4x4 Adventures in the Jungle
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Belaga,
Malaysia
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
A four hour boat ride in a longboat from Kapit to the sleepy hamlet of Belaga. This is the only boat of the day to arrive from the outside world. There are three ways to get out: boat back to Kapit, 4x4 to the main road, or boat and 4x4 via somewhere else remote. You cannot buy a newspaper here - a set number of copies arrive on the boat, all of which are reserved for the cafes. Annoying when you're a celebrity wanting to check that the photographers have published the photo showing your good side...
Thankfully, we didn't have to organise any longhouse visits or trips here, we'd been through all of that in Kapit, so we didn't have to deal much with the ubiquitous Daniel, of Daniel's Corner. He is the local fat cat guide, who uses a team of local, how can I put this, unfortunates (a deaf mute and some sort of mutant-mouthed guy with a smattering of English) to co-erce you to visit his office. We went along out of curiousity and to get his "team" off our backs, and came away with the deaf mute as a hanger-on.
Anyway, two days here of very little activity. A beautiful walk along the river bank and around the town limits took about forty minutes. We went for a swim in the evening in the river which was excellent, but hardly makes for an exciting blog entry. But car crashes do - right!?
Our next port of call is Batu Niah, a little village next to the Niah caves which include one of the largest caves in the world and which houses half a million swiftlets and the same number of bats (yes, they counted). So 4x4 to the main road was our exit strategy: us, David and Kate, Sonia (all of whom make up the celebrity rafting team known as "Team T-REX") and our new travelling companion Martina from the Czech Republic. Anyway, down comes the rain, sheeting down, a tropical downpour. Our driver is very cautious, but even still we eventually start to slip and slide about a bit. Finally we slowly slide one wheel into the little ditch at the side and we're stuck. Ang mo's (foreigners) out to go and stand in a shelter from the rain by the side of the road and watch as a couple of maniacs in a big truck arrive and proceed to pull our 4x4 back onto the road. The mud on the road is the colour of slate and really thick and it's difficult even to walk across the road to watch the show, so it's no surprise we went off. Boringly, however, the rest of the journey to Batu Niah passed without incident.
