The Big Durian

New York is known throughout the world as the Big Apple. I'm not sure whether it's for its sweetness, juiciness, or tendency to turn brown on the slightest contact with air. Whatever the reason I feel that Jakarta deserves its own nickname too. It is just as big and is quite the metropolis in southeast Asia. I have therefore decided to call it the Big Durian in homage to the local pungent delicacy fruit that locals love and foreigners loathe with a passion: the first impression is the smell (or perhaps in the case of Jakarta the haze of pollution on the horizon); at first touch it's a hard and spiky, seemingly impenetrable and not worth the bother to investigate further; once you've finally opened it up you discover that most of it is comprised of inedible, useless ballast with only a small percentage of fleshy goodness; and when you finally get to taste it then it's a 50/50, Marmite-like epiphany of either love or hate. Jakarta is a lot of work and you may not even like it at the end of it.

Is it a spiky, love-it-or-hate-it tropical fruit? or is it Indonesia's much-maligned capital?

 

Java: Stronger Than A Cup Of Coffee

Given my aching thighs and calves following Kerinci I was glad to spend a considerable amount of time on buses, trains and boats over the following week (although I was less happy by one of my drivers' enthusiasm for trance music played at full blast in the minivan at 2am in the morning). From the fresh, tea plantations of Kersik Tua I headed east to the hot and humid alluvial lowlands of Sumatra and the not-at-all-touristic town of Jambi. My main (only) reason for visiting was the remains of the capital of the once mighty Melayu kingdom that flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries after the fall of the nearby Srivijaya empire. It is this kingdom that gave its name to the Malay peninsula (which it also controlled) and, by extension Malaysia. This has led to friction between the two countries with Indonesians angered that Malaysia is claiming for its own cultural traditions and heritage that Indonesians believe to be rightfully theirs. The most notorious is batik, the colourful, wax-resist dying technique that is used to make intricately patterned clothes. Long ignored by Indonesian authorities Malaysia quietly stepped in claiming it as their own. This led to Indonesians protesting and quickly registering it with UNESCO as part of their intangible cultural heritage. Ever since then Friday has become batik day (the registration was announced on a Friday) when all office workers are obliged to turn up in garish shirts (the most popular designs often incorporating football team logos) in a sort of nationwide "up yours" to their northerly neighbour that they love to hate.

The executive ManU batik shirt - no self-respecting Indonesian office worker would be seen without one on a Friday.

Climbing Kerinci

Travelling down the interior of Sumatra you get a good sense of its size and relative wildness. The Trans-Sumatran highway is a joke: barely wide enough to let two trucks pass, winding along the hilly spine of the Bukit Barisan mountains and potholed, you'll be lucky if you achieve an average speed 40lm/h. It gives you plenty of time to watch the surrounding countryside go by. Small, dusty, farming villages with their adjoining rice fields, vegetable patches and banana trees alternate with large chunks of forest spilling down to the roadside from the wild, green mountains. Encroachment onto virgin forest is a problem as the human population of Sumatra increases and demands greater space and resources. Nevertheless this is still a haven of biodiversity and is the last refuge on earth of some of the world's largest and most majestic animals: the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran orangutan (slightly different to its Bornean cousin) and Sumatran rhino are found nowhere else on earth (actually there is a small population, estimated at 25 individuals, of Sumatran rhinos in Sabah). Naturally it's difficult to get out to the places where these animals live, and a sighting is as likely as winning the lottery. Instead I decided to just go for a hike in one of Sumatra's three main national parks.

Statue of a harimau (Sumatran tiger) guarding the road that snakes through the tea plantations to the Kerinci National Park and the iconic volcano that lords over the surrounding countryside.

Dangerous Island

Sumatra is a dangerous place. It's not the inhabitants though, but the island itself. Something deep down in Sumatra, more fundamental, geological, doesn't seem to like people. I've already mentioned the Boxing Day earthquake, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There have been at lest half a dozen serious ones since then claiming a few thousand lives. Slightly further back in time southern Sumatra was host to the largest volcanic eruption of the past 180 years when the Krakatoa (aka Krakatau) volcano erupted violently in 1883. The explosion, which was heard up to 5000km away, became the first worldwide media sensation, claimed the lives of over 36,000 people, plunged the world into an ash-induced winter for several years, and even had a film made about it.

Intricate decorations adorning a traditional Batak house in the Toba area.

The Day The Earth Moved

Up until six and a half years ago Aceh was a name that few people knew. For years the region at the northern tip of Sumatra was a no-go area thanks to the Free Aceh guerrilla insurgency that was seeking independence for the region underpinned by discontent about central government appropriation of Acehnese resources (oil had been found offshore Aceh in the 70's), an influx of outsiders and a desire for a greater role for sharia in local law. The almost three decades of conflict had claimed some 15,000 lives. All that was to change on Boxing Day 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever to be recorded struck off the northwestern coast of Sumatra. The resulting tsunami spread far and wide, causing immense casualties in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Somalia and even as far as South Africa. The brunt of nature's force, however, was borne by Aceh which experienced some 70% of the total 185,000 casualties and the capital, Banda Aceh, was almost wiped from the map.

The owners of this house probably weren't too pleased to find that someone had parked a boat on their roof despite the very obvious sign.

Hello Mister!

After a week with my friends in Cyberjaya it was time for me to move on. They had already postponed my departure by insisting I spend the weekend with them, but the easy life wasn't getting me any further, and so with a last farewell I set off for Port Klang, Kuala Lumpur's port on the coast. It seems strange to me that despite all the difficulties in getting by sea from one part of the country to another, Peninsular Malaysia has good maritime connections with several neighbouring countries, including Indonesia. Although I liked my time in Malaysia I find it a rather dull place to be honest. Whether it's to do with the rather staid, conservative Muslim culture favoured by the authorities, or whether it has to do with reaching a certain level of development and therefore eschewing the happy chaos of less developed countries I'm not sure. But a difference in chaos was certainly evident in the transition from Malaysia to Indonesia. Boarding the ferry at the Klang terminal was a muted affair, with slowly shuffling rows of passengers trickling through immigration. Disembarkation, on the other hand, was joyously raucous as porters, passengers and onlookers jostled for position on the jetty. The immigration hall was full of shouting, sweaty bodies and a dense fog of sweet kretek (clove cigarettes that have already become one of the hallmarks of my time here in Indonesia) smoke. Nevertheless the bureaucracy was dealt with surprisingly swiftly as people huddled round the immigration desk where the clerks were a blur of furious stamping. The crossing was also quite merry as there was a karaoke video of popular dangdut (the Indonesian music of the masses, best described as the bastard offspring between Polish disco polo and Romanian gypsy manele) songs, which the passengers sang along with when they weren't quizzing me about who I was, where I was going, and other personal questions.

Medan's crowded public market has possibly the largest collection of dried fish in the world. It also has lots of smiling vendors who seem to want to talk about Chelsea or the upcoming Euro championships.

Putrajaya, Pants, And Other Ponderings

So, getting from East Malaysia to West Malaysia by boat didn't work out either. My German couple were ready to take me with them, and even wanted to go to Singapore. But it just didn't seem like it was meant to be as they discovered their boat had a leak and were forced to leave it in Borneo themselves. I'm sure Charley Boorman didn't have these problems when he was filming By Any Means, but then again he has his own BBC film crew and lackeys to organise his itinerary. Kuching was getting boring and 16 days really were enough. I had seen all I wanted to, and had begun to get itchy feet. With a heavy heart I headed down to the airport as soon as I got the bad news and bought myself a ticket to Kuala Lumpur (although, as an aside, I did get to do something that I had dreamt of doing for some time, namely turning up at an airport and just buying my ticket on the spot).

The famous Petronas Towers which I revisited 7 years after my first trip here.

Travel Frustrations

I have now been in Kuching for over two weeks, the longest I've been in any one place on this trip (apart from Tehran). And it's not because it's a terribly exciting place; quite the opposite in fact. No, the reason for my extended stay is my stubborn desire to do this journey overland. I had already broken the no-flying pledge I had given myself by hopping from Taiwan to the Philippines, but I was damned if I was going to do it within the same country. Despite Malaysia being split neatly into two halves separated by some 500km of sea, the sole means of transport for ordinary civilians trying to get from one to the other is by plane. The last passenger ferry sailed its last over 20 years ago. That air travel is the default option is totally understandable: its faster, more comfortable and (thanks to the lack of tax on aviation fuel) is cheaper. But that it's the only option seems to me ridiculous. What of people who, for whatever reason, cannot fly; or if flying became impossible - not such a far-fetched idea for those who remember the chaos caused around Europe a couple of years ago when an Icelandic volcano started rumbling (and Java, with its collection of active volcanoes, isn't that far away)? I refused to to believe that there was no way to get by sea from East to West Malaysia so, when I arrived, I set about procuring myself passage to the mainland. Little did I anticipate how hard it would be.

Kuching is known as the "Cat City" - this is one of several such statues dotted around town.

Man Of The (Disappearing) Forest

For most people there is one overwhelming reason to come to Borneo: wildlife. The world's third-largest island is home to large tracts of virgin, untouched rainforest bursting with biodiversity and harbouring more than a fair few endemic animals. For the budding David Attenborough* there are few places that can offer such a range of things both bright and beautiful as well as short and squat. The biggest draw is, undoubtedly, our distant cousin, the orangutan (a word derived from the Malay, meaning "man of the forest"). There are only two populations of orangutan left in the world: one here in Borneo and the other in Sumatra. Sightings in the wild occur next to never and so the next best option is to go to one of the rehabilitation centres where orphaned and abandoned orangutans are cared for before, hopefully, being released back into the wild. One such centre is located just outside Kuching and I made it the first thing I visited when I arrived.

Orangutan faces are full of expressivity, betraying how closely related they are to humans.

East Is East

Six days in Brunei was enough and so I set off for Sarawak. One of the reasons I stayed so long was that I wanted to do a trek to Gunung Mulu national park, just outside the Bruneian border and accessible from BSB. It is famous for housing one of the largest caves in the world which is home to a population of several million bats as well as some magnificent primary rainforest and karst terrain. To be able to afford the tour though I had to find other people with whom to split the costs of transport, guides and porters, but unfortunately I had no luck. Such is the way when travelling solo: sometimes it is not possible to do certain activities because you need a group of people and they just aren't available. Instead I had to make do with the caves at Batu Niah, also in Sarawak, but only a dozen kilometres from the main highway instead of requiring several days' hike (or a trip by plane). The main cave there is also staggeringly huge and is home to several species of bats and swiftlets, whose droppings, like in caves throughout the region, carpet the floor and give it a characteristic, overpowering odour. What perhaps makes the caves at Niah special are that they have been home to humans for some 40,000 years, with some of the oldest archaeological finds in all of southeast Asia. And they have been continually used for that entire time up to the present day, where local tribes collect swiftlet nests. Although it's not the season for collection the bamboo scaffolds used by the collectors are still up and extend vertiginously 50m or more up to the roof of the cave, seemingly held aloft by a single, narrow pole, somehow defying the laws of gravity.

Looking back at the entrance to the main cave at Niah. You can see that plants manage to grow for a little distance into the cave, but then lack of sunlight allows only a few hardy mosses to grow and then nothing.