Hi All,

  That should definitely tell you where we are.  I’m sending the last email from our Brunei trip.  Then I’ll catch up with the last events of Sail Malaysia that included a wonderful dinner and a class on how to wrap yourself in 6 meters of material to make a sari.  The Rally ended on August 2nd.  Many of the boats are still here in the marina, but many have set off to continue their own journeys.  We’ll remain here in Kota Kinabalu for the month of August.  Randal is doing boat work and I’m doing the wandering around.  I did find a watercolor teacher and have taken one lesson so far.  I like her and will go again.  Every teacher I have is different but the principles are the same.  The more lessons I have the more I seem to “get it” even if I can’t always do it.

   I’m still hopeful that the Red Sox season isn’t blowing up.  But it seems every third year they win the Series and every third year they have a terrible year….At least since 2004.  We’ll see.

  I’m off to town later to Borneo Books where we can swap books. Randal will do boat work.  Then he’s going to try to check on his computer.  The R stopped working and he took the computer back to the store where he’d bought it this time last year.  They have a Dell person working on it.  For now we’re sharing 70 – 30 and you can guess who gets the 30. 

  So that’s it for now.

Ru

Ulu Temburong National Park

http://www.bruneibay.net/eco-adventure/natlpark.htm

“Visit the best protected rainforest in Borneo to see the unique forest, hike to the top of the Canopy Walkway to be above the trees, visit a longhouse and see the rural side of Brunei. Travel in longboats up the rapids of the Temburong River for 15km to reach the National Park. Lunch (afterwards) provided beside the river. The river trip back downstream from the National Park will include a couple of our inflatable rafts and numerous Rapid Riders (inflatable air mattresses made from raft material) to have fun shooting the rapids.”

How could any thinking person not figure out she would get wet? Make that half a bus load of people. Somehow Randal and I zoomed in on the word hike and tuned out the “shoot the rapids” part. So Randal wore socks and hiking boots and I wore my sneakers. Agnes Keith in Land Below the Wind said sneakers were her footwear of choice for jungle treks and I take her advice about anything Borneo. (Borneo is the island that Brunei and East Malaysia are on.) As it turned out, they’re not so bad for rapids shooting because sneakers dry pretty fast overnight in the engine room. Funny enough too, though we all wore life jackets going up-river to the park, no one did on the way back when half of us were in the water and where at one point when Joy and I tumbled off our yellow Rapid Rider into the river, I couldn’t stand up. Randal chose to take one of the motorized longboats back down river and I’m not sure what I would have done had Joy Carey not asked me to share a Rapid Rider with her. Her husband, like Randal opted for the longboat. I handed Randal all of my gear, camera, watch, phone and that was a good thing! But alas, no way to take photos. Luckily, Jean-Marie’s wife Lily did take some and shared them with me. I do have lots of photos of our hike into the rainforest and canopy walk.

Getting to the Rainforest……

We traveled by air conditioned bus; zooming 400 horsepower butt beating water taxi at 60 mph locally called the “Flying Coffin” , a second air conditioned bus, and finally butt numbing flatboat to get to the National Park. This is what the flatboat looks like.

Very shallow and narrow. You sat on a plank about a 6 inches off the bottom of the boat and a board was put in back of you to lean against. When you went past a rapid water would slosh into the boat and wet your sneakers and splash onto your shorts. By the end of the trip you butt was tired of sitting on the plank. Agnes Keith would travel for days on a longboat powered by natives with poles.

We’d be zooming along and then hit a shallows when our young bow boy would get out and pull us along. It was in some ways like canoeing along the James if you have ever done that. At this point we were going upstream so definitely needed the 30 horsepower engine.

Arriving at Ulu Temburong National Park.

Our first stop was at the Park HQ located in a replica of a longhouse and the only “Ladies Room” for miles around. Some folks listened the guide’s short talk. I went off to the “Ladies.” There would be no going off to pee in these leech/spider/who knows what infested forests.

Then we got back into the longboats for the 2 minute trip to the trailhead, got back out of the longboats and started up the 385 meters to the Canopy Walk.

Up the steps though in this photo it looks a bit like a ladder.

Then up the trail with rope railings that you needed to negotiate the giant dirt steps.

A very unflattering photo I asked Randal to take. I’m hot and pooped at this point and was glad there was a bit of a wait to start climbing the metal scaffold’s stairs to the canopy. And I was glad for my sneakers. Lots of folks had on flip flops and sandals prepared for the rafting part of the trip. You can see part of the metal canopy climb behind my head.

Up up and up…..about 45 meters Randal remembers. The air was breezy and cooler.

I hadn’t counted the steps, but the fellow who wrote this following passage did.

“Ulu Temburong National Park has the tallest canopy walk in the world and it is a feat just to reach the bottom of the canopy walk’s metal scaffolding, as to get to the canopy walk you have to climb more than 1200 steps. Add the steps to climb up the canopy walk scaffolding and you have at least 1300 pain-inducing steps.

http://realtravel.com/e-156184-temburong_entry-brunei_ulu_temburong:_hangin_with_the_locals

Before we started the park ranger told us how many “big giant western sized” people could be on the steps or the towers or the scaffolding at one time. (He told us they allowed more of the small local people.) So of course I was worried the whole time because it was different for the steps, scaffolding and viewing towers and I couldn’t remember and thought no one else seemed to care. I especially worried on the bridges between the towers. You walked along the bridges to the next tower and climbed up to the top with a viewing stand.

The top of the top of the top. I don’t like heights that well so didn’t really take time to enjoy the view. But the experience was worth doing for sure.

The way down was straight down. You walked down some steps then stepped onto a platform then down the next flight. The trip up is broken up by the bridges and different levels and time to stand in a tower and look around. The trip down you just go. On the very last level both Randal and I got bee stings on our palm from bees that obviously congregate on the railings.

Then it’s back down the steps through the woods and the dirt steps through the mud and then you’re done. You get back into a longboat and then are taken down the river for a picnic lunch.

Randal getting from our longboat onto shore for the picnic lunch.

The river was full of these rocks and we had to walk barefoot over them a short distance from the longboat. One of the kind guides held my hand while I gingerly ouched my way from boat to shore. At that point I was still trying to keep my sneakers dry. It was a wonderful lunch of local foods and a drink that tasted like sweet Rootbeer.

Then it was time to go down the river.

Photo from Intrepid Tours web site

Joy and I started out on the yellow “Rapid Rider.” She was sitting in front and I was in back. Getting nowhere paddling with our hands, ours being more like a “Slow Rider,” I grabbed on to the rope at back of one of the large rafts. Bad idea. We soon hit a rapid and weren’t able to stay connected to either raft or our yellow mattress and both of us ended up in the water. I managed not to lose either my prescription sun glasses or my B hat; Joy kept her hat too! We then gave up on the yellow mattress and climbed into one of the larger rafts.

Joy in the straw hat, Jean-Marie in back and our young bow person from the tour group. Originally Jean-Marie was in the paddle raft with 2 young men from the tour group. When we got into this paddle raft one of the young men jumped out and took the yellow mattress. Somehow as things went along Joy and I ended up with the paddles. We kept chatting away and Jean-Marie kept telling us to quit chatting and paddle. Somehow Joy and I couldn’t talk and paddle straight so sent us sideways into some of the rapids. You can’t tell from the photo, but Joy and I are both soaking wet from hat to sneakers. Randal and Jim were perfectly dry from their longboat trip. While we waited to board the bus for the return home I stood out in the sun and dried quite a bit. Luckily I had brought a large sarong. I was tempted to take off my wet clothes and just wear the huge pink sarong. Alas, No nerve! So I just wrapped it around me for the bus ride to keep off the blowing air conditioned air. We made a quick stop midway back while waiting to board one of those Coffin Zooming water taxi boats and that would take us home. Then we squashed ourselves into a small van for the mile or so back to the yacht club. Finally it was into the yacht club water taxi and back to the boat!