Bako

A short motorboat ride down a river and down the ocean coast takes me to Bako National Park. I hop off the boat, rucksack in hand, and walk through the wild muddy surf to shore. Leaving behind my fellow passengers - matching Birkenstocks, Lonely Planet clutching young Spanish couple; middle aged German woman with "tribal" armband tattoo - standing helplessly aside as the boatman assumes bellhop duties bringing their bags to shore. I scope out the nearby grassy clearing serving as a campground, pitch my tent and head to the cantine for my day's first meal. I ask for a bowl of "air panas" - hot water - and object half heartedly in beyond-broken Malay at being charged half a ringgit.

I sit down for a gourmet affair of MSG instant noodles - lamb flavoured, although I wouldn't know if it wasn't indicated as such on the packaging. The European vacationers in my immediate vicinity whisper to each other in confusion and disgust as I violently hack open a can of sardines and mash the slimy, salty wonders into my noodle soup. Yum.

I slurp up the last of my champion hobo breakfast, sit back and open up a tattered, tape-bound edition of Jack Kerouac's Lonesome Traveler - still attracting stares amongst the polo shirt crowd (to be fair I am sporting a rather unwashed appearance, my hair resembling that of Albert Einstein if he had dabbled in crack cocaine). As I am reading of Jack's time as a railroad brake man (he too prides himself on improvised meals on the cheap) I become the latest victim of the jungles thievingest bastard - the macaque. I chase him down, retrieving my foodsack of noodles, beans, sardines and crackers whilst yelling specist insults I hope the scumbag understands

I sit back down and get through less than three pages of Mexican opium adventures before the skies opt for a recreation of the emotional climax of every Hollywood film - Crack-Boom! (thunder) followed my instantaneous sheets of tropical downpour. I run full-tilt back to the campground leaping tarp strings to get to my vulnerable mesh-bare tent under aqua-assault. Awkwardly, I fling the nylon fly over; desperately searching for what clips where,  which way's up etc. I am quickly rescued from this pickle by two guys who abandon the shelter of the concrete bathhouse and come to my aid.

Now under the concrete, tin roofed shelter, dripping like mad, I thank my two heroes. I learn they are here on a reprieve from Uni study in Kuching, with about thirty of their classmates. This will be their last night and I am invited to their concluding shindig - under the big blue tarp - taking place later that night.

The cats and dogs don't seem to have any intention of stopping anytime soon, the place is flooding. The students however seem unphased and their relaxed attitude towards this torrential assault leaves me mutually unfretting - if the water rises a few more feet, swimming to and fro may be a welcome change of pace.

In typical Malaysian fashion I am told to serve myself first and to take "more, more!" of everything. There are many dishes of chicken, fish, hotdogs, rice and so on. It is all very scrumptious, a welcome break from noodles, sardines and beans. While I finnish the best meal I've had in a while, thanking all of my new friends repeatedly, I am told the evening is not over. These are the aristocrats of the jungle and a multicourse meal can only be followed by one thing: theater.

My friends have broken into groups and written short plays for the evening. I am very humbled when I learn that between meeting them earlier in the day and now they have all translated their plays into English, just for my benefit - this stinky disheveled bum is their quest of honour! All the plays where hilarious start to finnish but there was one play that will always (graphicly) remain ingrained in my mind - the story of the circumcision of a proboscis monkey (why do plays written by young people invariably end up being phallic-centric?). After the skits have concluded I feel responsible to put myself up on the stage (the stage being standing in the ankle deep water, under the communal tarp area) and give a performance of my own. I make an attempt  of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah with my cheap, battered ukulele. I struggle to be heard over the ratatatat of the incessant rain and thoroughly butcher Leo's classic but the enthusiastic applause at the end tells me they atleast appreciate the effort.

This is an expertly engineered string and tarp structure (oh, Canada) but is nevertheless thoroughly inundated, we abandon her for the more reliable shelter of the bathhouse. Here we sit down, guitars materialize, someone comes with a big jug of coffee, chocolate cookies - this party clearly isn't over. Almost everyone here is of a different ethnicity and religion. Folk songs are sung perfectly with much gusto from the different indigenous cultures of the state (Kayan, Kenyah, Iban) alongside more familiar acoustic-guitar-camping songs. The evening draws to a close, I reluctantly tredge through the swamp to my tent.

My friends pack up and depart the next day and I am left with no companions but the critters. I have many more standoffs with the macaques, rather pleasant snort-conversations with the wild boars, staring competitions with the proboscis monkeys (also contemplating their outrageously goofy appearance) and perplexing a monitor lizard with some beatboxing (my first ever win in a rap battle).

I sit down amongst a cloud of a few billion blowflies communally making the sound of a large open grave and reopen my book. Jack is on a boat for Morocco and I am about to pack up my bog of a tent and embark a boat of my own - onward.

I am 3 and a half months into my trip, 111 days to be exact. In this time I have managed to lose socks, shirt, nail clippers, flashlight, battery charger, an iPod and a cellphone, among other things. Yeah, I'm hopeless. But now I find myself commiting what many would consider travelling heresy: I am travelling sans-camera. Why you ask? Well I was careless and left it on a boat.

It has been nearly two months since I last uploaded photos to Facebook. Since that time I have taken many pictures that I'm sure would inspire envy amongst facebook browsers. Pictures of myself with arms around the many Malaysian friends I've made,  pictures of heart-wrenchingly gorgeous sunsets over the ocean, over the jungle, taken from boats and buildings, and rivers....lots of goddamn pretty sunsets, pictures of animals in the wild (oran utans, civits, crocodiles, many kinds of monkeys, monitor lizards.....) and so on. These pictures will never make it to facebook, you won't see them. Further, I do not plan on replacing my camera, so you will not see the places I will go in the coming months.

Travelling without a camera may sound like going fishing without a rod or net, why go out to sea and come back without anything tangible? Because some people like the waves, the quiet. Travelling is in and of itself an intangible act. It goes against my utilitarian minded culture and trying to capture the reality of an environment within 8 megapixels is really a laughable waste of time. I could be using that time talking to people, eating food or just properly appreciating a sunset instead of fiddeling with the shutter settings. Even if I went out and bought the most expensive SLR that sunset, that moment will always be incommunicable. You do not smell the fish market a few metres away, you do not feel the humid evening air you are not here and no camera can bring you.

So I am wrapping up my time in Malaysian Borneo and will be crossing down into the Indonesian state of Kalimantan in a week or two. From there I am, as always, completely unsure of where I will go although I do wish to eventually get to the recently seperated nation of East Timor. I have started this Blog as a means to compensate for no longer having pictures. I hope to update here with the odd entry, nothing too regular and certainly not any award winning writing. Just trying to capture a little bit of the essence of my chosen environment.

For now I am going to go investigate the prospects of getting a night bus to the town of Kuching. Which in Malay directly translates to Cat. Yup, a town called cat.