Twenty Nine Palms...

... is a place in California, not far from Palm Springs. It is, however, totally outclassed by Sarawak' s Kubah National Park, where there are alleged to be over 93 species of these leafy-fronded trees. I could clearly recognise at least three of them, even though I never listened in Botany class -I was asleep at the back. I suspect palms are angiosperms not gymnosperms, and monocotyledenous not dicotyledenous, but I really don't know. They make fruit, so they must have arrived on the planet fairly recently, after insects I suppose. Top geneticist Steve Jones says geneticists manage even to make sex boring, but it's really only insects who show any interest in plant sex. Them bees would be locked up for bestiary, or rather plantiary, if the religious Right ever get on their case.

Kubah has the usual multitude of lizards, plus other life-forms I've not seen in the wild hithertofore, icluding terrapins, long-tailed birds in trees, and tropical squirrels. Top notch. Linda noticed some butterflies and suffered in the heat. As this was never in silence, most of the wildlife had plenty of time to clear off before we saw it.

Yesterday we went to Bako NP, wher we saw big-nosed monkes and did some rather good bouldering at a splendid beach. Remote, you have to get a boat in, and it feels like an island, though that was mostly due to the price of beer.

All this was much better than the mediocre Fairy Cave we visited the day before. People come from all over the place to se the caves in Sarawak, but listen to me - don't bother with this one. There's a crag on the adjacent premises, but now it's under lock and key, so bring a crowbar if you want to go climbing.

Kuching, Sarawak is great. Of the stuff we did in Sabah, only snorkelling at Sapi Island was as much kop.

We fly tomorrow for Singapore...

What Afterlife? What news?

It's been a while since the WA question has been asked in SE Asia, what with Buddhism and Hinduism already dealt with, and Islam given a sensibly short shrift - we all know about an afterlife of available virgins in Heaven for the blokes only, right?

Malaysia, ostensibly a Muslim nation, in fact hosts a muliplicity of ethnicities, including in Borneo, 30 tribes in Sabah and probably just as many in Sarawak. Many of these were headhunters, and all of these were animists. There are also Chinese, always trading or restauraunting; all Taiost for want of a better name. And then there are the aforementioned Buddhists and Hindus. And Sikhs, of whom there are many also in Nottingham and elsewhere. Here I'll attempt to elevate conciosusness levels only of animism and Sikhsism.

Alas, not much to tell, based on the available information.

Headhunters in Borneo all seem to have animist beliefs, such that spirits are in the forest and everywhere else, and all one's fortunes and misfortunes are associated with their influence, benign or otherwise. When you die, your spirit (of course) lives on to cause as much mischief as you want to extract from your living relatives if they haven't gathered enough heads. Simple.

Sikhism arose from the teachings of an Indian guru in the 16th century. A few other gurus followed, then worship continued in temples rife with the smell of sweaty feet until the present day. Nice guys, Sikhs will give a daily veggie meal to all-comers whatever their faith, creed or footwear. No idea what happens after death, but l'm working on it. Keen on turbans.

Two units...

...of personnel moving from Kota Kinabalu to Kuching...

Thanks to Air Asia and Waddingtons Games.

Kota Kinabalu, Borneo

As we waded through the head-hunters on the way to the mall today, trying not to bump into protruding nose-bones, I wondered whether the bookshop would be well-stocked. The only books on sale in Kuala Lumpur seemed to be Islam-based tracts of one sort or another, and as I've nearly finished my Iain Banks novel, I'm in the market for some lit. Loads of fiction in the smart bookstore here in Sabah, but not a sniff of Popular Science. I even asked  whether they stock Richard Dawkins, but it was blank looks all round.

And the internet connections are terrible. Wi-fi, so ubiquitous now in Thailand that interntet cafes are almost redundant, is virtually absent here in Malaysia.

Malaysia seems pretty happy and functional on the surface, but the taxi drivers tell you some imteresting stuff. Notoriously, the Leader of the Opposition continues to be incarcerated following rigged sentencing based on trumped-up charges of buggery, despite several inquiries that found to the contrary. That's in the papers too.

Head-hunting is now outlawed, of course, but other forms of consumerism have taken over - the national sport is now shopping.

Phi Phi done

The budget international cuisine may be the best it in Asia. But, we're leaving PP Don tomorrow, headed for Kuala Lumpur via Krabi airport. Excellent snorkelling trip yesterday, saw coral snakes and an octopus! Done some climbing too...
www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/showlog.html?id=84&sort=e

Phi fi fo fun

Ko Phi Phi

Linda likes it here. So much, she's even started a new business...

Bronchitis begone!

Back in the game, we took the local bus (or songthau, I could add various umlaut-cedilla ~`'* - type symbols, were they available, to reveal full pronunciation nuances) to Spirit Mountain again, and did some proper routes with SA Ben and Silent Rene (add accents), and it was great.

Spirit Mountain

It was with little spirit that we staggered there today, but a climb was done! A mere Grade 5, but we've had H999N9999 flu for a week. Immune systems have been stretched somewhat, but the sunsets on Ao Nang beach make up for it on a nightly basis...

Bloggus interruptus

Technical issues are preventing me from uploading pics - should be very easy from my new device, but alas, no....

Vientiane airport, Laos

Waiting for a plane, sitting in the Bangkok Airways lounge where they have the best sarnies and cake known to humanity. Well, better than old baguettes in dusty Thakhek, anyway.

Bus travel behind us, we're rejoining civilisation and flying to Krabi.

Laos is great, pics coming up if I can sort out uploading them from my tablet. Should be easy...

Thakhek, Laos

There are lots of caves in the area that are explorable in the dry season, but I imagine are raging torrents in the wet. It's now the Very Dry Indeed season.

We took a tuk-tuk today and had a look in Buddha cave, rediscovered by a bat-hungry local a few years ago...supposedly after several centuries of obscurity, yet already containing several thousand Buddha statues that looked to me exactly like the ones you can buy in any Thai market for a fiver each. Quite possibly utter fakery. Nice lighting, though, and delicate formations. Nearby, there was another cave you could swim into, long and dark. Karst chasm is the lowest form of dip, you might say.

Neither cave was as impressive as the huge through cave adjacent to the crag we were climbing at here...greenclimbershome.com

Same same but much better!

Laos - Vang Vieng

Hi blogwatchers if you're still out there - this, at last, is a post from Abroad, yet another trip to SE Asia where the snow never falls! Technical problems consisting mostly of forgetting the required Blogspot username plus password combinations are now overcome! 

There will be verbiage...but to summarise so far, there has been climbing and downhill mountainbiking at Chiang Mai, temple viewing at Luang Prabang and more climbing at Vang Vieng. Green curry has been consumed in considerable quantity, and all is well.

This Side of Paradise ** by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In his first novel, Fitzgerald goes all self-indulgent. Which is a bit rich under his circumstances.

The ''most scenic boat trip in Cambodia"

...is that which goes from Battambang to Siem Reap via Tonle Sap lake, according to the Lonely Planet.

So when I woke up at 6 am this morning, it seemed sensible to take the opportunity to switch my bus ticket for a boat ticket.


Things seemed promising when, after only half an hour, I saw two kingfishers and some other unfamiliar streamlined and brightly coloured predatory birds. That was it, really, except for a fat grey pelican. Egrets you can see anywhere.

It would take a lot for me to recommend a 9h boat trip down a muddy river - much, much more to take 4 days heading up the Mekong to Laos (the main competition), but this was dullsville.

Trip stats: The bus takes 4h and costs $5. The boat 9h and costs $19, so it should be at least 6 times as good to break even.
It was rubbish.

However, it costs $30 to go from Siem Reap by boat for 2h to see the floating villages on  Tonle Sap. So these we saw for $11 cheaper. So not as rubbish as all that.

Lunch (included): one stale baguette. 

Arse status: sorer than after cycling around Angkor .

Tomorrow's activity: cycling around Angkor.