Sungai Igan

Under construction    "adventures on the Igan river"
will our heroes ever return to civilization ?

 Back in the early 70's when I was doing my bit to make the Sultan of Brunei the world's richest man, I also spent some time helping the Malay government to balance it's books by searching for oil and gas in its part of the South China Sea. This meant that for some weeks I was stationed at the mouth of the Igan river (Kuala Igan) just across from Kampung Igan, a small fishing village, a fairy tale sort of place with no electricity, running water, roads or modern amenities.  The village even had its own "medicine man"  (dukun) who would dispense traditional remedies.  However by the 70's the locals had come to prefer the Clinic Boat that would come down the river from Sibu doing a weekly round trip stopping at every village and longhouse on the way dispensing modern "western" medicine, especial valued was the anti-natal care it provided to new mums and babies, and it was an event pertaining to this Clinic boat and a young mother and her baby that makes Igan so special to me.

Sibu’s Markets

Sibu at night

We arrived in Sibu on the Rajang River after a long all day bus trip from Miri.  I quite liked Sibu.  It is a bit rough and ready but has a lively atmosphere and some of the best markets we have seen yet.  Markets are always a treat for the senses and the ones in Sibu were a special delight.  Sibu has two main markets; the daytime Central Market and the Night Markets. 

The Central Market is Malaysia’s largest fruit and vegetable market.  One can find every conceivable type of produce in the most unique presentations.

Central Market

There were plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Salaks or snake fruit

Not sure what these are

And prepared meats and fish.

Squid

Intestines

Black Chickens??

There was also live poultry all packaged up to take home.

Chicken in a box?

Or perhaps a duck wrapped in newspaper?

Poor chooks

The Night Markets are more for grabbing a snack or take away dinner.  There were stalls selling sweets, steamed buns, various fritters and meats.  Pork seemed to be a big speciality reflecting the large Chinese community in Sibu.

 

Sweets

Steamed buns

Fritters

Meats

Pig snouts

We sampled a few treats but definitely were not game to try the pork snouts!

Oil and Gas Country – Brunei and Miri

We decided to go by ferry boat from Kota Kinabalu to Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei.  The route goes along the coast of North Borneo into the South China Sea stopping in Labuan for a few hours then on to Brunei.  The ferry was a fast, enclosed boat so we could only sit back and look out dirty windows at the passing scenery; no going onto an open deck with the wind and sea around us.

Our Ferry

The island of Labuan is a duty-free special zone in Malaysia and seems to exist solely for the oil and gas industry.  The harbour was full of service boats and oil and gas platforms.

Labuan ferry terminal

 

Oil and Gas country

After a light lunch and a quick walk around the streets, we got on another ferry for the short trip to Brunei.  This was a new country for me and I almost was not let in.  When in Sumatra, my Australian passport had gotten wet and the photo on the main page became quite fuzzy.  The immigration officials in Indonesia and Malaysia didn’t seem too bothered by this but Brunei officials would not accept this passport.  After many phone calls and about an hour wait, the officials decided that they would accept my other passport.  So I am travelling on my US passport for awhile.

Brunei was a great example of how a country so wealthy can be so poor.  Brunei ranks the 4^th wealthiest country in the world by GDP; 90% of this wealth is from oil and gas.  Yet this wealth is in the hands of a few, mainly the Sultan and his family.  There are some magnificent buildings, flash houses with half a dozen cars outside (Brunei has one of the highest car ownership in the world) but there are also many poor houses and poor infrastructure outside the cities. 

Lot of bling in public spaces

A very strange roundabout sculpture - Mad hatter's tea party, perhaps?

The main mosque in BSB

The other end of the scale - Kampong Air or Water Village

 

Business seems to depend on who you know.  When we tried to purchase bus tickets, we were told to go down the street and look for a man called Danny, who is easy to spot as he wears lots of jewellery and colourful shirts.  There was no office or business front for the purchase of intercity bus tickets.  When we met Danny and Bob indiscreetly alluded to the Sultan’s wealth (as Bob was one of those who helped find the gas in 1973, he joked that he ought to ask the Sultan for a small donation towards our boating habit, as a fellow yachtie he would surely sympathise and donate to a good cause). Danny said the Sultan was an okay guy and showed us a picture of himself with the Sultan.  

That aside, Danny was quite a character.  He was wearing Australian paraphernalia so we got into a great conversation about Australia with him.

Danny

The country has sharia law; there is no alcohol and there is death penalty for such offenses as blasphemy, adultery, sodomy and extramarital sexual relations .  There are no open elections and no effective opposition  There is an extensive secret police working hard to ensure the nations "stability".  We were warned not to talk about the Princes or discuss politics while there.  

The sultan has declared himself infallible and lives in the worlds’ largest family residence; 1788 rooms, 18 elevators, 5 pools 257 bathrooms, 44 marble staircases and 2,152,782 square feet (200,000 m²) of floor space.  His younger brother, Jefri, went on a bit of a spending spree a few years ago while he was the country’s treasurer and blew about $14.8 billion on fast cars (about 5000 fast cars), a whole harem of fast women (sex slaves), nine jet planes (747, Airbus, etc.) and a few hundred paintings, a truckload of jewels, 500 hotels and mansions around the globe, 5 yachts, one called Tits with tenders called Nipple 1 and Nipple 2 and a network of companies, trusts, financial instruments and secret accounts with the sole purpose of hiding all the loot. 

Our reason for stopping in Brunei was to return to another place Bob had worked, the beach at Tutong.  We hired a car for the day and drove out to Tutong.  The area had changed quite a bit in 40 years, as expected, but we walked on the beach and Bob told his story of a close encounter with a crocodile there.

Bob on Tutong Beach

The next day we went to Miri, another oil and gas town just over the border in Sarawak.  We just had an overnight stop here to break up our journey south.  We went up Canada Hill to see The Grand Old Lady.  This was the first oil well in the area drilled in 1910.  

The Grand Old Lady

A petroleum museum was also on the site.  This had been a very nice museum with lots of information about geology and the petroleum industry plus interactive science displays for school children.  Sadly no maintenance on the museum had been done since the Minister opened it 10 years ago.  None of the interactive displays worked.  The entire museum had an awful clawing musty smell.  Half of the lighting was broken or not turned on so that we could hardly read the static displays.  I got quite annoyed that a once great little science museum, a place where school children could come to learn and be inspired, was so badly neglected when the oil companies made such huge profits from the area.

Petroleum Museum in Miri

View of Miri

Wild Borneo: Sabah - Kota Kinabalu and Papar

Jesselton Point

When planning our 4 months away from Songster we decided to go to Northern Borneo where Bob worked for 9 months in 1973 doing a coastal survey job and living in tents and grass huts.  Bob dug up some of his old photos from that time and we have been going on the ‘Footsteps of Bob Nostalgia Tour’ of Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak.  I am hoping Bob will write a post giving his then and now perspective of our trip but until then I will give the highlights of our travels

The sights flying into Kota Kinabalu (KK) were spectacular – pristine islands, coral reefs, clear blue water.  I was very excited to be landing in wild Borneo, the land of jungles, orang-utans and head-hunters and the subject of endless nature shows I watched as a kid.  What we found in KK was a dynamic, modern, cosmopolitan city – big hotels, endless shopping malls with all the big name shops and streets lined with restaurants serving cuisines from around the world.

Our first day we hired a car to drive to Papar, a town about 50 km down the coast, where Bob had a camp in 1973.  We found the street corner where Bob had taken a photo in 1973 and except for more cars, not much had changed.

1973

2017

But out on the beach things were quite different.  Instead of a dirt road and jungle there was now a sealed road, nice houses and open spaces.  We had a lovely walk on the beach, which we had all to ourselves and got our feet wet in the warm South China Sea.  On the deserted beach with the bush hiding the houses one could imagine how it might have been in 1973.

 

 

Back in KK that evening we went to the night fish markets.  What an amazing feast for eyes and stomach!  A huge market of stalls stretched before us with every imaginable type of fish and seafood, many I had never seen before.  Dinners would wander through the stalls and pick the items they wanted and they would be cooked on the spot.  We just went up and down the stalls agog looking at the displays.  We happened upon an Australian couple from Queensland (one of the few ferringi (foreigners) we have come across) who were in heaven in front a huge pile of various shellfish.  We weren’t intending to have dinner as we had had a late lunch but couldn’t resist.  We settled on sharing a lovely grilled fish – fantastic.

Dinners enjoying themselves

I have never seen such large prawns!

Fresh colourful fish

Shellfish of every kind

Or maybe some sea weed on the side?

Fish grilling on a bamboo leaf