Dispatches from Crazytown

February 28, 2007

Dispatch from Borneo

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When I was in the fourth grade, I did a report about the island of Borneo. At the time, it seemed as fantastical a place as still existed in the world: home to headhunters, flying frogs and the Sultan of Brunei (widely agreed to be the world’s richest man throughout most of my childhood, but since replaced by more mundane figures out of the software industry). Eight days after arriving in Kota Kinabalu, capital of the East Malaysian province of Sabah at the Northeastern tip of the aforementioned island, I have seen no sultans or flying amphibians. Here are some of the things I have seen:

Chinese tourists feeding bread to a barracuda: The islands of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park off the coast of KK offer crystal clear waters with an abundance of aquatic life. On one particular pier, I witnessed a large group of tourists, apparently mistaking the open ocean for a koi pond, throwing scraps of bread at a barracuda who could be seen cruising just below the surface. The large, toothy fish appeared uninterested in the offering, and the soggy bits of gluten floated unmolested in the waves.

Giant glasses of watermelon juice: You can get some great fresh fruit juices in Sabah, although I’m not sure I was really prepared to consume a half liter of watermelon juice in a single go.

glass of watermelon juice

Grand Old Lady: After KK, we spent a few days in Miri, in Sarawak province. Miri is an oil town, the sovereign domain of Royal Dutch Shell, and the “Grand Old Lady” is the cute name given to the first oil well in Borneo, now dry and serving as a monument to the oil and gas industry. As oil monuments go, it’s not nearly as impressive as the Petronas Towers (see Dispatch from Kuala Lumpur).

Grand Old Lady - Miri, Sarawak

Crocodile farm: This is also in Miri, one of the few local attractions not related to petroleum. Now, I’ve never been to any of the alligator farms in the Southern United States, but I imagine that the Miri Croc Farm must beat them claws down for sheer reptile density. They stack those critters three crocodiles deep in some places. That’s a lot of handbags.

Croc Farm - Miri, Sarawak

A cage full of binturongs: Unfortunately, the croc farm has also diversified its wildlife collection by interning other local species. I had seen my first binturong only a week before at the Singapore Zoo, and let’s just say that the life of an uptown binturong is significantly different from the life of a croc farm binturong. Before coming to Miri, I would have described binturongs as a solitary and reclusive nocturnal creature, so I was surprised to see five of the bizarre-looking omnivores stuffed inside a cage, begging for scraps of bread like furry little barracudas.

binturongs - Miri, Sarawak