L1 Brunei Darrussalam (10) Holidays in Brunei

Bario

Charles took me to Bario a couple of times during the final years. This was a place in the central highlands of Sarawak inhabited by the Kelabit tribe. There was no access by road –although a logging road did reach there the year before I left Brunei.This meant that everything had to be flown in or brought up river by small boat. There were eighteen motorized four-wheel vehicles in Bario at last count –including mechanical diggers.

It was a beautiful rice growing area and the people were very intelligent and innovative.The natural primary jungle was still intact in many places.The lodge we stayed in was very quiet and well tended by Jem and his kelabit wife who sang quietly to herslf most days while she cooked tasty and nutritious food for her guests. He had an electric generator which he switched off at about eleven at night. We went for long walks to little villages with longhouses that were still in use.

Jet-skiing

Charles also took me Jet-skiing. He had bought the jet-ski in a vain attempt to keep his teenage children happy when they were in Brunei. His family had gone home to England and so he invited me to accompany him on some Jet-ski trips. We had some adventurous trips: many to Limbang ; one to Labuan , one to Lawas and one to the wildest of all to Marudi on the Baram river in Sarawak. Charles also did a night trip with his wife from Serasa Yacht club to Kota Batu at night: She sat on the back and shone a torch so that he could see where he was going!

The trip to Labuan was memorable for the fact that the wind blew up at about three o’clock – just before we started the return trip. I remember sipping my beer in the waterfront hotel and feeling a little apprehensive as I saw the wind get up.

By the time we left Labuan there were a few white horses. I was driving. Ten minutes out the engine died and I looked round to see Charles disappearing under the stern of the ship. After what to me seemed a very long time –but it could hardly have been more than fifteen seconds he re-appeared with a plastic bag in his hands. It had been twisted around the propeller. I was very relieved to hear the engine start again. On and on we drove with the sea getting rougher by the minute. By the time we were half way across there were white horses everywhere. The outward journey had taken forty minutes. The return journey took an hour and a half. As we neared Muara port there was a very turbulent area of ocean which almost capsized us. Several times, waves came form behind and nearly washed first Charles, then myself, off the Jet-ski. One wave in particular almost pulled me after it. But we were close to home and this rough patch didn’t last for long. Like drowned rats we steamed into port, I was much chastened by our experience!

But not Charles. I decided there would be no more open ocean trips for me after that. Charles, not so: the next week he went straight back to Labuan and did the trip again–this time on his own. The same thing happened and this time it was a moderate gale which blew up! He made it back safely.

Marudi

The trip to Marudi was in many ways the most adventurous of them all: It started as we looked at the Baram river on the Map and it looked like a snake and fun to travel on.

Marudi was an old logging station in Sarawak-just across the border from Kuala Belait in Brunei. We towed the jet-ski down to K.B. and Charles crossed the border by sea illegally by Jet-Ski and met me in the Mariott in Miri. I had driven the car across the border. We stayed the night and then the next morning I drove back to the river Baram and Charles jet skied (again illegally) to meet me. I noticed that the river was vast – and it was flowing strongly, and more importantly, it was full of logs and other dangerous jetsam and flotsam. I began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of the enterprise as I stared towards the mouth of the river waiting for Charles to arrive on his Jetski from the Mariott..

He eventually arrived but very late. He looked like a drowned rat.

He told me that he had beached the jetski on a sandbank and taken ten minutes to manoeuvre it off the bank. Then the propeller had jammed with a plastic bag and he had had to dive under the jet-ski to unsnag it. Pointing to the logs in the river I asked him tentatively if was wise to continue with our plans.

Charles had no doubts at all.

As we set off upstream, dodging our way through the logs, I asked him about petrol and he said it was just over half -full and should be OK. It was a white blistering hot Borneo morning and we whizzed up the river feeling like Dr Livingstone, albeit moving a little quicker than he probably did..

The river was dead. Because it had been logged many years ago, all the animal life had disappeared and the riverbank was a desolate sight. There was no-one living there. For about two hours we motored along in the searing heat.

Charles shouted to me over his left shoulder:

“I think we have a fuel problem!”

My heart sank –on either side the river there was only mangrove swamp.

I scoured the river banks for life.

In the distance I pointed out what looked like a dwelling of some sort and we veered off at speed across the huge Baram river and made for it. When we reached it in about five minutes we saw a “sight for sore eyes”

It was a fisherman resting. Beside him was a can of petrol for his boat! Although neither of us could speak much Malay we managed to make him understand that we wanted to buy the petrol. He couldn’t have been more cooperative. Soon, we were on our way again to Marudi.

If this ‘Tom Sawyer–like’ figure had not been there I don’t know what would have become of us. When I asked Charles later he said:

“The worst that could have happened is we would have had to spend the night in the mangroves at the side of the river”

“Exactly! I thought to myself”

Half an hour later we were in Marudi. And what a disappointment it was: it was a seedy place with many whorehouses form the logging days barely disguised as hotels and motels. As we were eating lunch the rain came and we delayed our return for a while until it abated.

But it didn’t stop raining!

At about three o’clock we had to head back and we started off with me piloting in the driving rain. I couldn’t see through my glasses and so we changed places - a tricky maneuver in the middle of the river. As I tucked in behind Charles on the jetski the rain set in and there was a considerable show of lightning and thunder. I remember thinking to myself

“Maybe this was not such a good idea”

When we reached the bridge it was with considerable relief that I disembarked. Charles insisted on driving the Jetski back to Brunei into the storm at the mouth of the river and I was seriously concerned about his safety.

I needn’t have been. When I got back to Brunei and Kuala Belait by car Charles had
already arrived and was hauling the jetski up on the beach!