Rediscovering an old frontier: Sarawak, Borneo

‘There are three tracks on the map but you want to take the green trail not the red one. The red one is dangerous and there is a lot of ups and downs. Don’t take the red one. The green one, it’s only a kilometre, quite easy’ he said. ‘Walk slowly, take your time and make sure to look 5 metres ahead when you are walking’ 

‘Yeah, ok, for branches and stuff?’

‘Uh, yeah… but also, I have seen cobra there before’ he paused. ‘Spitting cobra.’ I laughed. 

‘No, really’ he iterated. ‘Twice.’ With those words he left us alone in the jungle. 

Forest floor

When I was eight there was a series of collectable magazines specialising in biospheres around the world. One of those, first issue is 50p with a free ring binder deals. The first issue was the letter A. Amazon, anaconda, awesome. The second was B for Borneo. A distant green land I had never seen captivated me. I sat for hours gazing at the pictures of flawless jungle and the cuddly furries that made it their home. The band of land between the tropics concealed by an emerald canopy, home to millions of species fabricated by colour and noise, that gave me the travel bug. The magazine’s centre page was devoted to the King of the Swingers, the orang utan. A sulky orange mama gazed dreamily from underneath the staples, holding her tufty goblin baby close to her bosom. I wanted to hold one and tell her that I would single handedly save the rainforests.

As I aged my dreams of hugging every orang utan slowly dissipated. The idea of forking out £3000 to ‘volunteer’ for 2 weeks at an orang utan sanctuary were unjustifiable. What happened to solid virtue and good ethics? Why were these no longer adequate currency? I chased information but each ecotravel company was as disheartening as the last. The Q&A sections gave standard answers on fees. The £3000 would ensure that you would be accommodated in standard dormitory housing and fed two (not three) meals daily. Not including activities (tree hugging deserves R&R), no transfers (from accessible airports to inaccessible jungle locations), no innoculations, no (expensive) flights nor insurance (dengue fever, anyone?). Good intentions are worth nothing if they cannot be properly costed. 

The bejewelled belt of the Earth had to wait. It was only this year when my partner and I decided to embark on a South East Asia bender that my love reared a new head. Having spent enough time in Malaysian cities we flew from the high rise shopping malls of Kuala Lumpur to Kuching, the city of cats. The anticipation which engulfed me became the root of my partner’s irritation as I jittered in my seat peering gleefully down at the ground. A thick chocolate river drew a long winding path through viridian sugar hills. Like Augustus Galoop, I was ready to dive in. 

Sunset over the Sarawak River, Kuching

We were dumped on Lebuh ‘Carpenter’ in central Kuching with a guesthouse name and number. Wrong Place it was called. I quickly found the name to be a misnomer. The guesthouse had been crafted from recycled items. A giant wok and an old oil drum had been remastered as a sink. All of the signs and the cafe menus were written on the back of cut up cardboard boxes. Old corrugated iron felt a new lease of life as a shower cubicle. Environmental awareness and conservation weren’t just words, they were real. 

We organised a driver to take us to Semenggoh Orang Utan Sanctuary the next day. Our driver picked us up and we exchanged formalities. His name was Eric and he had grown up in the forests of central Sarawak. Quickly the conversation turned toward the environment. I asked if the government set aside much money for conservation and environmental efforts. 

‘Well, not Malaya, no, but Sarawak is autonomous. We are different. We even have our own immigration. The state of Sarawak spends a lot of money to look after the forest’ our well informed driver told us. ‘Many people want us to plant palm because it makes money, and because you know palm trees oxidise the air more than other trees… But we will not because one, the roots do not go deep enough. It may cause landslides one day. And two,’ he emphasised this, ‘the forest is our home.’ Eric explained the process of logging in Sarawak to me. All loggers must have a license, and for every tree felled, another 40 saplings are planted. 

‘But’ he added, ‘the government has stopped issuing licenses. A way of reducing.’ 

‘But then… will you not have problems with illegal logging?’ I asked.

‘Oh… oh yes’ he replied gravely. I had struck a nerve. ‘But, that happens everywhere’. The difference in Sarawak being that the government is trusted. The government works with the people of the forests to clamp down on illegal activity. 

Sanctuary feeding time

The orang utan sanctuary came and went. It was thrilling to see these great ginger mammals bashing coconuts on tree trunks and peeling bananas. The sedate chewing and mellow swinging of the orange men is incredibly rewarding. But it was Eric who had the greatest effect on me. He was no regular driver, he was in fact a park ranger as I later discovered. His love of the forest was bred with respect. Having grown up among the trees he understood the dangers as well as the beauty lurking between the branches. What to protect, how and why. Eric instilled in me a dignified respect for the forest.

No hugs please

Sarawak doesn’t need any more naive tree huggers than Scotland does. Our basic beliefs are often unfounded and, for the most part, ecotravel is bollocks. Whatever of that £3000 which isn’t spent on ludicrous administration is unlikely to be devoted to grassroots protection of the environment. Someone out their has a rather large pocket. If you really want to save the planet, go and see it with your own eyes and ask the locals what you can do to help. 

We emerged from the jungle trail and found ourselves in the carpark of a jungle style garden centre. A man was spraying the hot dusty concrete with water. He saw us clambering free from the forest and winked. We stood, waiting for Eric who said he would meet us there. We waited twenty minutes, baking our pale skin under the Bornean sun. He finally arrived. 

‘You took the wrong trail!’ he exclaimed.

‘What?! But that was the only tail we could see!’ 

Eric paused. He looked at me through the mirror.

‘Sometimes, it is hard to see the right way…’

A New Beginning

Hoping for a quick smoke, I peeled the lighter from my partner’s sweaty palm, moments before we were pounced on by throngs of hawkers. 

‘Danau-toba danau-toba?’ They greeted. I shook my head. 

‘DANAU-TOBA DANAU-TOBA!!’ they pursued. As I lifted my hand to light my cigarette, the connecting elbow was dragged toward the side of a moving bus. The back door flew open. My 15 kilo rucksack and I were pulled onto the moving vehicle. As promptly as we had arrived at Medan’s decaying bus station, we left. 

They were right to fling us on board. They weren’t hawkers trying to sell me dud anythings but incredibly keen station attendants. On spotting our oversized rucksacks they had correctly anticipated our intended destination. The bus pulled out of the station and gently pushed us into seats. The dreaded strip along the back row. Sweating already from the humidity I  nestled into my stovetop prison, ready for the journey. The cheeky chap that had pulled us on board sat on my knee and put out his hand. 

’40. Each, each’ he said. 

The bus was a dump. It consisted of little more than a tin shell and four wheels. (I didn’t count, I can never be sure.) It juddered on roads, slipped round bends, and bungled over potholes. Cigarette butts were embedded in the floor like a map of the night sky. A limp cloud reeking of cinnamon and tar skulked over and under the seats. The seats, once floral and dainty, were cancerous from second hand smoke. There were two guys guarding the two exits of the bus. Whenever the bus slowed they unlatched the doors and jumped out, threw more people or boxes or unattended canisters of petrol onto the bus, hoisted themselves back on, whistled, and off we went again. During the 5 hour journey the bus slowed at least a hundred times, yet was only stationary twice. (The latter of those occasions of course being when the clumsy foreigners needed to get off the bus) As we moved, the two attendants hung out the windows, whistling at everything that moved, and occasionally banged a screwdriver on the metal handrail. The rest of us, in silence, breathed our hot tarry smoke. 

We left the raw sewers of Medan. We drifted through fields of palm and rubber, past the site where Bridgestone obtain their raw material. It was soon after that we came to the first full stop. An entire band of bongos were thrust into the chaotic holding space behind my head. The boy swung round and sat on my lap again. 

‘Do you like music?’ he asked, knocking on the drums. I winced yes. His face grinned like the Cheshire cat. Suddenly the bus erupted with a screechy rendition of my least favourite ABBA track. Better than no ABBA, I guess. 

As we drove south, the previously sunless sky began to puff its gunmetal chest. Each window clicked shut simultaneously. The skies were gratuitously dark. The clouds burst. Thunder blundered over the cheesy pop. Water drenched the dusty roads, within minutes they were submerged. The bus doggy paddled along the river roads. Gusts of wind rocked the bus. Droplets of rain snuck through every crevice and panel. A thousand tiny waterfalls emerged from the ceiling. Luckily for us, our stovetop prison happened to be the only dry seats on the bus. We giggled as everyone else scrambled, shading their shoulders under scarves and plastic bags. People alighting from the non stop bus were thrown into the newborn rivers with their belongings. We waded further south. 

We turned sharp around a bend in the road. Just as effortlessly as the storm began, it died. Like Truman, we had driven over the edge. The muddy roads were cracking, as though rain hadn’t fallen in fifty years let alone so recently just over the ridge. Dust coated the bus like an ink wheel, tracing our path. We clambered up the bumpy slopes, a meter or three higher at a time. The foliage became more primitive as we gained height, Trees shortened and leaned hard, clutching its last roots on the incline. As we drove higher even the tarmac began to crumble over the hillside precipice. We passed a bus in the alternating direction, stopped by the cliffside. A crowd of teenage boys stood in the grass, crouched over one other. An unlucky victim of the winding road. 

About an hour of incline later, we navigated one final bend and emerged over a giant lip. Only the azure sky lay above us while a triumphant cobalt blue lake winked beneath us. The bus teetered over the crater rim and began the descent. 

Lake Toba is the largest lake in South East Asia, something you will hear repeatedly even after you have comprehensively researched the place and subsequently arrived. More interestingly however, it is the Earth’s memory of a catastrophic event which changed the course of our little planet. Approximately 70 000 years ago a super volcano erupted, erasing everything in its path and plunging the world into a temporary ice age. The explosion left this enormous crater in Sumatra which eventually filled with fresh water. The tiny corner of the Earth which this vast volcanic lake colonised is more than double the size of Singapore. 

Many hotels and guesthouses line the narrow track to Parapat town on the mainland lake edge. Some perspired under the intense sun, cracking in the heat. Some more elaborate ones, blithely shut out the sun with parasols and surplus roofing. Parapat is a strange place. It has all of the trappings of a tourist resort, but the empty accommodation, empty buses and empty restaurants, smack of neglect which sinks deep into the heart of this great lake. Parapat seems to have forgotten what it was doing before the hoards arrived for full moon extravaganzas which have long since relocated to trendier Asian neighbours.

The centre of Lake Toba is occupied by a massive cluster of trees and hills which jut out of the crater lake. Samosir island is the world’s largest island within an island, although personally I would consider the accolade of the world’s largest (and perhaps only inhabited) island on a lake in the crater of a volcano a touch more impressive for the guides… We caught the ferry from Parapat to Samosir and landed at Tuk Tuk. Tuk Tuk village consists of one road which hugs the coast of a tiny wedge shaped peninsula, which protrudes from the much larger wedge shaped Samosir. The island is a benevolent, fertile provider, supplying inhabitants with every essential; coconuts, bananas, avocados, papayas, mangos, corn, rice, chilis, aubergines. Almost anything can be spotted growing on a stroll around Tuk Tuk. 

The natural beauty of this place is undeniably spectacular, but the true highlight is the Batak culture. As you cruise down to Parapat and across the water on Samosir you encounter the most incredible architecture. Little wooden houses with a stunted ladder which leads to a Wonderland style rabbit hole, covered by an enormous concave roof, not unlike the horns of a bull, pointed toward the sky. As you wander the unpaved streets you will find evidence of this previously animist society. Stone and wood sculptures still litter the countryside, particularly as elaborate graves. The faint strums of guitars are audible from valleys half a kilometre away. Even the food takes a step to the right from usual Sumatran fare, the fresh barbecued lake fish is ubiquitous and more importantly, delicious. Best of all is the cultural personality. A feeling of ease caresses the streets, hand in hand with the Batak's sense of humour. (On nearly hitting half a dozen of his neighbour’s hens with his motorbike my guide told me ‘It’s ok, it’s ok! Chicken is cheap’.) 

Despite this, I can see why the masses came and left. The temperatures may be cooler at this altitude but the intensity of the sun burnt even me to a crisp, when it didn't rain that is. A lack of beaches make the idle life difficult for hungover beach bums. Litter is endemic, and, let’s not forget the crazy insects… 

It’s no Bali, no Koi Samui, but Lake Toba shouldn’t be. Though some of its former visitors have been stolen by SE Asian resorts, there is no reason for the lake to reflect nostalgically on the moonlit socials. It is a different place, with a soul of its own worth seeking. Just remember to make time for it. I don’t think we ate a single meal in Tuk Tuk where the cook didn’t prepare everything from scratch. But that is a part of the charm. The a slowness, the disconnectedness from the wider world, and the gentleness in the community. The lake's tourist economy is beginning to see signs of recovery as a new generation rediscover this forgotten island. But the Batak should stick to their guns this time. The tourist economy can be rebuilt without the booze and the... other stuff. It is time for Lake Toba to delve deep into the vast lake and uncover its heart.