OK – now in Kota Kinabalu airport in Malaysia. NOT somewhere I would choose for my winter sunshine holiday. It would a good place for anyone who enjoys sticky heat, as they are doing much in the way of reconstruction inside and therefore, the a/c is not working up to par .. in fact, it’s barely working at all, so what with it being about 90F outside, it’s a balmy 85F inside. Nice place to sit and feel clammy.

Malaysian immigration is the silent type of service, take passport, scan, stamp and return. The inbound form takes a bit of completing however, esp. the health declaration which wants to know if you have in the last three weeks suffered from “diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting, fever, headache, sore throat, rash, jaundice, severe cough, dyspnoea, abdominal bleeding or convulsion” – I haven’t clue what dyspnoea is and was too intimidated to ask, in case I have something that I don’t know what it is … if everyone was 100% truthful, then all of immigration would be full of people waiting to see the MD. Good thing this is not heavy farming land as I am sure some visiting Oz would get in on the act and have us all interrogated for visits to farms in the UK.

Having asked the Malaysian agent outside the security check if there was somewhere nice to eat Malaysian food inside and she smilingly said there was, I gets through and discover a perhaps less than wonderful snack bar with some fermenting noodles – man says they are nice so I take a risk – I may have to go back and do a retroactive fill in of the health form. They could be guaranteed to bring on all of the above, including dyspnoea ! Ah me, there’s a luvly local lady sitting opposite me who is carrying a large striped golf umbrella which she has just been using as a back scratcher – right down inside her blouse it went.

Shops here absolutely full of interesting things to purchase – several would rank as mini supermarkets anywhere else and have a huge range of items, including many quantities of dried fish – or dried sea slug (which is actually a vegetable but don’t tell anyone). Hope no homesick Malaysian returning to Oz ever comes through here, as there is enough to put the Oz Quarantine into a tailspin.

I am back in Dilarang Merokok land – CS or anyone, know what that means ? No Smoking to anyone else who does not have the encyclopedic memory of CS. Got a new one for you – u can put it up on the wall in SEATAC  KETIBAAN ANTARABANGSA, which is International Arrivals.  In Yemen I once saw a No Smoking sign, but it was a bit garbled and became No Somking, which sounded much better. The same country, the museum in Ta’iz, also requested you ” To leave your weapon at the door”, as local visitors were prone to inspecting the place with a Kalashnikov casually draped over the shoulder. Don’t know what Mae West would have made of that !

So now in Sandakan, Borneo, Malaysia … hope that puts it on the map for those of a lesser geographic bent. We come here to see the Orang Utans (those huge chimpanzee-like animals who manage to share 95% of their genes with us.) It is an easy trip to the reserve where they live. Forestry has much decimated their living quarters and until about 30 years ago, it was legal to have a small one as a pet – of course when they get big, they get too much to handle and would be thrown out or killed. Fortunately, the Malaysian government came to its senses and designated a huge area of land for them to live in safety. Like human babies, they need years of feeding and protection and training from adults before they can fend for themselves, so what you are allowed to visit is the center near to the feeding platforms.

Over the years, they are reintroduced back into the wilds and there are feeding platforms at different distances from the buildings. Eventually they are being fed on a voluntary process at the furthest out platform, where to all intents they are living freely back in the jungle. And it really IS a jungle here. HOT and HUMID, but amazingly not too buggy, though we were all covered with enough repellent to kill mossies by the ton. You cannot guarantee you will actually see any of them, as most of the time they are off foraging for their 100% fruit diet.  It is also absolutely imperative that visitors remain SILENT … not a squeak is permitted.  Try telling a group of Americans that they will have to shut up for up to an hour and a half. You walk single file along a path in the jungle to one of the feeding platforms.  There is no guarantee you will see anything.  The scheme is that you will stand there, in silence, for an hour exactly.  If they come, they come. If they don’t, they don’t and you have to troop back through the leaves.  The local naturalists bring buckets of bananas, which is any orang utan’s idea of a good time. We were in luck, as no less than 7 turned up for a meal of bananas and milk, one of which had a small baby tucked underneath. They are just so wonderfully human and observe you with long rather dismal faces – they look practically on the edge of tears ! One young male, about 3 feet tall, came along the walkway we were on and managed to sneak behind yrs truly and a client and we were told, very sotto voce by the guide that we had to walk slowly past him and hide cameras etc as he was likely to make a move, so that was an excitement for both of us ! Don’t think HE was so impressed. They swing through the trees and lianas with wonderful ease, using all permutations of arms and legs – their arms are actually twice as long as their legs. It was a good morning out and the pax were v impressed and I had to swear up and down that we did not have them locked up in cages and released just for us.  When I went to inspect it about two years before, I did the same route and we stood in silence for 59 mins and it looked like a wash and at the last minute a whole family came swinging through the trees and it was total magic.  I remember a woman crying and I could easily see why.  And the rain has stayed away, as around here you can have some real end of the world downpours.

The town of Sandakan is pretty uninspiring. Was once the shipping center for logging, but that has now ceased, so it has become rather a backwater. It has a new very modern mosque with a minaret that looks more like a lighthouse and also an extremely garish new Chinese temple which is the last word in scarlet and gold – you need sunglasses to look at it !

And now back in SIN again – it has become my new crossroads. Singapore Airlines brought me here safely yesterday afternoon – they certainly do have the most good looking crews in the world – the girls must weigh all of 50kgs soaking wet and are stitched into their outfits so that an extra noodle would show. They are all exceedingly sweet and when I think about the air warriors at UA and AA, all I can do is shudder. But what a crappy meal they gave us – someone was having a bad day when they put that menu together. I cudda done better.

In SIN, it was pouring torrentially in best tropical fashion, but tucked up chez Raffles I did not hear a thing. But such problems in my room – phone lines not working, butler call button not working, unable to access internet from this pc, TV and radio stations somewhat scrambled, a litany of disasters as far as they were concerned. Poor Richard looking besides himself. Great off-stage mutters about shaking this place up and using my visit (as a great potential client shipping oodles of rich Americans through here), so I had to remember to act miffed, rather than saying ‘ Oh these things can happen anywhere’. Many flunkies called to a degree that was glad to be in a suite, otherwise it was in risk of turning into the Singapore version of the Marx Brothers party in the ocean liner cabin. Only the band was missing. I stayed well out of the way while people crawled under furniture and generally made themselves useful. End result was a phone line and not much more – such loss of face already !!!

Thnk that’s enuf for now – can’t overload my readers.

I’m off to Dubai tonight to check on the dhow loading scene and then later tomorrow to Damascus. So more from somewhere like that….