Bumpy Sections - Part One

Well here I am, back from a self-imposed three month break from blogging. I just got so fed up with people asking me when I was going to start blogging again that I decided I would take up my keyboard again and continue to serve my legions of fans.

So here goes...

“So what have you been doing with yourself all this while?” I hear you all scream. Well, my dear loyal readers, I’ve been up to many things, though most of my experiences since August are unutterably and mind-numbingly dull and not worthy of this august forum! But, I did do one thing that is worth mentioning. That is my mammoth drive across Borneo which I undertook at the end of September for the Hari Raya. I’ll happily share that one with you, dear readers, because I’ll never forget it, and neither will you...

Now, it’s bad enough trying to take a plane from Kuching in Sarawak to Tawau in Sabah at the best of times, let alone the Raya when just about every Muslim in Borneo is taking to some sort of transport or another at the same time.

So, imagine what it’s like taking the same trip by road? Yes, by road!!

Now I’ve been called many things in my life, including ‘screaming great lunatic’, ‘mad as a hatter’ and ‘silly as a box of toys’. Also, ‘one brick short of a full load’ and ‘out of his tree’. However, that’s nothing compared to people’s reactions when I told them I was planning a driving holiday from Kuching all the way across Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah to my wife’s ancestral pile in Tawau.

Why did I think of such a hair-brained scheme? Well, apart from the obvious savings in flight tickets, which are criminally expensive just before major public holidays in Malaysia, well, my wife and I just thought we would challenge ourselves, see a bit of the scenery that we had never seen, and basically do something that we had never done before. It’s the old NASA logic – we go there because it’s there!! Well, Borneo is there alright, as I found out.

Our trip was somewhat convoluted by the fact that my dear wife had different holiday starting dates to me. This meant that I had to set out two days before she did. She, of course, flew to Kota Kinabalu, by which time I had already driven there.

Needless to say, I did not travel alone to KK. There was my son as co-driver and our young friend Mordiah, an ex-student of my wife who knows all the local dialects and was brought along to help out and have a holiday. We set out from Kuching on 16th September at about 11.30 in the morning. We started so late because my dear son had left his passport in KL the day before and had to get it couriered over before we travelled. You can’t go through Brunei without a passport!!

As punishment for the passport incident, I made my son pilot for the first leg of the journey, from Kuching going roughly North sort of hugging the coast (well, waving at it from a safe distance anyway). We proceeded along a scraggly route to Serian (12.30 pm), Seri Aman (14.24) and Sibu (by 17.40).

Word of advice: DO NOT TRY TO DRIVE THROUGH SIBU DURING THE RUSH HOUR!! Or at any other hour in fact. We made the mistake of thinking we would look for a place to stay the night in Sibu, but the fact is that Sibu is so full of traffic and so lacking in places to stop, plus having a one-way system designed by Satan, that we decided to stop for a rest at a petrol station before driving through the dark tunnel of the night to Bintulu.

The trip to Bintulu was a night-driver’s playtime, which is why I took over the controls from Sunny. The road to Bintulu was narrow, bumpy and full of gargantuan trucks, and I was spending most of my time squinting past the blaring lights of oncoming vehicles and negotiating ways of overtaking without being smashed to pieces against an oncoming Hilux. We were nearly hit in the face at one point by a 4WD which must have swerved to avoid a pot hole (more about these later!). Further up the road we passed a car which had gone down in a ditch. Lots of excitement...

Eventually, though, after a 2 1/2 hour drive, the hot dark womb of the tropical night spewed us out at Bintulu, which is a very well lit oil town and major port with nice safe roads and, luckily for us, plenty of cheap hotels to choose from. Selecting a fairly safe-looking place called the Lee Hua Plaza, we checked in at around 22.00 and, after an excellent meal in the understandably deserted restaurant, we retired to our rooms for a well-deserved slumber.

Number of Kilometres covered in day one: 643. Number of petrol stops: 2.

Next Part will follow (honestly!!!!!)