I know that this trip has been severely lacking in interesting emails. I have now come to expect that if I leave my house for more than 48 hours, something funny, something dangerous and something totally awful should happen, and I genuinely enjoy writing these things down and sharing with all of you.....
Any good trip, any significantly interesting vacation for me involves one of those rare, very special moments... those times when I say, "What in God's name am I doing here?"... "I would give anything to be at home, watching CSI right now (I don't even like CSI)"..... "Oh, merciful God, please get me out of this one..."
These moments come in the Mexico City bus terminal at 2:00 AM, they come when waves are pounding you against a sharp coral reef in Costa Rica... and they come in Borneo's jungles, when the sun has set, its pouring down rain, your lost and you have leaches in your shirt...
I've been traveling in Malaysia and Singapore for about 2 weeks now. I've been riding clean, state-of-the-art subways, lazing on perfect, white sandy beaches and eating sanitary food at reasonable prices.... while this sounds nice... I could have done this all at home..... so why did I come on vacation anyway???
I met up with Brent (my coworker/ only male friend in Asia/ new traveling buddy) a few days ago and we went to a nice beach on mainland Malaysia (think of China, go South.... keep going.... STOP) that is about where Malaysia is.
It is a really beautiful country, about 1 degree north of the equator. The cities are nice, the country side is awesome.... palm trees, ferns, vines, grass, wild birds, etc.
The population is about 1/3 Native Malays (something like Polynesians), 1/3 Chinese (like China) and 1/3 Indians (from India)... Things come together and it seems to be the real "melting pot" of Asia.....
Somewhere in history, someone brought Islam here as well, though I insensitively refer to it as a "good" Muslim country....
Yes.... the official religion here is Islam.
No.... The numerous Buddhists, Christians and Hindu's are not beaten or persecuted
Yes... Many of the women wear scarves on their heads
No.... they don't wear bee keeper suits,
No... women are not forced to wear anything Muslim-esque
Homosexuals aren't too common, but they are not beaten or jailed. Women hold jobs, drive cars and walk the streets freely.
No... I haven't bothered to mention that I am Jewish... haha
Because of such a diverse culture, the "local" food ranges from Chinese to Thai to Indian to all sorts of mixes of the 3..... I had sting ray curry one night!!!
So as I said...... mainland Malaysia was beautiful, relaxing and culturally fascinating.... but it wasn't really all that exciting. I needed to find dirt and grime and stomach parasites- so that I could really unwind... Also, Brent (who barely left Kansas before coming to Taiwan) deserved to have some fun too....
Our dreams came true in Borneo.... Yes.... Borneo.... Borneo.... Borneo... Borneo is an island, somewhere south of China and the Philippines, north of Australia. I know what you are thinking.... No one goes there.... only Crocodile Hunters and weird uncles who drink to much and have tattoos go there.....
I am the weird uncle and I..... am now in Borneo.....
Brent and I arrived a few days ago and this is 3rd world heaven... the streets are dark and dirty, the local men have shifty eyes and gold teeth, the local women wear little clothing and have dragon or snake tattoos....
We landed in the evening and hopped a night bus across the island. The bus twisted and turned for hours, up and down dark mountain roads.... everyone threw up their fried noodles and beef satay... At around 2:30 AM we arrived in the small town of Sandakan... the bus let us out in the pouring rain, thick, heavy, malicious, monsoon rain, there was no taxi in sight, the thugs and prostitutes smelled us and started to circle around.... eventually we found a taxi, a hotel, we went to sleep.
We woke up yesterday and went to the Orangutan Sanctuary. There, we walked on wooden planks through a jungle that looked, to me, like the San Diego Zoo. Finally the skinny bridge opened up to a large area with trees and ropes leading towards a raised central platform... there, on the "stage" a group of 5 or 6 of the brown apes congregated and waited for little dark men to feed them bananas and milk.... they introduced the apes to us.... "This is Patrick"....."Vanessa here loves to be tickled"... “Sean is having a bad hair day.”
Chinese, British, Swiss and French tourists pulled out over-priced digital cameras, made monkey faces and clicked away.... Brent and I did the same....
The monkeys got full and swung away, into the jungle... we exited the park and as we were leaving, we saw two skinny, white guys run out of the jungle, rip off their shirts and start to beat each other...
I came closer to them and realized that they were covered with little, black twigs... and the twigs were moving... and the twigs were leaving small puddles of blood in their wake....
I thumbed through my guidebook (guidebooks really know everything).... I cross referenced- "twigs" "black" moving" "blood"........ the book spoke up..... Borneo's jungles have LEECHES.....
I slyly walked over to the skinny, bloody, white guys who were now holding cigarette lighters to one another, and I thought of something clever to say.... "You got a leech... huh?"
"One?" .... one of the guys replied- he had an Irish brogue [you can do one in your head]
"Fuck..... I got 'undreds of 'em! Its a great 'ike but you'll never make it like that!"
I looked down.... I was dressed pretty much like the Irish guys... sandals, bathing suit, thin cotton t-shirt… the big difference was my legs and torso weren't covered in small puddles of blood.
The Irish bloke continued..... "Me mate here, he went barefooted.... fuckin' terrible idea... as for me.... I lost my flip flop about 3 kilometers in....." He had one tired-looking flip flop dangling off his foot.
"Hmmm.... it's a good hike though?" I asked....
"Fuckin' excellent mate."
I looked at Brent.... Brent looked at me....As for me... I am a total idiot and never believe warnings when I should.... as for Brent..... he is from Kansas.... where I assumed.... people are constantly facing leeches and scary wild animals....
We silently nodded to each other....
A shady-looking Malaysian man was watching all of this and trying his best to eaves-drop, or, maybe like us, he was just wondering while the young Irish lads were half-naked and beating each other.
He motioned for Brent and I to come his way. We obliged and, in a hushed tone, (like a drug dealer or bootleg DVD seller talks) he asked, “Can I interest you in leech socks? I have raincoats, leech socks, mosquito spray, whatever you need.” I had read about leech socks in my guidebook. They sounded a little fruity to me; like they would be marketed to the same people who buy walking sticks for trips to the zoo, or Kevlar-enforced hiking boots to walk the trails of Yosemite. But after watching these boys swab blood off of each other’s torso and legs, I would have bought leech sunglasses or toe rings if the guy was selling them.
The sock dealer brought us to his taxi (a true entrepreneur) and popped the trunk. In the trunk, were stacked boxes of everything a retard like me would have forgotten: sunscreen, bug spray, sun glasses, tan colored hats, shoe laces, flashlights, disposable cameras, compasses and finally… leech socks.
Leech socks look more like a Christmas stocking than a sock; they are tall, white booties, made of thick cotton. At the top is a cinch tie, to keep them up around the calf. For a total price of 5 or 10 bucks, we got 2 pairs of socks and a couple of disposable raincoats. We put our socks on and the man offered to duct tape them around the top; we decided to maintain an ounce of dignity and denied his offer. He slammed the trunk and offered us a last piece of advice: “Get some salt.” I politely informed him that I wasn’t familiar with the indigenous Malay’s eating habits, but these white boys from America had no plans to eat any leeches on our hike. The man looked at me cock-eyed. Brent hit me.
“Salt kills leeches!” Brent was annoyed.
We tied our socks, put on our famous blue raincoats (Brent’s was actually clear) and hugged and thanked our dealer. We snuck into a small café, and I stole a saltshaker, while Brent created a diversion.
With that, we set out on the trail of excitement and wonder. The path started out wide and clear of plants, snakes and blood sucking annelid worms. We scoffed at the Irish boys, doing terrible impressions of their accents while thinking of other reasons that Europeans were not as tough as us.
“I’m just terrified of cats,” I said, in my Irish/ Scottish/ British accent.
“And what about snails, they could give me a heart attack,” Brent added.
“We should work 6 hour days and get 3 months off work every year.”
This went on until the trail led us into a puddle of mud, which became a swamp, which became a stream, which became a river. Soon, there was no trail at all and we were trekking over logs, through waste high grass and around leaves the size of a small elephant. Then we heard the hard slap of raindrops on the canopy of leaves above us. Because it had so many levels to go through, we didn’t feel the rain for a few moments, but soon enough, rain drops the size of whiteboard markers (I’m a teacher) were falling on us. We were soaked and pissed off and then Brent reminded me that leeches come out in the rain.
I saw the first leech on the toe of my indestructible bootie. He was no wider than a guitar string and about an inch long. I thought it was a twig, but it was crawling around, blindly. I screamed like a nancy and jumped higher than I have ever jumped in my life; I could have slam-dunked a basketball (but I was in a swamp in Malaysia, not a school playground).
I started breathing so hard that I thought I would hyperventilate. My voice went 3 octaves above its normal pitch; “Brent…fuck! Fucking kill it! Save me! It’s gonna kill me! Shit!”
Brent doesn’t show his emotions the same way I do; He paused for what seemed like an eternity. He spoke slowly and calmly, “Matt, relax, stop acting like a Taiwanese Junior High School girl and stand still for a minute so we can remove it.”
I was busy jumping around and shouting the F word, so I heard none of this.
Finally, I calmed down and Brent tried to flick it off. Our first lesson of the day was- leeches are like wet boogers, they just don’t flick. This little fucker stood its ground, like it was glued to me! Brent then tried to grab it and pull it off... nothing! Finally, we remembered the salt; we shook a teaspoon’s worth of salt on him (I wanted to put the whole shaker on him, but Brent advised against it). Within a few seconds, the little guy curled up, lost his grip and fell to the forest floor.
With this, we started to act more cautiously: We put our hoods up over our heads, we cinched our socks enough that blood flow was restricted to the feet and ankles, we devised a hip-holster for the salt shaker. I was wearing a long-sleeve raincoat and shorts, which meant I had about 2 inches of exposed skin, below my knee. Other than this, and my hands and jutting nose, I was totally leech proof. Brent had jeans on, but short sleeves. We both agreed that if one of us were to walk around naked, the other could take his clothes and be 100% safe. Neither of us was willing to make this compromise though.
The hike went on and on. The trail got less and less like a trail until there was no trail at all; we might as well have been the first people in history to walk there. To prevent people from getting lost on trails that are poorly maintained, there will often be markings every 100 feet or so. Luckily, here, there were orange spots painted on many of the tree trunks.
We stopped every 30 or 40 seconds to examine each other and then spill salt on every black line we could find. We both cursed a lot, but after the 100th leech, I lost my voice and with it, lost my ability to squeal like a fruitcake. After about an hour, my legs got sore and I stopped trying to jump out of my skin. After close to 1000 kills each, if got boring. We said “goddamnit” and “Fucking asshole shit” more as a courtesy than anything else. Eventually, it came to either of us stopping every few minutes, looking down at his leg or arm, looking back at the other and lazily saying, “salt.” After that, we even lost the energy to smirk or laugh at the leeches curled up, pathetic, little salt-covered bodies.
About 90 minutes into the hike, we were tired and cranky, soaking wet, thirsty and running out of salt. Brent stopped and asked, “How long do you think this hike could be?”
When we had first started the hike, I had seen a rusty sign on the trail. It read, Nature Sanctuary 10 KM. With an arrow pointing down the path. Now, you can call me an “ignorant American,” or a “moron,” or any other mean names, but I just don’t get the metric system. I have lived abroad for almost two years now. My motorcycle’s speedometer is even in kilometers, but I still don’t know what the hell a kilometer is. When I saw the sign, I did some quick math; I had recently read that the new Ferrari could do 0-100 Kilometers in 3.4 seconds. I also knew that one time, I went on a hellish, 9-hour bike ride, that ended up being about 75 KM’s. By my calculations, this meant that a 10 KM hike would take no more than 45 minutes.
I thought about sharing this with Brent. I thought some more. “Its probably about 10 more minutes,” I replied. “The Irish guys said it took less than an hour.” I had pulled all of that straight out of my ass, but Brent seemed satisfied enough. He half-nodded his head and we carried on.
At this point, we got out of the swamplands and started hiking up and down hills. The rain had slowed down a little, but we were slipping in the mud, (both wearing sandals) still stopping to cover each other in salt, still calling the leeches mean names. Another 30 minutes passed. Then, I saw a familiar, rusted sign. I assumed it would say Nature Sanctuary 0.25 KM. I got excited, confident that if I ran from there, I would soon be able drink some water, burn my clothes and find a mound of salt to roll in.
As I approached the sign, a wave of disappointment, followed by thoughts of my “untimely” death shot trough my body. Nature Sanctuary 6 KM. “SHIT!” At first, I didn’t realize that I had said this out loud.
Brent has known me for over a year now and he knows that I don’t run…ever. He’s also knows that I may have a mild form of turret’s syndrome but I don’t usually shout profanities for no reason. He came up behind me… “What’s wrong?”
I placed myself between him and the sign, and made up something about a millipede in my sock. I assumed, if Brent saw the sign, I would get in trouble or something. My plan didn’t work, Brent said, “Hey, there’s a sign behind you.”
We looked together. Brent smiled, “6 KM’s!!!! Great… that’s probably 15, 20 minutes!” Apparently, Brent had read the same article about the new Ferrari. I decided not to correct him, but I picked up my pace a little, knowing that we would follow.
The hike continued. I looked at my watch; it was 6:00 PM. I knew from the past few days there, that the last speck of light disappeared over the horizon at 8:00 PM. I did some more calculations and decided that we’d surely die in the jungle that night. I was getting dehydrated and started to see orange spots on ALL the trees. Also, it was about 80 degrees out; I was sweating profusely, and my head and neck felt like they were on fire. I took my hood off, but then imagined leaches climbing into my ears and making their way to my belly button. Being hot was better than being killed by parasites, so the hood went back up.
I couldn’t decide if we should stop there and build a hut for the night, or sprint the rest of the way, or start screaming for help or just hang ourselves from some vines and admit defeat. I decided not to share any of this with Brent.
We trekked on and on; more swamps, more mountains, more mud, more leeches, more salt. After another hour, Brent stopped dead in his tracks and shrieked. I imagined a tiger, a gang of monkeys, a herd of carnivorous elephants. Any of these would have been better than what I was about to see… Brent lifted up his shirt…he was bleeding! It wasn’t the wound from a cannibal’s spear…it was a leech! The unthinkable had happened and a bloodsucking parasite had made it through the raincoat, through the shirt, through the anger and frustration and broken the skin! We salted the hell out of it and pretended to be tough men about the situation. I didn’t want to pass out cold, so decided against lifting my shirt up at all.
This is when things got really bad:
We finally acknowledged that we didn’t know what a kilometer was but it was much longer than we thought. We acknowledged that we were unhappy, thirsty and exhausted. We acknowledged that the sun was going down and that the nocturnal life of the forest was waking up all around us. Lastly, we acknowledged that if a leech could make it into a shirt, it could also make it into the underpants.
With that, we decided to hightail it out of the jungle and walk at a quick pace. It was decided that leech checks were now less important than getting out of the jungle alive and thus would be temporarily suspended. We never actually said that we were goners, that we didn’t know where we were going, and that we hadn’t the time to get there.
We walked on and on. I fell off a slippery log and into a deep (4 feet) river. Brent got bitten by a poisonous centipede; his leg swelled up twice its normal size. We heard mysterious noises and imagined large animals stalking us. The sun nearly disappeared. The only source of light either of us had was the LED screens on our digital cameras. We both decided our moms were gonna be really pissed that we died this way.
When all hope was lost, we saw a glimmer of light in the distance. We got excited. We ran, we tripped and slipped in the mud, but got up and ran and ran and ran. The light got closer. I imagined it was a restaurant where they sold steak and baked potatoes. Then I imagined that they could do laundry while we took hot showers. I was sure they had special “leech-killing” soap. We approached the light (which was now a few lights) and saw that it was a creaky old pier on the bank of a river.
Anything was better than the jungle, so we ran to the pier. Following our instincts and our wise predecessors, we each stripped down to our underwear and started to beat each other. Brent had a few leeches on his torso, but I was so disgusted, he had to get them off himself. I just stood there and said, “yuck, oooo, disgusting.”
As I took my pants and shirt off, I said to Brent: “I am going to close my eyes. If there is a leech on me, I want you to do whatever it takes to kill it and not let me know at all. I will close my eyes and imagine that I am in a happy place where animals cannot suck my blood.”
I took my clothes off. Brent used the voice that a therapist uses when guiding her patient through meditation: “Matt, don’t worry, I am going to get the salt and remove a small leech from your stomach.”
I used the last few ounces of energy in me to scream as loud as I could. Again I jumped ten feet in the air. Then, I waved my hands rapidly (as if they were on fire) and whined, “Get it off, get it off, I beg you to get it off, I wish I was never born.” I continued mumbling and jumping around like someone going through heroin withdrawals while Brent told me to shut the hell up and stop moving so much. He salted it, it fell off, I dabbed the wound with my crumbled up T-shirt. We simultaneously checked our own underwear and butt cracks with our hands.
When we looked up, there were 4 heavyset Malay guys surrounding us. Two were smoking filter-less cigarettes, one was sharpening a big knife and the fourth was sloppily eating a banana. They were all looking at us, slightly angry, mostly puzzled. They mumbled to each other in Malay, “I am 100% sure they all uttered the Malay word for faggot.”
We then realized that we were NOT in fact back at the monkey sanctuary and that these guys might not really want us on their pier. We expected people to greet us with a change of clothes, a cup of hot chocolate, a smile; instead, we were left with four unwelcoming faces and a big knife.
Brent and I simultaneously jabbered our whole story. We saw a monkey… it was so big… the Irish guy said something funny… we got the socks… I fell… I had stingray curry last week… I couldn’t even understand what the hell we were saying, let alone these poor guys.
Finally, the one with the banana put his hand up. We stopped. “No Englisheee!!” He growled. A light turned on in Brent’s head, he whispered to me,
“Maybe they speak Chinese.” We didn’t bother to ask, we just relayed the story (as best we could) in our broke ass bastardization of Mandarin,
“失去, 飢餓, 疲乏, 猴子, 水蛭, 渴, 驚嚇, 被壓下, 公里, 愛爾蘭語”
“huo tzz, hen da de uen ti, wo men bu shu fu, shui zhe, nagga, bang wou men”
At this, he put his large, calloused hand up again. We realized that he couldn’t understand a word we were saying… I thought for a minute. Through my travels, I’ve come to learn that most people on Earth know at least 5 words in English…
“HELP, HELP, HELP!” I shouted at the Malay pirates. Brent Joined in,
“HELP, HELP, HELP!”
After minutes of debate between the four of them, the men invited us to sit on their pier. They gave us water to drink and with a lot of hard work, games of charades and repeating the word MONEY, MONEY, MONEY, we all gained a better understanding of the situation at hand.
Brent and I had somehow managed to hike a 40-minute boat ride from the Orangutan Sanctuary. There were no roads leading to this pier and even if we could have gotten back to the sanctuary, it was all closed up for the night and there certainly wouldn’t be a taxi or bus to get us from there back to our hotel. We were somewhere on a river and the only way to get out was too hike back through the jungle or take a boat.
Without saying a word, Brent and I both knew that we would have rather swam across the Pacific then set foot in that jungle again, so we inquired about the boat. The man would take us back to town, where we could get a taxi, for as little as 50 US dollars. But the man really didn’t want to take his boat out at that time of night, so we’d have to wait on the pier until morning.
I had no desire to sleep on a pier and I imagined that some leeches were clever enough to find the pier and find us sleeping on it. Brent also looked displeased.
There was a solution though… the men had brainstormed…if we doubled the price, the friendly man (with the big knife) would not only take us in his boat tonight, but he’d even grab his car (which was parked at the dock in town) and take us back to our hotel.
Brent and I talked it over in hushed tones- this felt right even though the men couldn’t understand a word of what we were saying. We both agreed that it must have been very strange for these guys to see two tourists run out of the jungle and beat each other’s half-naked bodies on their pier. We both agreed that they could have charged 10 times that price and then sliced our arms off. We both agreed that we were in absolutely no position to bargain.
We all shook hands and it was established: For the grand price of 100 dollars, the man with the big knife would save the day. As the price went up, his English miraculously got better! Throughout the 40-minute boat ride and the following 40-minute car ride, he told us his life story, about his wife, his kids, about the Philippino immigrants stealing Malaysian jobs and about his true pleasure in helping some good American boys- that time, he didn’t mention the 100 dollars.
Finally, 8 long hours after our trek had begun, Brent and I returned to our hotel room. We thanked god that we didn’t die, we thanked god that we didn’t live in the jungle and we proceeded to dump pounds of salt (we bought a Costco-sized bag on the way home) on all of our clothes.
In the end, we agreed never to enter the jungle again and to spend more time in libraries, malls and mosques, where nothing bad could happen. The next day, we took a tour of the same jungle and watched in horror as a territorial macaque (a monkey about the size of a toddler) mauled our tour guide’s face, nearly taking off her nose and giving all three of us heart attacks. But that’s another story in itself.
Love,
mattto
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