Walter travels ...

Trying to get my visa for China in Kuala Lumpur

The fountain with constantly changing jet patterns is a visual highlight of the KLCC park below the Petronas Twin Towers.

September 11, 2012 - Kuala Lumpur

Yesterday afternoon, I arrived in Kuala Lumpur, also called KL, from Melaka. I only wanted to stay 2 nights and try to get my visa for China, hopefully by express service, and then move on to Penang and Georgetown.

But those plans went out the window as there is no more express service at the Chinese embassy for citizens from 3rd countries without proper residence in Malaysia. So, now all I could get is a 4-day service, which means that I will have to stay here until Friday. On top of that, I will have an interview at the Chinese embassy on Sep. 12 at 10:00 a.m. In general, I am not too optimistic and have already drawn up a plan B in my head. At least, if I don't get the visa, I will only have to pay 28 Ringgit for the service of the Chinese visa agency.

I don't really like dealing with embassies as one never knows what will happen but this time it could not be avoided.

It also rained quite a bit during the day and when I left my hotel in the early afternoon, I saw some spectacular sky in the distance. I hopped onto a bus to get nearer to the center and the Petronas Twin Towers but once I arrived, the sky had gone back to normal. I strolled around the area outside, entered one of the towers but got tired of the shopping-mall feeling and proceeded to the KLCC park right below the towers.

Here are some more photographs of the day:

The Petronas Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004 until surpassed by Taipei 101.

Spanning 17 acres (6.9 ha) the KLCC park offers a number of jogging and walking paths ...

... as well as a playground and a wading pool for children.

The park is a popular meeting and picture-taking point for tourists and locals, and needless to say that it is kept immaculately clean by a staff of cleaning workers.

With a height of 452 m or 1483 ft, the Petronas Twin Towers are now
the world's fourth-tallest building, surpassed by Taipei 101 in 2004,
the World Financial Center, Shanghai, China in 2008, and the Burj Khalifa
(formerly Burj Dubai), Dubai, The United Arab Emirates in 2010.

Cruising the Lower Kinabatangan River

Note: Due to the appallingly slow internet here in Sandakan, I have not been able to add the photos to this post despite numerous attempts. I managed to upload them to my Flickr-stream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/41223208@N00/ - and will add them here along with their captions once I have a better internet connection. I apologize for the inconvenience but I am at the point of going mad and therefor better stop trying to bash my head against the wall.

August 25-27, 2012 - Sukau at the Kinabatangan River

Sungai Kinabatangan is the second longest river in Malaysia and considered one of the best places for viewing wildlife in Borneo. In 2006, the Kinabatangan area was officially declared a wildlife sanctuary and has since then become a haven for rare animals which have lost their native habitats due to ever increasing logging and palm plantations in nearby areas.

Elephants, rhinoceroses, saltwater crocodiles, and a staggering variety of monkeys and birds call the floodplains of Sungai Kinabatangan their home. Depending on time of the year, weather conditions and the river's water level, one might see a number of these animals in their natural environment, often from afar up in the trees or partly hidden in the grass or the canopy.

Many tour operators offer package trips to visit the area and these might be ideal for people with on a limited time schedule. I however, opted to do it on my own, taking a local minibus from Sandakan to Sukau. This took at least some 3 hours and Sukau was much less of a town than I had expected and I was lucky that I still had gotten some cash from an ATM in Sandakan as such do not exist in Sukau. The village has a school, a mosque, a cemetery, two small shops where one can buy drinks, snacks and other basic necessity items, but no restaurant, which means that for meals one depends on one's homestay or B&B which are both quite plentiful in the area.

All offer basic accomodation including breakfast and a variety of river cruises (sunset, night and morning) as well as jungle walks (beware of leeches!). I spent three nights at the Sukau Greenview B&B and joined 3 of their river cruises. The boats usually can accomodate up to 12 people but were never full while I was there and in particular the afternoon and morning cruise I found worthwhile.

The night cruise was pleasant, but we did not see any crocodiles due to the high water level caused by heavy rainfalls during the previous days. And while during the day, one can spot animals on one's own, at night it all depends where the flashlight of the guide shines.

Otherwise, there is not much to do in Sukau, so 2 full days were just perfect. The B&B also runs a minibus service which takes guests back to either Sandakan or drops them at the mainroad junction for catching a bus to Kota Kinabalu or the Orangutan Rehab Center in Sepilok.

Details of the trip:

1 Euro = approx. 3.80 RM, 1 USD = approx. 3.10 RM

Minibus from Sandakan to Sukau: 35 RM

Sukau Greenview B&B: 45 RM for a room with shower and fan, incl. breakfast

Dinner at the B&B: 20 RM

Sunset Cruise 16:00-18:00 (about 2 hours): 60 RM

Night Cruise 19:30-21:00 (about 1.5 hours) 40 RM*

Morning Cruise 06:00-08:00 (about 2 hours) 40 RM*

Minibus service from Sukau to Sandakan: 40 RM (this was a private minibus of the B&B and we were only 4 passengers, 2 of them got off at the junction 10 km from Sukau, and the driver dropped me off at my hotel in Sandakan)

* as I booked more than 1 tour, I got a discount for the other 2 tours

My Name is Pugle and I am 8 ...

August 24, 2012 - Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center

Sometimes the unexpected things make your day and often the best things in life are free.

I had actually gone back to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center to catch the public bus back to Sandakan but for whatever reason that bus never came. The feeding of the orangutans had just ended and as tourists crowded the cafeteria, I went in search of a quiet place away from the hustle and bustle of busloads of people chattering along noisily. I had just sat down at a quiet covered platform outside the center when suddenly a midsized orangutan approached my bag I had left down by the stairs. I have to admit that I was a bit startled as I had no idea what he would be up to.

The next 2 pictures are of very mediocre quality as I had the wrong lense for this encounter on my camera. I also had it set to manual focus and it took me a few snaps before I realized that something was wrong.

So, here is Pugle walking away form my bag after giving it a quick inspection.

The bag was quite heavy, so he probably wouldn't have been able to carry it off, but I still wanted to make sure that he didn't disappear with it into the rainforest. I got up and walked slowly over to where the bag was. Fortunately, Pugle was not of the aggressive sort and he wandered off but snatched my empty softdrink bottle and went over the banister.

Next, he climbed up on the roof and after having removed the cap from the bottle, he started to play with it checking whether there was anything left inside.

By now, I had managed to change lenses but Pugle was still in the dark against a very bright sky.

Finally the photos get better ... Pugle obviously enjoyed playing peek-a-boo while hiding in the nearby bamboo and chewing on the leaves.

For at least an hour or two Pugle hung around while some of us visitors tried to get some decent shots of him.

Rehabilitation means that the center tries to reintroduce orangutans which have been kept as pets or were orphaned in another way, to their innate life in the rainforest ... no, they are not recoverings alcoholics or drug-addicts!

Hand or foot?

Keeping orangutans as pets is illegal in Malaysia but people in very rural areas often do not know or do not care. Other orangutans lose their environment due to growing palmoil tree plantations. Orangutans need broad-leaved forest trees as they build a new nest at least once a day. Every time they go to sleep or take a nap, they first build a nest from leaves.

After he had come down from his bamboo refuge, he once more went for my bag. I was already on alert and slowly reached for the bag myself keeping an eye on his movements. But that is when he turned around and went back into the woods. Still, this unexpected close encounter with not so little Pugle certainly made my day.

UNESCO World Heritage Site - Gunung Mulu National Park

August 1-4, 2012 - Gunung Mulu National Park

This was certainly not my first UNESCO World Heritage Site I had the chance of visiting, not even the first one on this trip I started back in February, but in order to start my personal list at some point, let it be Mulu.

There is a way to get to Mulu over land but it is a long and unpredictable journey. The easiest way is a short flight from Miri by MAS Wings. Although I had only booked 2 days in advance, the flight was less than half full and as there are 2 flights a day, it usually should not be too difficult to secure a seat.

Once I arrived at Mulu airport, a couple of pick-up trucks were waiting to take passengers to the park for accommodation or to one of the nearby dorms. Accommodation inside the park usually has to be done at some point in advance through the internet and was pretty much full by the time I booked. I hadn't stayed in a dorm for decades, but as this was the only option ... it was actually a nice spacious dorm with some 20-30 beds lined up on both sides of the longhouse and enough space in between. Only the showers and toilets could do with some fixing in the nearby future.

The park was an exceptional experience and apart from the walks and tours offered, it was the park and the dorm staff who made the trip truly memorable. Everybody was extremely friendly and helpful, whether it was the workmen at the park, the staff at the park office or the tour guides.

Don't expect to see too much wildlife as most of the bigger animals or birds are probably gone before people would spot them, so I was mostly in critters, lizards and bugs, and of course the millions of bats which leave their caves every afternoon between around 5 and 6 p.m.

I wish some of the photos were sharper but often it was quite dark and shady and although I had cranked up the ISO and widened the aperture, I still had to live with a slow shutter speed. Here are some of my Mulu National Park photos:

Taken on one of the tours showing the surrounding country side

Wildlife Object No.1

Lots of tropical plants

Wildlife Object No.2 - a small stick insect

Plants and trees in full blossom

Wildlife Object No.3- ?

A villager working on a dart for a blow pipe

Blow pipe darts

Wildlife Object No.4 - ?

From inside one of the caves

Wildlife Object No.1 - a cotton bug

I often found myself walking all alone in this quiet and peaceful environment

Wildlife Object No.1 - a green lizard

As someone had left the door unlocked, I could explore the Mulu Canopy Skywalk on my own - a bit scary in the beginning as one is high above the ground (15-25 meters) walking on a small path which swings quite a bit. At 480 metres is the longest tree-based walkway in the World.

3 Million bats leave the caves every late afternoon in their nightly search for food, mostly insects.

Details of the day/s:

Roundtrip airfare Miri - Mulu - Miri incl. taxes: 272 RM

Shuttle from Mulu airport to park or dormitors: 5 RM each way

Dormbed incl. breakfast per night: 35 RM

Park entrance fee: 30 RM for a 5 day permit

The Bharani Festival of Kodungallur

March 26, 2012 - Kodungallur, Kerala, India

As I just watched this excellent short multimedia presentation by Anthony Pond - - I remembered my own visit to Kodungallur earlier this year and had a look through the photos I took.

Unfortunately, I had arrived a day too late and although the festivities were scheduled for a number of days, by Monday the event was by far not as intense as it had obviously been the day before. Kudos to Anthony Pond for some spectacular shots. I know how hard it was to get decent pictures as there was a lot of movement, a great number of people, so someone would always walk through the frame or a head or hand would stick into it, plus the light was rather harsh.

I had hired a tuk-tuk the day before actually, but the driver had mixed up the town with another one which would have been much closer. I had my suspicions but wasn't that sure either. On the morning, when he picked me up from my homestay, he told me about the destination I had in mind and that it was still doable by tuk-tuk, just the price went up a bit.

It was quite an interesting trip from Fort Kochi, first getting onto a ferry and then passing through villages on the way before reaching Kodungallur.

Here are some of the photos from that day:

Eid ul-Fitr and the end of Ramadan

August 19, 2012 - Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia, Borneo

I left my hostel just outside the Kinabalu National Park in the morning and was lucky to get a seat on the bus to Sandakan. I was told that buses during this time were all pretty full due to the end of Ramadan and many people going home for celebrations.

After some 4 hours on winding roads, we arrived at the city of Sandakan located on the east-coast of the island of Borneo and the second-largest city in the state of Sabah. A kind of pick-up truck took me and a few other travelers into the center of the city. I didn't have a hotel reservation due to not having had internet at the hostel but soon found a small Muslim-run place called Alonto Hotel with the usual amenities I am looking for - shower with hot water, a/c and WiFi accessible in the room.

It was Sunday and Ramadan had just ended. The streets were filled with people, most of them dressed in colorful clothing and obviously in a festive mood. There were lots of Hellos, smiles from both men and women and quite a few requests for taking people's photographs.

Here are some of the pictures I took during my first walk around the center of Sandakan.

Faces of Sandakan: