The adventure begins with getting across Bangkok to the new airport. Yes, they planned a new airport here too, but here they actually built it. The day we left, it had been open for exactly one week. We made the trip by taxi. For the first time in my life (though I already knew they existed) I climbed into one of those vehicles where the driver is a woman. Against every stereotype and received wisdom about the art of driving a car, this woman turned out to be the driver with whom I have felt most at ease navigating the streets of this city.

Since the airport was genuinely new, she didn't know how to get there either, it being (just as it was for us) her first visit. She solved it easily with a couple of calls from her cell phone and got us there without a single hiccup, for a very decent fare (three dollars, which is a steal considering the place is well out on the edge of the city, something like 25 kilometers). Just arriving at the airport leaves you speechless. Truly world-class.

The flight (which we booked very cheaply through Air Asia) was wonderful. The only downside to this budget airline is that it doesn't use the main terminals in the cities it flies to (in Bangkok it has no choice) and it doesn't assign seat numbers, meaning whoever gets to the gate first and decides to queue fastest is the one who picks where they sit. When you consider that a round-trip flight of more than three hours cost us around a hundred dollars all in, I think it's worth it.

Borneo has a more exotic name than the place actually warrants, at least as far as the part belonging to Malaysia is concerned, which is the province of Sabah. Kota Kinabalu is a small but relatively modern city, and a genuinely pleasant one. Visiting a Muslim country is very interesting, especially in these times. Everyone warm and welcoming. Prices not as low as in Thailand, but nowhere near as expensive as Mexico or other Western destinations.

We decided to look for a camp in the jungle so we could see it before it disappears entirely. We made the journey by bus, along two-lane roads that were in excellent condition. Traffic moves at speeds considerably slower than what we were used to in Mexico, so a trip of four or five hundred kilometers takes eight or nine hours. From what we could see out the bus windows, we arrived just in time. Palm oil plantations cover staggering distances. You drive for hours and see nothing else. All the way to the horizon, even from high points in the mountains, there is no end to the plantations in sight. You'd call it a sea of palm trees. Actual jungle, almost none.

We got off the bus in a small village where we had arranged to be picked up and taken into the jungle. From there, a couple of hours in a 4x4 along dirt roads (quite wide ones, actually, since they're built to handle the large trucks that carry palm seeds to the oil mills on one side, and the big tanker trucks that haul the oil itself to the ports for shipping on the other). We reached the bank of the Kinabatangan River, which we crossed in a motorboat with an outboard motor to the camp where we'd be staying.

As luck would have it, not many other people were doing the same thing, so the four of us got a cabin built for eight without the nuisance of extra guests. In another cabin, three British adventure-seekers just like us.

Almost as soon as we arrived, we got ready for an evening boat ride along the river. The idea, obviously, was to see the local wildlife that lives in or near the water. The clouds were threatening rain, and in fact we had only a few minutes of watching monkeys and birds before the threat made good on itself. A monumental downpour left us soaked to the bone in a matter of minutes. The rain fell so hard it made any kind of observation completely impossible, so we headed back to camp, where after drying off and resting a while we were served dinner and told to prepare ourselves for a night walk through the jungle. In this case, preparing meant not only making sure we had the necessary gear (headlamps, cameras, and so forth) but also dressing in such a way that leeches (which we were told were plentiful) couldn't find any skin to sink into. Easier said than done, because given the heat and humidity, covering yourself from head to toe is nothing short of torment. Despite all precautions (which included wearing the kind of tall rubber boots that gardeners use), Adriana, Marcel, and I were all attacked by those little creatures. Marcel on the neck, me on one hand, and Adriana (hard as it is to believe given the tall rubber boots) on an ankle, right through a thick hiking sock. She was the only one bitten seriously, and the scar was still visible until just a few days ago.

The feeling of walking through the jungle at night, with all the sounds and shadows you can imagine, is for me beyond description. The animals we actually spotted were almost always insects and the occasional bird. But still, an experience you simply don't forget. The following day, on daytime walks and from the boat on the river (along whose bank we also hiked), we did manage to see many animals, ranging from monkeys and birds to wild boars, including one orangutan roaming free, all the way up to crocodiles. Judging by how many we saw, the place must be quite densely populated by those reptiles, which are fairly impressive (even more so when you're sleeping just a few meters from the river). We didn't have the luck (or perhaps we did have it) of encountering elephants, which, though smaller than their African cousins, we would have loved to see up close (from a distance, naturally).

Many people associate the island of Borneo with the death of one of the Rockefellers, who allegedly ended up served as an appetizer at the table of a cannibalistic tribe. But that didn't happen in Borneo; it happened in New Guinea. On this island, to judge by appearances today, there haven't been cannibals for hundreds of years, if there ever were any at all. In any case, we certainly didn't run into any.

Worth mentioning, coming as we do from Mexico: we found it curious that the word Malays use for "caution" or "watch out" is AWAS, pronounced exactly the way Mexicans use that expression to tell someone to be careful.

Anyway, in the coming days the story will continue. Right now I have to get to work, since as many of you already know, we've launched a new venture in Bangkok. For those interested in finding out what it's all about, you can visit our website at:

Asia Trade

The original external links in this entry (Asia Trade, Picasa Web photo album) no longer work. The text is kept here for historical value.