SEMPORNA, MALAYSIAN BORNEO
On our last morning in the jungle, we awoke to discover that the water level of the river had risen substantially during the night--it must have rained upstream, although it hadn't here. In any case, the camp was still dry, but the oxbow lake near the camp was, well, a lot nearer than it was the day before! So much so that the campers taking the early morning river safari were able to return from the river through flooded areas to the lake and get out right beside the camp. Very convenient!
We left the camp the same way, which was pretty interesting, because we had to navigate some really narrow jungle creeks under tall trees and hanging vines to make it out to the main river. It was a beautiful journey, though--just like the Jungle Cruise at Disney World!
Oh, I forgot: Right before we left, I took a short walk along the path to the river, and saw a snake swimming in the swamp! Surprisingly, snakes are rarely seen here (one guide told me the average was about once a month), although they do have some nasty ones around like spitting cobras and king cobras,. Yikes. I think this one was probably a harmless one like a mangrove snake, although I didn't get close enough to see for sure.
After being taken upriver and dropped off at the boat dock at Batu Puteh, Chris and I hiked up to the main road and caught a passing minibus to Lahad Datu, about an hour away. There we crammed into another van that took us southeast to Semporna--there ended up being 15 of us squeezed in there (with our bags),which made things more than a little crowded!
A couple of hours later, we arrived in the coastal town of Semporna, which had been described to me earlier by another traveler as a "shithole." Which is, in fact, a rather charitable description, if you've ever seen the place! Luckily, we had booked accomodation at the Dragon Inn, which is a large wooden hotel complex away from the main part of the town, set on stilts out in the harbor. You can actually see the water through the cracks in the floorboards, which is kind of exotic (if you ignore all the garbage floating by). There's also an adjacent seafood restaurant, also on stilts, with pens of live fish, lobsters, and crabs underneath. A nice idea in theory, although the harbor is dirty enough to make the idea of "fresh" fish pulled from the water more than a little distasteful to me. But since I don't eat seafood, that wasn't an issue--their sizzling chicken was excellent, at any rate. :-)
On our last morning in the jungle, we awoke to discover that the water level of the river had risen substantially during the night--it must have rained upstream, although it hadn't here. In any case, the camp was still dry, but the oxbow lake near the camp was, well, a lot nearer than it was the day before! So much so that the campers taking the early morning river safari were able to return from the river through flooded areas to the lake and get out right beside the camp. Very convenient!
We left the camp the same way, which was pretty interesting, because we had to navigate some really narrow jungle creeks under tall trees and hanging vines to make it out to the main river. It was a beautiful journey, though--just like the Jungle Cruise at Disney World!
Oh, I forgot: Right before we left, I took a short walk along the path to the river, and saw a snake swimming in the swamp! Surprisingly, snakes are rarely seen here (one guide told me the average was about once a month), although they do have some nasty ones around like spitting cobras and king cobras,. Yikes. I think this one was probably a harmless one like a mangrove snake, although I didn't get close enough to see for sure.
After being taken upriver and dropped off at the boat dock at Batu Puteh, Chris and I hiked up to the main road and caught a passing minibus to Lahad Datu, about an hour away. There we crammed into another van that took us southeast to Semporna--there ended up being 15 of us squeezed in there (with our bags),which made things more than a little crowded!
A couple of hours later, we arrived in the coastal town of Semporna, which had been described to me earlier by another traveler as a "shithole." Which is, in fact, a rather charitable description, if you've ever seen the place! Luckily, we had booked accomodation at the Dragon Inn, which is a large wooden hotel complex away from the main part of the town, set on stilts out in the harbor. You can actually see the water through the cracks in the floorboards, which is kind of exotic (if you ignore all the garbage floating by). There's also an adjacent seafood restaurant, also on stilts, with pens of live fish, lobsters, and crabs underneath. A nice idea in theory, although the harbor is dirty enough to make the idea of "fresh" fish pulled from the water more than a little distasteful to me. But since I don't eat seafood, that wasn't an issue--their sizzling chicken was excellent, at any rate. :-)
posted by John Kuge at 8:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home