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Deccan Herald » Sunday Herald » Detailed Story
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TRAVEL
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Of Canopy walks and city lights
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Hugh and Colleen Gantzer
visit Kota Kinabalu in Borneo, a land whose natural formations are dipped in fascinating facts. Flesh-eating plants, the world’s largest flower and much more...
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From KL we flew across the South China Sea to KK. KL, as most people know, is Kuala Lumpur. KK, as many people don’t know, is Kota Kinabalu. They’re both in Malaysia. KL is the capital and is on the mainland; KK is on Borneo, a 755,000 sq km island, if you include the adjacent islands, Borneo is divided between Indonesia, the oil-rich Sultanate of Brunei, and the Malaysian state of Sabah.
From the air it was clear that KK, the capital of Sabah state, is a modern town cupped by dense rain forests against the warm sea. Clearly, however, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, it still hasn’t shaken off traces of its original, fishing-village, character. Though visiting Caucasians might find the settlement of KK’s Philippine Bazaar, adjoining a salt-fish market, to be quaint and charming, it was a little too grotty for our taste: we don’t go abroad to experience things that we have in abundance at home!
In marked contrast to the Bazaar was KK’s ethereal, blue and white, City Mosque which seemed to float, weightlessly, on it own reflecting pool. Also worth seeing is the Sabah Foundation: it looks like a 30-storey pillar of glittering ice standing erect on a short, squat, stick! Then there was the Duh Toh Sze Chinese Temple with its towering statue of Kwan Yin, Goddess of Mercy. Joss sticks smouldered and smoked and in the prayerful haze, Kwan Yin smiled.
We left this benign goddess, hired a small outboard motor-boat, and tracked our white wake across the blue bay. We were in the Tunku Abdul Rehman Marine Park with its crystal-clear waters, constellations of exotic fish glittering through its coral gardens, and five wooded islands. Trekking trails wound through the jungles, people picnicked and sun-bathed on the beach, swimmers and snorkellers splashed and cruised in safe areas marked by buoys, scuba divers flopped backwards off tenders into deeper waters.
One of the islands, Manukan, has an intriguing hotel of wooden cottages, built on stilts, tucked snugly into its forested slopes. We would, happily, have stayed there but we had an appointment with denser jungles in higher mountains deep in the heart of Borneo.
We drove out of the coastal plains, the next morning, and climbed through dense, shola-like forests, past grass hills and little hamlets with snack-bars and handicrafts stalls, and stopped for a dramatic view of the 4,095 metre Mount Kinabalu. Nine million years ago, a 150 sq km mass of plutonic rock formed, and crystallised, in the molten depths of the earth, and then forced its way up through the softer sedimentary layers. It’s still rising at five mm every year.
We learnt all this when we drove up to Sabah Park’s Mountain Garden. It has an excellent orientation centre and a very elegant restaurant: knowledge and relaxation perfectly matched. The walk through the gardens meanders over bridges, along steps with their rises made of logs, past streams and rock pools: all beautifully landscaped.
In screened-off enclosures we saw the rare Slipper Orchid and the strange Pitcher Plants. Because these Pitchers grow in soil with few nutrients, they have developed leafy jugs with lids. Insects attracted by the nectar secreted outside the leaf, crawl into the pitcher and trigger sensitive hairs in these green traps. The lid snaps shut. The insect is then, slowly, digested by the juices in the pitcher. There are other flesh-eating plants in the world but none so dramatic in its food procurement as the Nepenthaceae, as this order of carnivorous plants is called.
Curiously, Borneo is also the home of the world’s largest flower: the bizarre Rafflesia arnoldi. It has no green tissue, leaves, roots or stems. Instead it has thread-like strands living as a parasite on the roots of a vine. But its flower appears on the forest floor.
It could weigh as much as eleven kgs and measure almost a metre across. The most striking feature of its fleshy, five-lobed, structure is that it has the livid colour of rotting meat and a putrid stench to match! Flies find it quite irresistible and swarm in helping to fertilise it. Sadly, or perhaps not so sadly, this odious impersonator wasn’t blooming when we visited Sabah!
We now wanted to have a really close encounter with the famed rain forests of Malaysia. Driving deeper into the Park we headed for a place called Poring. We parked at the beautifully landscaped entrance, but as we walked deeper into the jungle, the forest closed around us. It almost seemed as if the jungle was a single, conscious, entity, self-sufficient and not entirely happy with our intrusion.
It was as if we had entered an aloof, exclusive, and very old, club and the members resented our presence. And then the trees retreated and we stepped into the open area of the Poring Hot Springs.
We were told that the Japanese, who delight in thermal springs, had developed these naturally heated waters during their occupation of Malaya: as it was then called.
It is still a hot favourite with Japanese visitors and so cameras buzzed, there was much bowing and smiling, and a number of people were soaking in the steaming waters in the concrete pools, under the attractive wooden kiosks. The few that emerged had the appearance of par-boiled lobsters! Two Indian couples, however, preferred the seclusion of private baths behind locked doors.
We didn’t have the time for either a public dip or a private soak so we trudged up a path that led into the forest, following sign posts that indicated the way to the much-publicised Canopy Walk.
As we left the hot springs clearing, the forest closed in around us again. It became darker and darker and we were plodding through green tunnels of tall trees, past ferns and looping liana creepers as thick as marine hawsers. Insects strummed and whirred and there was the mushroom aroma of damp loam.
The air felt humid and heavy and we began to sweat with the heat and the moisture and the gradually rising climb. We were now deep in the kingdom of the rain forest: a domain where vegetation ruled, creating its own food and climate, adapting itself to various levels of life.
Then, when our clothes were damp with perspiration and clinging to our limp bodies, the Canopy Walk appeared. It was a narrow suspension bridge, hanging ¾ of the way up the forest giants. We tramped up to it and began to tread, cautiously, along the single plank all down its 140m. length. At its highest point it was 41 m. off the forest floor but it was far more fascinating looking up and around than it was looking down.
There’s a lot of competition among plants to reach for the sun. Some rise tall, others creep up the soaring giants, many orchids entrust their seeds to the wind to carry them to a suitable spot, strike root and thrive. We were now at this orchid-level of the rain forest and the only way we could have experienced it was by the high adventure of the Canopy Walk.
Like the plants, we too had reached for the sun, in Malaysia’s Borneo...
FACT FILE
Getting There:
Malaysian Airlines has flights from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu.
Accommodation:
Ruby Inn E-mail JW333@hotmail.com - Tel:088-213222; to 5-stars like Pacific Sutera Hotel —E mail:reservations@sutera.po.my — Tel:088-318888 and Nexus Golf Resort E-mail:nexusht@tm.net.my - Tel:088-411222.
Getting Around:
Hire local travel agents. We used Wildlife Expeditions — Tel:088-246000 — E-mail: leegn@pc.jaring.ms
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Sunday, May 8, 2005
