Karamuak

After climbing the Mount Kinabalu, on Sunday evening Zuzana went back to Kuala Lumpur. But as I still had one week before the trip to the interior of Sarawak, on Monday morning I decided to go to the Sabah Tourism Board to ask for sponsorship. At that point I was already quite used to asking for it. I had a meeting with a woman there and she told me that she would call me in a couple of days.

After that I decided that in the afternoon I would go to Sandakan, in the eastern coast of Sabah, to take some pictures in the areas around. I went to the hostel, I packed everything, I went to the bus station and I took the first bus leaving to Sandakan. At night I was already there looking for accommodation; I found a hostel with a clean dorm at a reasonable price and I went to bed.

On Tuesday morning I planned everything I was going to do during all the days I had in Sabah. First I went to the Sandakan Tourist Office and later I took a walk on the city looking for travel agencies to see what they offered. While walking the city I found the travel agency of a local photographer called Cede Prudente, I got his telephone number and after a short conversation we decided that we could meet in the evening.

In the Tourist Office I got information about places near Sandakan, especially about Turtle Island, Sepilok (the other rehabilitation centre for orangutans) and the lower Kinabatangan River, one of the areas with widest wildlife diversity in the region. But the most important thing I got from them was the address of the offices of the Yayasan Sabah Group in Sandakan. This governmental organization is in charge, among other things, of the management of the conservation areas of Danum Valley, Imbak Canyon and Maliau Basin. These areas, in the interior of Sabah, are the biggest natural reserves of the state; and visiting Danum Valley was one of the things I wanted to do.

So the first thing I did as soon as I left the Tourist Office was going to the offices of Yayasan Sabah Group. As I told you, I am very used to asking for sponsorship, but this time, since I already spoke with the Sabah Tourism Board in Kota Kinabalu, I only went there to get information.

In ten minutes I arrive there, I tell my eternal story about the Spanish photographer, and one minute later I am sitting in the office of a very nice man called Barnabas who is asking me to tell him about what I am doing. I tell him in short what I do and I also tell him, among many other things, about the trip I am going to do in Sarawak sponsored by the Sarawak Tourism Board and that I have been talking with the Sabah Tourism Board… but just as a part of the story. I don't know what happened, it must be that I tell the story very well, because Barnabas started to say that it is very interesting and that he has a program of homestay in Karamuak, a small village in the upper Kinabatangan and that it is a very good promotion for him.

In a couple of seconds Barnabas has already called the 6 people of his department and I look at all of them standing in his office. I was sitting in front of Barnabas desk while he was telling them my story and he is asking them about how much time I would need to see what they do in Karamuak. After a while everything is clear, on the next morning I will go to Karamuak, they will cover all the expenses and there will be three people coming with me to assist me in all I could need. But... If I just wanted some information...

I also asked them about the conservation areas I wanted to visit, which is why I went there, but the time you need to visit them is too much for me, so I will have to leave it for the next time. In fact I asked if one week would be enough to visit Maliau Basin and the answer was "roughly to cross it". Ok, with the time I had then, it is not possible.

When I left the Yayasan Sabah Group offices, I went to the office of Turtle Island. To be able to visit that island there were two problems. The first one is that you have to book quite in advance, and by now you must have noticed that I can not do plans in advance because I don't know where I will be at any time. And the second problem is the price. Going to Turtle Island usually costs from 120€ just one day and one night, besides, travel agencies usually book for a minimum of two people, so I would have to pay double the price. Sometimes you can bargain the price, but in a destination with such a high demand… impossible. So my only option is asking them to let me go as a photographer in exchange for some photographs. After talking with two people they told me that it is not possible. Well, what can I do, not always everything is going to be ok.

From there I went to the office of the photographer, Cede Prudente. While I was waiting for him I took a look on his pictures, some of his books he had there and his postcards, they were very good. When he arrived he gave me some advice about what should be interesting for me around there. After talking with him I thought that it could be a good idea going with him to the hostel he is running in the lower Kinabatangan to see some more wildlife, and when a bit later he told me that I would have a special price, we agreed that when I came back from Karamuak I would go to his hostel.

With these plans for the next four days, and realising that I didn't have much more time to visit anything else around there, I decided that after visiting the lower Kinabatangan I would go to Miri, where my trip to the interior of Sarawak should start. Since I still had a couple of extra days and I needed to leave the country to renew my entry (as a tourist you can only stay for three months in a row), I thought that instead of flying from Kota Kinabalu to Miri I could pass through Brunei, so I could also take the chance to see it.

At the end of the day I had already planned all I was going to do until I reached Sarawak. That night I went to the cinema with a girl who was in the same hostel. There was not much to choose from, since you have to forget about all the Asian movies because Malay subtitles are not very helpful. We finally ended up watching a romantic comedy that I don't even remember the title, I only remember that I expected it worse. At least cinemas were decent, and a cinema evening is always a pleasure.

I woke up early in the morning and when I arrived to the offices of Yayasan Sabah Group, everything was ready. The driver, the three people coming and me, we all got into the four-wheel drive car and left towards Karamuak. After driving around 120 km on the road through palm oil plantations we took one of the many tracks disappearing into the palm trees. It is at that moment when you realise why Malaysia is the second producer of palm oil in the world. It is not something I had never seen before, when flying, for example, but somehow being for such a long time in between all those plantations makes you really realise it.

During many years, the logging industry and palm oil plantations have been the two biggest reasons for the deforestation in Malaysia. When travelling across all those plantations, it is difficult not to think that once all that was the rainforest.


It is not easy for me just to mention this topic and not to say anything about it.

Those of you who know me know that I love nature, wildlife... I recognise that I feel a bit sad when I see such a wide surface which is not rainforest anymore. And know that I write you back from home, I can assure you that I miss the rain forest. During the last months in Malaysia, the extremely long rain season last year didn't allow me to go to the rainforest as much as I would have liked, but the few times I could get close to it and listen slightly to its sounds... It fascinated me again and I kind of felt like home.

During all the time I spent in Malaysia, I spoke about the problem of deforestation with several people, especially with Cede Prudente, the local photographer I met in Sandakan, who collaborates with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). So, even if I don't have much information about it, after listening to all of them, my opinion is that these days it is necessary to understand these industries without which Malaysia could not keep the development status which has. As far as I know, Malaysian government created new laws to prevent further deforestation, creating protected areas and preventing the decrease of the surface of the rainforest. Let's hope it works.

During our trip in between the plantations I was asking from time to time the driver to stop so I could take some pictures; since they were there to help me, every time I asked him, the driver would stop or turn back to take me to the place I needed. After a long way crossing plantations and rain forest we reached the area which Yayasan Sabah Group manages. But… What does exactly Yayasan Sabah Group do?

This organization was originally created to manage the logging industry in the State of Sabah in a way that all the population could get a benefit from it, specially in order to support their education. But nowadays its activities are not limited to this sector; its different departments manage different areas such as conservation areas, oil palm plantations, gas, petrol or biotechnology among others. In this region, through the Community Forestry Centre that they manage in Karamuak, they run two main activities: ecotourism and, most importantly, helping the local communities to survive in the new conditions the live in. People living here used to live from the rain forest and the natural resources they got from the river. But now the environment is not the same as it used to be and they have to adapt their customs to the new resources, such as palm plantations to produce palm oil.

That first day they showed me the facilities they had in several places, all them were quite nice and were located in beautiful places.


They also showed me a place with a few small waterfalls where people go to have a bath, but don't think it was a place where you could really swim.


Finally, we arrived to Karamuak; the woman who managed the centre was waiting for us. I was given the key of my place and as soon as I left my backpack she took me for a walk so I could see all they have there and how they used it.

In that centre they have several classrooms that they use for two different purposes: they teach the locals how to use the new resources and give them basic education; and when they have visitors, they show them how the area is and how it is managed.


In the centre they also have the different accommodation facilities for the homestay programme. These homestay programmes, which you can find in several places in Malaysia, try to stimulate rural tourism. The idea is to visit a village, spend some days there together with the local people, seeing their customs, and enjoying their hospitality. People in Malaysia are very kind, especially in rural areas. A homestay programme usually consists of basic accommodation in small villages where some activities are prepared for the visitors so that they can get to know better how the locals live. And it is also one of the best ways of getting to know the real popular gastronomy.

They took me to see the different types of accommodation they have, and I was taking pictures of them. Then she took me for a walk around the centre, and even if the centre is not in the middle of the rain forest, it is not a bad place for a walk.


Karamuak is quite in the interior of Sabah, but even though you can reach it by car (better if it is a 4wd) and it is not really in the middle of the deep rainforest, which makes it seem to be more developed than other villages, it still has its limitations. For example, this girl was waiting for an sms.


Mobile phones are hanging there because it is one of the few places where, from time to time, there is a bit of mobile network coverage. Even like this, after 15 minutes, she left without any message, leaving the mobile hanging there, where they are all the time… unless it is raining.

In the evening I had some free time before dinner, and from the car I saw a place from where I thought I could see a nice sunset, so I decided to take a walk by myself and enjoy the sunset.

I arrived there before the sun set and I had time to take a couple of pictures. It was a pity that there were not more clouds because the place was nice and quiet. But even if it wasn't the nicest sunset in history I spent a very nice time there.


After that, and before it was dark (remember that there is no electric power in the middle of the rainforest), I walked back to centre for the dinner. One of the girls who came with us from Sandakan was the cook, although I guess she had more tasks to do. She was not the only one cooking there, there was always somebody helping her, but you can be sure she knew what to do in a kitchen. It is not that she cooked anything really sophisticated, I guess that all she cooked during the time we were there were normal dishes for them, but I really liked them all.

In the next morning we went to a hike they normally do with the visitors who come to the centre. Close to Karamuak there is the mount Tingkar (this time it is only 768 metres above the sea level). In 1962 a helicopter crashed on its top, and the pilot and the geologist who was with him had to walk all the rain forest down the hill until they reached Karamuak. It is the peak which you can see on the photograph of the sunset.

It usually takes about 2 or 3 hours to climb it, and it didn't really seem to be very tough to me, but I was a bit more trained after the last two weeks in Mulu and climbing the Kinabalu. But one thing is for sure, from all the hikes I had done so far, this was the most "real" from all of them. In both parks, Mulu and Kinabalu, the trails are a bit crowded and it is easy to follow the path. This trail was not so "touched", in fact, the guys going first had a machete and sometimes they had to re-open the path, clearing the plants that had grown in the middle. Don't think this was anything like Indiana Jones though.


After three hours walking up the hill and stopping to take pictures, we reached the top. Once we were there we took our meal packs and sat close to the helicopter to enjoy the food and the views.


When we arrived back to Karamuak, again soaked in sweat, of course, I took (yet another) shower and sat to have a rest for a while in the terrace of the hut where I was staying. I think they gave me one of the best ones.


That evening they took me to meet the "mayors" or the "chiefs" of the village. I was told that there are 2 chiefs (changing every few years) who are in charge of different tasks related to the village, the relation with other governmental institutions and who take decisions to solve small problems of the people of the village.



Apart from these two people, I was also introduced to a third person. They told me that he was the owner of the plantations and he was in charge of improving the access roads to the village and several other small projects.


I think there is a difference in between them.

Alterwards we went back to the centre for a ddinner. Here, as in the Iban Longhouse, I was the first one eating when the meal was ready, and after I finished, the rest of the people started to eat. Of course I was telling them that it was not necessary to do it like this and that I preferred them to eat with me. That night I told them that I would like to have the dinner all together because it was my birthday and I would like to celebrate it with them, even if it was only having dinner all together. That night the power generator didn't want to work, so we had a nice birthday dinner under the light of the candles.


It is funny, I remember how, when we were finishing the dinner, I could hear them at the end of the table talking between them to sing the "happy birthday", but they had some problems remembering my name (here, in this kind of trips, people usually call you "sir"). This happens to me quite usually in Malaysia. In the end I think they felt a bit embarrassed and didn't sing anything. I felt as happy as if they had singed it.

The next day they showed me what Yayasan Sabah Group had done in the village until then. Thanks to them now in Karamuak there is, among other things, a small jetty, a church (you would be surprised how many indigenous people in Sabah and Sarawak are Christian), a small medical centre and several schools for boys and girls of different ages.



After the walk through Karamuak I was taken to fish a bit in the Kinabatangan River… well, or rather to see how they fish, I confess that I am not too keen on fishing. They also showed me a bridge that Yayasan Sabah Group built over the Kinabatangan River and we went to another village where they had more projects running.

After having lunch there was no more time for anything else, so we packed our stuff and went back to Sandakan so that I could be there before 6, when I had to be in the agency of Cede Prudente.

During those three days in Karamuak for sure that I didn't visit the most spectacular landscapes in Malaysia, but I did experience a part of the country that you miss if you only visit the typical destinations. I met really charming people and, above all, I really had a great time. And that –when I look at it from a distance, after a long time as I see it from here, while I am writing this, that– makes me appreciate it even more.

So if one day you come over here and you feel like spending some days in a different way, I really recommend you to pass by Karamuak.