After my cultural sightseeing extravaganza in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, I decided to indulge my spirit for adventure in Borneo on the, well, Spirit of Adventure.
After a day at sea, cruising from Nha Trang in Vietnam to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, my first adventure was river rafting on the Kiulu River, about 90 minutes' drive from where the ship was moored in KK, as the city is known.
I was one of the chosen few on this trip - just five of us from the ship and our tour escort and resident pianist, Clive, who when he is not tinkling the ivories, is usually found biking around port cities with unsuspecting passenger in tow or teaching scuba diving for what passes for a pool on Spirit of Adventure. Goldfish bowl is a more apt description.
The problem with the rafting was the local tour company had slapped on a maximum 60 age restriction so although plenty of passengers wanted to go they had not considered the small fact that reception has all our passports and could check their ages!
Actually it was a shame for the over-60s who wanted to do it as the rapids are only graded 1-2 and as they haven't has much rain for a while, they were very much more 1 than 2. As long as you could get in and out of the dinghy and could swim (strangely I don't remember seeing that as a requirement) anyone could have done it.
We had two dinghies, so there was plenty of space for us all to mess around. By the time we got to the end of the 8km stretch we were drenched from head to foot - and I hadn't even been in the water! But it was excellent fun.
Spirit of Adventure stayed in KK overnight and day two I did the tour to Mount Kinabalu National Park, home to the tallest mountain in South-East Asia at almost 13,500 feet tall. It takes a day and night to climb it and there is a six-month waiting list to go up, according to our guide Mary Ann.
She reckoned anyone can do it - a 93-year-old is the oldest recorded, a six-year-old the youngest. And then went on to tell us about the people who have died trying. I quickly struck it off my to-do list.
Especially after learning that the tectonic plates below the mountain are rubbing together and the mountain is growing. OK, so it's only an inch a year but clearly if you fancy climbing, do it sooner rather than later!
As we didn't have time to climb, we walked through the foothills, admiring the "naked" trees (they have no bark), the orchids (there are about 1,200 species), the ferns (650 species) and endless exotic plants.
All very interesting but painfully slow. I appreciate the ship is full of elderly people (hence so few could go white-water rafting) but why does the world "step" seem to fill them all with fear. We have steps in the UK and they work in much the same way as over here. But over here, they see one and word is passed back through the group with growing angst until the last person is seriously considering turning around while there is still time!
I would have loved also to visit a memorial in the park erected in memory of almost 2,500 Australian and British POWs who died at the hands of the Japanese during three forced marches in World War Two but instead we had to endure a visit to a cultural market, which turned out to be selling the biggest collection of tourist tat I've seen for some time.
Not that we could have bought anything anyway as they only wanted Malaysia Ringgit and all most of us had were US dollars. Every other country on this trip has been happy with dollars so we never thought to change money, and even if we had considered it, there was little chance anyway as the tourist authority hadn't thought to provide an exchange facility at the port. Some lessons to be learned here.
The day finished with a visit to a local pottery. "You have 15 minutes," Mary Ann said. Within 10 minutes everyone was back on the coach, agreeing shopping time could have been better spent enjoying the national park. More lessons to be learned.
Next stop after KK was Muara in Brunei, a tiny state less than a quarter the size of Wales that juts into the north coast of Sarawak, also in Malaysia, also on the island of Borneo.
It's an extraordinary place, dripping in oil and gas, which means they are not short of a bob or two.
Our guide Min explained he was always smiling because there is no income tax, sales tax or VAT, education is free and if you need the health service, it costs $1. If they don't have the facilities to treat whatever illness you have, they will fly you to another country for treatment. Cost still $1. And that's a Brunei dollar, which is worth about 35p.
There are just 50 taxis in Brunei and hardly any public transport as it's so cheap to drive - petrol is 53 Brunei cents a litre, diesel 31 cents and road tax is B$2.20 a year for every 100cc engine size. The average family has four to five cars; you could see them all, parked in drives or along the roads.
But before you start packing to live in this tax-free paradise - even the weather is lovely year-round, with hot and very hot, punctuated by rain - bear in mind it is a dictatorship, even if a financially-friendly one, where the Sultan is king, prime minister and finance minister, and you have to live there 20 years and pass an exam to get citizenship.
There were tours from the ship to Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital, about 45 minutes from the port, but again I opted out of the cultural stuff in the city and instead went for the Temburong tour, which promised a speedboat ride, a visit to an Iban Longhouse and a ride in a Longboat.
I wasn't too keen on the longhouse, a "cultural experience" I've done before and disliked then - tea, dull local dancing and a taste of rice wine with the Iban people, headhunters in days gone by - but at least the first time it was in the jungle, not at the side of a road!
If you've not come across longhouses, by the way, they are literally long houses, shared by a number of families (the one we visited had eight, but Min pointed to one later that had 27) that are usually related but are also allowed to inter-marry. They have a communal area the length of the house and their own rooms off the back.
But the speedboat ride was great, 45 minutes pelting along the river lined with mangroves with a stop when a crocodile was spotted, and so was the longboat, especially as we kept getting grounded on the rocks because the water level was so low.
Each boat had five passenger and our poor guys managed to pick the one with three heavyweights (not me, I hasten to add!) so when we were grounded, we really were grounded. The lad at the front was in dispair trying to push the boat off the rocks.
If I'd had my swimming cossie I'd have happily jumped in to help (not that I would have been able to do much but it would have lightened the load a little and been good fun). Next time I will know.
Our last stop in Borneo is Bintulu, in Sarawak, but I'm skipping the tour today (there is only one) as it's time I brought you some information about our ship, Spirit of Adventure. That'll be for another post.
Jane Archer
