Ah Boy's Scribbles: Indiana Khoo and the Sukau Rainforest

Indiana Khoo is Back from the wild!
I never knew paradise was only a sea away until now. It's truly inspiring to be away from all the busting city life, just to be here, in Sukau, surrounded by never ending green carpets and 31 other crazy nature loving folks. When can one get this opportunity again? This is where one suddenly sees the “light” after 16 years just to admire, really appreciate and sense the desperate need to just sweep all of these into my embrace. To have both your legs sink 3 feet into a bottomless mud pit, to be able to see a night sky filled with infinite number of stars which one will never see back home in Penang, that is something one can never describe and experience through solely textbooks and the Discovery Channel.

I just came back from Sukau, Kinabatangan, Sabah, Malaysia. It was an incredible , awesome journey. It was organized by the Star in collaboration with D Jungle People. We were and are called the P2P Greeniz Educator. 32 of us supposedly chosen from 200 applicants (hehez tats wat they said) had this amazing opportunity to explore the wildlife in Kinabatangan.
Theres only one word, yes one word to describe that place - Breathtaking!
Hence, allow me to describe my adventure from day 0.1 to 29th of May :

Saturday, first day of the holidays:
Took a bus to KL at 7. Was very very very very frustrated. Doof that bus company. The bus had like around 5 to 6 stops to pick up passengers from Penang to Butterworth to Jawi... Really annoying. But i managed to bury myself in the book i was reading The Rape of Nanking. It's hard to be distracted by the outer surroundings when one is gets so shocked and immersed in the brutality of the Japanese beasts back then. No offence but what the Japanese soldiers did should earn them eternal damnation. Those b*stards. ANd whats the problem with them till now? The Japanese government still refuses to admit the atrocities done by their predecessors back then. Ironically, the ex soldiers who are still unfortunately alive are smiling through the lenses of the camera of the Discovery Channel crew when they were being interviewed about what they have done. DOOF YOU MAN! Mind you but sticking a bamboo stick into a young 16 year old girl's vagina is DAMN inhumane, satanic ! Ok enough of the sadism, now upon reaching PUDU, i had lunch with my mum there. ANd i Was so shocked to find out that KL, the capital of Malaysia, is filled with immigrants: Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Nepalese, Burmese, Siamese, You name it KL has it! It's not unusual at all to say that the population of immigrants alone overshadows the Indian population here. Scaryyyyy. SOmething needs to be done. Lets return to our adventure, so we had lunch at PUDU - 1 duck rice and 1 charsiew rice for me. As an ever-loving, charity-loving boy, I donated some money to some really cute schoolchildren(PLs note I am Not a paedophile) to help in the relief efforts in CHina. Later, hopped onto a LRT to my relative's house to prepare myself for tomorrow's great adventure.

Day1 - Indiana Khoo wakes up at 3am. Left for the LCCT with a wary heart. Heart thumping thrice as fast, hands and legs feeling the chill. It's not unusual if you initially thought that you are the only one from Pg. No friends with you. Heading out to a place where you have never ever set foot on, a place famous for its headhunters. Hah! If you were me, I bet you'd be munching on your own balls too. Indy's first time at the LCCT. After registering with the Star people on guard there, I checked in and had my breakfast in the Malaysian beggar mode. Surprisingly, the LCCT's McDOnalds was swarming with people. After bidding goodbye to my aunt, uncle and my mum, I checked in through immigration and off I go to the waiting area, Gate 9 if I am right.

Fortunately, I wasnt the only shy guy. From the looks of the other participants at the waiting area, they wore an expression that was exactly the same as mine. :|
So, the plane arrived at around 7 am and we boarded the plane. I sat next to a Malay Pak Cik and Mak Cik who was rather friendly. I was quite excited at this point. This was going to be my first time to Borneo. And so I decided to continue reading my sadistic book, The Rape of Nanking. When we landed, it was rather weird to me that we were the only plane at the Sandakan airport. Now, when we were about to leave the plane, my personal alarm in my backpack RANG suddenly, and everybody kinda panicked for a moment. Ada bom ah? Takda, bukan bomb, alarm sje!
very very embarassing indeed. After meeting up with the other P2P participants from Sabah at the airport and John and Mei Cheen, we gathered for a moment of short briefing by the facilitators(thats where I met my first 2 new friends- RIchard and Patrick) before leaving for the jetty. From the jetty, another 3 hours boat ride to the Sukau Rainforest Lodge. We were cruising along the Kinabtangan river and at one point, we were very fortunate to be able to witness a herd of elephants by the riverside. Some were having their lunch, some getting horny and flirtatious. The photos of them in the slides below. There were also villages along the river bank and we were told by Dr Jeanie that they were called the Orang Sungais, the indigenous population in Kinabatangan.

Upon reaching the lodge, we were greeted by Winston Marshall(the guy with the cokebottles fixed onto his eyeballs)Hehezzz.. and we were informed that everyone of us must wear sarong for dinner everyday ( thank god I had some experience of that from Ronggeng Merdeka). Checked into our rooms in the Bilit Wing( where the boys stay) while the Abai WIng was for the girls. The lodge is very nicely decorated, surprisingly, as I did not expect a lodge that far in the jungle where there are no roads leading to it and the only way to get there is by boat to have such richly decorated yet simple designs. The lodge was built based on the concept- the lodge and it's inhabitants are merely part of the forest and unlike the other lodges that we can see elsewhere, we, humans are the "dictators" and "colonizers" of the forest" My room mates were Julian and Alan and they're really nice people. Ok, so now I see that we have our own private toilet for each room and we even have housekeeping everyday, hence, we need not shit n urinate in foxholes as said by my mother.......