Bario

2nd to the 12th September 2007

I met Nancy at the airport with a young French couple and Dutch girl. I’d forgotten that she had said she’d be on the flight when I met her a few days before. The others hadn’t really organised accommodation, so we all decided to stay at her place. We got on the tiny plane, and Sebastien immediately started to sweat. He doesn’t like small planes, and the sight of Nancy opening a Bible for some light reading just as the turbulence was at its worst did not help!

I was enjoying the view, when it happened. I had my camera ready, had the view in sight, and then nothing.

The top of the camera just flashed Err99.

It had been working perfectly that morning, and now, as soon as I had left the tiny city of Miri, with it’s malls, and camera shops, it stopped working. Actually, not only had it stopped working, but I had just received the Canon version of the "Blue Screen of Death".

I spent a day trying to figure it out, swopping parts back and forth with the Dutch girl who had just bought a smaller Canon. It was the lens. Using the one payphone (A satellite phone it turns out) I called the Canon agents, and realised I had to wait until I got to Kuala Lumpur or Singapore before I could get it checked out. I got it to work on some of the fully manual settings, but the aperture is now locked in place at the highest degree, so enough light is only reaching the sensor on the brightest of days. Even then, sometimes it just doesn't work.

Luckily I had a two year old disposable camera with me as a back up. Apart from that mini personal disaster, Bario was great. The four of us went by the “road” during the day to another village, stayed at a homestay, where the Diesel generator seemed to be switched on more for the personal karaoke machine that the lights. A load of people from the other houses came around after dinner. Not to see us though, but to watch Pirates of the Carribbean 3.

Sebastien didn’t feel comfortable with English, which was great practice for me! We had an English-free zone for a few days with French and some very feeble attempts to speak the local Kelabit language.

The way back to Bario was through the jungle proper with the son of our host as our guide. Leeches suck. And there were lots of them. And cursing in French at the blood sucking bastards is entirely more satisfying. The French couple and Dutch girl left, and I stayed close to Barrio for a while, trying to sort out the camera, wandering around the area, and hiding from the rain in a shed with the migrant rice pickers from Indonesia
Then on to Indonesia!

You probably can't make it out, but that's the border marker there between Petrus and I.
I wasn't going to do it. I was cursing my decision not to bring my boots (The ones I "borrowed from Dad 5 years ago") but there was only one way to find out if it would be possible with runners, and within an hour of setting out it didn't matter anymore.

I met Petrus at Nancy's house, when we got back form the other village. It was his house we had stayed in, and he had recently just brought a group of English Gap year kids to Kalimantan, the Indonesian state on Borneo, so I asked him if he'd like to go again. We had just left his village when we reached the first stream, and the water came up to my knees. I looked down at my shoes, at the water above where the top of my boots would have been, and sighed.

We met two teachers from Brunei, and Englishman named Charles and a local named Rhokia, and got them to join us when their own plans were washed out by the rain, camped out in the jungle one night, and spent another above a shop in Kalimantan. Then back across the border,


and on to Ba Kelalan, where I thought I would be heading back to Miri right away.

Instead, I got to talking with some people on a confidence building mission with the International Tropical Timber Organisation. When they saw how interested I was, they invited me to join them back in Bario, and when we arrived, everyone thought I was a member of the NGO. There was a reception, Pineapples, flowers, dancing, music, the works!
I seem to have shown some knowledge in Micro-hydro power, so now I have to see how feasible 14 generators would be for the outlying villages. It's all part of their confidence building measures. The logging company is promising a road to this isolated community. That would greatly reduce the price of everything that is now currently flown in. The community is split 50 50 on whether to allow the logging. A couple of generators might tip it the right way.

For loads more photos, Click here.