Category: Malaysia

  • Malaysia – Borneo – Bario

    Malaysia – Borneo – Bario

    24 November 2022

    Bario, is located deep in the heart of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, on the high plateau of the Kelabit Highlands and home to the Kelabit people for hundreds of years. It is a delightful place, where our airport collecting got us to.

    We flew here from Miri, the gateway to small airport collecting paradise. Miri, when we woke up, was miserable with heavy rain and thick, low cloud. Not ideal weather conditions for flying into very short runways in the jungle, surrounded by mountains.  I was very sceptical if our flight would go ahead, but it did ;-). The co-pilot of the delightful Twin Otter recognised us – apparently, he flew us to Long Akah & back a few days ago. The pilots were relaxed about our flight in this weather so I decided to relax as well. We enjoyed a delightful flight via Marudi to Bario with 2 other passengers.

    Once we had settled on Malaysia as our main destination for this trip, Alan set to work on trying to maximize the number of airports we could add to our collection. There are some intriguing sounding airports nearby in Sarawak, namely Long Akah, Long Banga, Long Lallang, Long Seridan, and Bakelalan.

    The frequencies of these flights were far less than we hoped. We could not understand why we could fly to an airport but not fly onwards from nearby airport or back straight away on the same plane. Unfortunately, with the jungle terrain, it would not be possible to fly to, for example, Long Banga and fly back from Long Lallang, even though they are only about 60 kilometres apart. There is no road or river to connect them. Therefore, our normal method of into one airport and out of another would not work. The flights are nice and cheap but this did not help when we couldn’t book them.
    Once we got to Sarawak, it became clear why we could not easily book return flights straight away. Although the aircraft operating are Twin Otters with 20 seats, because of runway length restrictions they only sell between 7 to 9 seats per flight and some destinations are only served once or twice per week and quite a lot of locals fly from villages to towns.

    We managed to get to Bario, which is a simply charming place. The locals are so friendly, the paddy fields are incredibly green, surrounded by delightful hills and mountains. It really is a treat amongst our many treats. 

    There was only one place to book on Booking.com, and we struck gold! We stayed in this The Longhouse with our  hostess, Jane. This longhouse is really long – about 100 meters and shared by 24 households. On the outside, it does not look that different to a row of terraced houses with their own entrances. The magic starts when you walk in as there is a 100-meter hallway shared by all the families – it’s maybe 5 meters wide. You can easily nose around and see what a neighbour is cooking or what they are watching on the TV. Behind the communal hall are more private rooms and the exit to another long hall which is empty and only used for events. On the walls, there are pictures of the family events, ancestors, and other achievements like university diplomas or work certificates. Jane takes us on the tour around and introduces to all the habitants of the Longhouse.

    There used to be 24 families living here, each having many children. Now, the youngsters emigrate to bigger cities, and there are only 15 permanently inhabited houses with ageing populations.

    Western explorers had no idea until the early twentieth century that this self-sufficient mountain community of Kelabit Tribes existed. They lived peacefully cultivating their traditions. Now you can see only traces of the old way of behaviour. For example, babies, when they were about 10 days old, were presented with heavy earrings, which throughout their life caused their pierced earlobes to stretch longer and longer. A female would not find find a husband if she did not have long earlobes with heavy earrings. Now, there are only 6 women with long earlobes in the village. The younger generation cut the ears short, and now the kids are no longer presented with earrings at birth. You can not see a single man with long earlobes.

    We were lucky enough to meet most of the women and listen to their stories as Jane knows everyone in the village and happily introduced us. We spent a good few hours at the village market with Jane trying local specialities: deer curry, samba – local rice with spicy anchovies, wild vegetables with garlic, and a kind of soup made of leaves from a jungle tree, topped up by a local Laksa.
    Another tradition of Kelabit people (men and women) is to change their names completely a few times throughout their lives: first time when the first child is born, second time when the first grand child is born, third time when the first great grand child is born etc…

    Most of the visitors come here to do well organised jungle treks. The most challenging of them, apart from the one to Marud, is the climb to Batu Lawi, the strange double-horned peak. We chose to see it from the plane 😉 by doing a there and back flight to Long Seridan from Bario. We had been lucky enough to secure seats on these flights a few days ago. We awoke to very low cloud again and lots of barking dogs and cockrells. Luckily, this cleared quite quickly, and yet again, the Twin Otter took off early, with one other passenger, and this really was the best of sightseeing flying you can imagine. It seemed like we flew through the mountains rather than above them, and the tiny village of Long Seridan was beautifully located. We would like to have stayed there but could not imagine using 10 days of our time before the next flight!

    We have met the same pilots on several occasions, and they now understand why we are flying there and back with them.

    If you would like to book the stay at the Longhouse please see the link below.https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063458199777

    To book the flights, you need to go to this Mas Wings website.
    What a lot of local people do is book a waitlist ticket and come to the airport with a hope to fly. We do not know what the success rate of this type of travelling is as we had no time to test it, but if you are keen on trying, that option exists.

    Please see the current timetable of the flights in the picture below

  • Malaysia – Borneo – Bakelalan

    Malaysia – Borneo – Bakelalan

    29 November 2022

    When we planned our journey in Borneo the itinerary was dominated by visiting as many airports as possible, which is great as some of the places either have no roads (just rivers) or very basic roads.
    They are inhabited by various tribes that have been living deep in the Borneo jungle for generations before they were discovered by the outside world.

    Bakelalan sounded great and is located practically on the Indonesian border.
    We wanted to get there from Bario, and although there is a weekly flight from Bario to Bakelalan, we could not get the schedule to work taking into consideration availability (or lack of) on the MASWings website. Despite calling Malaysia Airlines, we didn’t get much luck, just what we could find on the website.

    Our idea was to fly to Bario and then get to Bakelalan somehow. Bario and Bakelalan are very close when you look on the map. And our guidebook says there is a road under construction, otherwise it’s a 2-day trek with one night in the jungle. Well in reality in 2022 the road still does not exist and we didn’t fancy a 2 day jungle trek so we came back to Miri from Bario and then made our way from Miri to Lawas via Brunei (quick stop) and from Lawas got a land transport to Bakelalan. Simple ;-)?
    I love the look of the jungle, but not so much to trek in it for 2 days. Therefore, this drive was perfect to get the views.
    It’s an off-road experience in 4×4 and took over 5 hours in the dust and rain on the back bench. The seats inside of the car were clearly reserved for the elderly, us youngsters had the back seats. This pleasure cost 100RM pp (about 20GBP).
    The guy who introduced himself as our driver, Balang, said he would travel with us at the back. Very cool looking dude. The only logical question we both asked simultaneously was “who is driving?” If you are sitting with us at the back. Balang said that he was getting old and that he was training a young lad who would be the driver. Before we hit the road we picked a lot of cargo from various places in town and finally hit the road.

    We were warned about this old logging road that it is not passable in places with landslides and flooding – well let’s see – in the hands of the young driver, surrounded by cargo which included among other things a box of noisy chickens and a shooting gun we were excited to go to this jungle settlement of Lun Bawang tribe.

    As soon as we were on the road, our passenger/driver opened a can of beer and offered us one each – what could be better ;-). It was after 0930, after all.
    FYI tribal people are Christians, so they do not follow the “no alcohol” rule, of some Muslims.

    The road was not as terrible as expected and we stopped on the way at the local “cafe” where our companions enjoyed the lunch made of rice wrapped in banana leaf, salty fish paste, can of sardines and something called Guapayan.
    We have tried Guapayan only 😉 it was a relatively tasty fruit.

    5.5 hours later, covered in dust and a bit wet, as it decided to rain towards the end of our journey, we got to Bakelalan. One of our travelling companions told us that when he was young before the road was put in he would walk for 5 days to get to Lawas, with hardly any money he would rely on the kindness of the people to offer him food on the way.
    Why there is an airport here who knows as it’s only a cluster of houses.

    A lovely girl, Esther, who we’ve met in Miri, had arranged a home stay for us in Bakelalan with one of her uncles. There was no address, just a name. Gladly everyone knows each other and our driver knew where to drop us.

    Accommodation was basic, welcome without a smile, but the key selling point was the airport view. It is quite literally about 40 metres from the runway. A planespotter’s paradise if there were more than 3 flights per week! But, undoubtedly, an airport collector’s paradise.

    We dropped our bags and went for a walk: the gate to the airport was open, so we followed a local to explore the runway and terminal building. Walking the length of the runway was fun – it’s only 549 meters long.
    Surrounded by mountains and rice fields, it’s a very picturesque proposition. However, the proximity of the mountains means that the weather better be good in the morning for the Twin Otter to land and take us back to Lawas. Fingers crossed.

    Bakalalan Airport


    Dinner at our homestay was very tasty, but as there wasn’t much to do after dark, we retired early. Bakelalan is very close to the Indonesia border, and a lot of Indonesian people come here for shopping. Equally, a number of people from Bakelalan have parents or other relatives still living on the Indonesia side. It only shows how the border split the local tribal community. The border, by the way, is not an international border but the local crossing only.

    Watching the airfield in the clouds, we consumed our breakfast and wondered if the plane would land and subsequently take off.

    It would be such a shame to come here and not to add this airport to our collection. But we were in luck, I thought, as there was some activity at the airport and all the “staff” were coming in to work.

    I have to say that these MASwings boys seem to be quite sensible about their schedules: there are no early morning flights to the rural airfields and none past 3pm. They clearly recognise their window of opportunity to fly when the morning mist clears but before it gets dark again. The morning mist through the valleys really is quite magical, so long as it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

    We were amused when we left our homestay when the girl asked who was taking us to the airport! They really don’t like walking in Sarawak. Seriously, it’s less than 70 metres from homestay to the terminal, if you went the long way 😉

    Bakelalan Airport Termainal Building

     

    The departure lounge was brilliant – there were 20 seats for when they carried a full payload, and now only 9 passengers are allowed on board, apparently for health and safety. There are 3 check-in staff, 4 security, 2 firemen for a maximum of 9 passengers. Today, we are 6. Alan has just been asked to sign the airport visitors’ book! Another first. And another: I am the first Pole in the book, going back to 2012! Alan is the first Brit since 2018. IT’S COMING….IT’S LANDED! The joy is unbridled. We had been considering if we could get Malaysia Airlines and/or Tourism Malaysia to sponsor us for a return to Bakelalan for our 500/1000th. Now we can turn our attention to Long Banga and Long Lellang, if they’re interested.

    Check this out. The plane arrived 20 minutes early, and we left 10 minutes late. Why? Because the pilots have gone off for some noodles for breakfast;-)

    I wish we stayed longer in Bakelalan as there are a few things to do, for example, a salt factory, great birdwatching, and some trekking with great views.