Sarawak

I flew to Miri in Sarawak--the southern Malaysian state in Borneo. So far so good, but I left half my clothes in Sepilok! In a hostel I don't care to return to, thank you very much. I had my first shower in three days just now. And then I met six--count 'em, SIX--Americans! This doubles the American count. We States-ers suck at globetrotting, at least in Asia. I've met six times as many Danes, Dutch, and Swiss. So I can't tell you how spectacular it was to hear New Jersey jokes, or rather the suppression of New Jersey jokes when I told these guys where I was from.

I'm starting off in Miri. My intention was to stay a quick four days all in one place, but the hostel-runner is a bit eccentric (when I asked for four nights she said, "Let me see." I'm not really sure what she's waiting for, seeing as I'm offering to fill a bed for her...) and I heard there's a nice beach about 3 hours away with cheap accomodation and a barbecue area. That sounds like a nice way to round up a trip. Miri is an "oil town" and quite rich from what I've seen. The town bus was air-conditioned and there were honest-to-God developments outside of the airport. Most of the cars were shiny and big--none of these "Protons" I've been seeing all over the place (do we even have that car in the US?). No more stares for my whiteness (though maybe it's my tan...ha! ha!) and slightly pricey dorm beds. Yep, they're relatively rollin' in Miri.

Sepilok, where I left at o'dark thirty this morning, was pretty cool aside from the shower situation. The orangutans were awesome. You can't believe how human-like they are (actually "orang" means "people"--all the tribes in Borneo have names with Orang in them). I felt priveledged to see such a creature. This is one of the two or three places you can, and they're very shy. They came up to a feeding platform which was right on the edge of the jungle. The point is to convince them bit by bit to move away from the rehabilitation center. The organization was completely Malaysian-run, which was surprising to me and pretty cool.

The Lonely Planet and everyone who visits (it seems) talks smack about how the Borneo jungle is being replaced by palm oil plantations. This is another thing I'm ambivalent about. I think it should be a bit harder for Westerners to condemn a country for making money off the land. I mean, surely once the States were a lush forest, too. But today as I flew over Borneo, I could see that the plantations really did take a chunk out of the rainforest. So all I can say now the solution is more complicated than something like "save the rainforest" (my guess is it will likely only work out when the money is favorable to saving rainforests--like if all of you all went to visit it! But then we have other problems, right?). See the world. Become ambivalent. I should make t-shirts.