- Barney Brantingham shares his Borneo adventures

“I knew I was really in the rain forest when a torrential downpour soaked us and blood-sucking leeches grabbed onto our ankles. ”

Borneo is full of surprises. For one thing, there are no more headhunters.

At least none in Malaysia’s northern portion of the world’s third-largest island, which it shares with Indonesia. For another thing, Borneo's Sarawak region is not one big jungle.

To reach the rain forest for which the island is so famous, or notorious, I flew to two very modern coastal cities, Kuching and Miri. From Miri I hopped a small plane for a 20-minute flight to Mulu National Park, deep in the interior.

Then I climbed into an outboard-powered canoe for an hour’s ride up the Melinau River, one of the countless streams that vein this green land, then pour down into the South China Sea. At that point, along with a traveling buddy and a guide from one of the local tribes, I hefted a pack and slogged on a three-hour trek along Headhunters Trail. I knew I was really in the rain forest when a torrential downpour soaked us and blood-sucking leeches grabbed onto our ankles.

”Rain makes the leeches very aggressive,” the guide told me. He was right. The problem is distinguishing black leeches from mud splatters in time to pull them off before they start sucking blood. (Smart people wear leech socks, but we weren't able to find any.)

The Headhunters Trail is criss-crossed with tree roots, easy to stumble over and all resembling the lethal snakes we'd been warned about. After about 15 minutes, the jungle looked the same. Lots of trees and bushes. Lots of mud. Lots of streams to wade. If you're hiking for hours in the rain, the jungle is not so beautiful. You just want it to end. To make matters worse, I wasn't at all sure why I had even agreed to make the trek. Against my better judgment, I had allowed someone else to plan the itinerary.

It called for a hike to something called Camp 5. I could not find Camp 5 on the Sarawak map. But I gathered that it was a shack hardy young backpackers used as a base camp to make the dreadful-sounding climb to the Pinnacles. But on the good side, we didn't see one snake, despite one author's warning to us that he'd seen countless venomous vipers on the same trail. Maybe snakes don't like the rain either.

Nor were we attacked by swarms of malaria-laden mosquitoes or other bugs. A few varmints buzzed around on the trail, but amazingly few. Sloshing into Camp 5, we found it to be a large wooden building, built on stilts in a lovely clearing by the river. This and the towering El Capitan-like cliffs across the river reminded me of Yosemite.

We found about a dozen other hikers at Camp 5 who had slung their wet clothes on the railings to dry. We soon made friends with most of them, except for a young French couple, who coolly ignored our overtures. We especially liked three charming Italians, two of them women, who were keenly disappointed at not having time to climb the Pinnacles. We kept running into them all over Borneo, exchanging kisses and e-mail addresses.

There was also an engaging British couple in their 60's who live in Spain and spend half the year climbing mountains in Asia and living on the cheap. That night we spread our borrowed (dry) sleeping bags and pads on benches and fell asleep listening to the rain hammering the aluminum roof above.

By morning the rain had stopped. We downed a hot breakfast, gulped some tea and plunged back onto the muddy Headhunters Trail, hoping that our boat would be at our meeting point to pick us up three hours later. It was and soon we were ensconced in the Royal Mulu Lodge, sheer luxury in the jungle.

The swank outpost, with its huge pool, large air-conditioned rooms and excellent dining room and bar, made the perfect jumping-off place for less strenuous adventures into the jungle. One day we took the one-hour hike along a boardwalk raised about the jungle to the famed Deer Cave, one of the world's largest cave chambers, where three million bats live.

We emerged at dusk, just when the bats began streaming out to hunt, leaving about three tons of guano behind for the beetles and cockroaches to consume. Outside the cave there's a convenient viewing area to watch the breathtaking sight of the bats' flight in the gloaming. In the Mulu, rivers are the highways. One boat excursion from the Royal Mulu Lodge took us to the immense Clearwater Cave, named for the stream that runs through its interior, large enough to traverse in a rowboat.

Another day we took a boat to a Penan tribal village to buy blowpipes and other craft items, then lunched far up a clear, lovely stream. Sadly, many of Borneo’s rivers run muddy brown due to logging in the highlands. Sarawak was once the fiefdom of the legendry “White Rajahs,” the Brookes family that ruled the province for a century before turning it over to the British after World War II. Later the northern part of Borneo became part of Malaysia and the southern area was claimed by Indonesia.

Most tourists fly into the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, then hop a short flight to the large, pleasant city of Kuching or to Miri, where oil was discovered in 1910 and still flows. Both Kuching and Miri are nice surprises for those expecting ramshackle tropical towns with dirt streets, flies and beggars. In Kuching the thing to do is stroll along the row of tiny shops on Main Bazaar just across from the pretty promenade along the Sarawak River. In the evening, take a two-hour dinner cruise for about $12.

There are three or four top-notch hotels in Kuching. The Hilton and the Crowne Plaza sit across the street from the river, offering fine views and are just a short walk to the Main Bazaar and other shopping. But my favorite was the elegant Merdeka Palace, where deputy prime ministers stay. It boasts an active bar-disco and the Havana Club, a mahogany den where one can puff Cuban cigars, sip port and imagine one is in Cuba or London.

If you're not planning to visit one of the tribal longhouses in the interior, at least take a trip to the Sarawak Cultural Village outside Kuching, where longhouse dinners include tribal dancing and blowpipe demonstrations, done with pinpoint accuracy. At Miri, cool off with a plunge in the immense pool at the top-notch Rihga Royal Hotel and have a bite at the fine Chinese restaurant there. Be sure to visit the open-air market downtown, where women sell an amazing variety of fruit, meats, vegetables and the highly prized Bario rice, raised in the highlands.

Good reading: “All Elevations Unknown,” climber Sam Lightner Jr.’s account of his quest to climb the lost peak of Batu Lawi. It also delves into the little-known exploits of Allies fighting Japanese troops during World War II, enlisting the aid of local tribes. I traveled from the U.S. on Malaysia Airline, an excellent airline that'll also take you just about anywhere you want to go in Southeast Asia. Just be sure not to traffic drugs in Malaysia. The penalty is death.

Source: www.opinionated travel (Barney Brantingham)