After the longhouse trip out of Kuching I flew to a small town in the highlands - the heart of Malaysian Borneo - called Bario. Bario and the area has partially escaped the scourge of logging and is almost exclusively accesed by air - tiny Twin Otter 20 seaters (I think) fly in and out twice a day, ferrying people and goods. This place is remote, and expensive, but not heavily touristed - partly due to the encroaching logging, partly since it's the low (wet) season - in fact I saw only 3 other tourists in 6 days. From Bario I ventured further into the jungle to a village called Pa' Lungan from where I arranged a guide to take into the jungle for 3 days. Pa' Lungan is the definition of a tiny village in the middle of nowhere - you get there by walking, that's the only way, and that's the same way the buffalo drag everything in that the village needs. It's a very peaceful place (when all the generators are turned off) and has only semi-reliable phone service. It's certainly not what you'd call developed. I stayed at a guesthouse/homestay run by a local Kelabit woman Supang and her ethnically Chinese husband. They were amazing hosts - they gave me local information, helped me arrange my guide and trekking and Supang fed me huge amount of excellent local food - a lot of it supplied from the "jungle supermarket". I set off into the jungle with a local guide Petrus, an older guy but incredibly tough. We ventured up and down, across ridges and rivers, sometimes on and sometimes off trail. Petrus knew (nearly) every second exactly where we were. We got rained on for hours at a time. The leaches were unstoppable. We ate jungle veges, meat we'd carried in and local rice, and stayed in a jungle shelter set up for logging to build a local church some time a few years back. The area we walked in is virgin primary jungle and has never been logged other than here and there for local use, and usually near the villages. Some of the trees are pretty massive - we measured one to be 16 feet round. Unfortunately this type of forest is becomming more and more rare in these parts - logging over the Indonesian border (only a few km away) and to the southwest is extensive and devastating. The local people in Pa' Lungan seem determined to protect their forest, but who knows if their resolve will last. At least it is intact for now. I would love to visit this area again and climb Gunung Murud (2454m) - allegedly a 6 day roundtrip complete with climbing vines up near-vertical slopes, likely in the rain - unfortunately I had only 5 days available, not 6.
have you tried pouring salt on the leeches?
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