Episode 37

Episode 37

Haynes Motor Museum was started by the same man who started the Haynes maintenance manuals for cars. It is in Somerset and we visited it on a fairly quiet afternoon.

I think they must have got a job lot of bright red paint, Ferrari red, according to David, because a great many cars in one room were painted in the same very bright colour with a few others in slightly different reds. The majority of cars in this museum are classics; there are some vintage and veteran cars and some that are quite modern like a new Ferrari and Jaguar. Most are British in manufacture but there are several big American cars from the 1950’s, a few cars from Europe too, and one or two Japanese. All are presented in immaculate condition, a handful are actually replicas of rare cars and some are kit cars. One of those replicas was of the first car ever built back in the 19^th century. I think it is the same one that we have seen on display in a shop window in Vienna. I found it quite interesting to look at cars that I was familiar with as a child back home; cars such as the Ford consul and zephyr, the Austin’s and Morris’s and a few others. A couple of rooms were devoted to old motorbikes and David spent a good while reminiscing over those.

Heading towards Newport Pagnell and a visit with our friend Ria we passed by the white horse near Westbury. This is a large drawing of a horse that is cut into the steep hill side of the downs. I don’t know its measurements but it is very large and can be seen from quite a long distance. It is white as that is the colour of the chalk downs once the grass has been removed. The present horse dates from the 18^th century though it is believed that it was drawn over a much older one that possibly dates from nearly 1000 years earlier. The origins are very unsure but it could have something to do with winning a battle against the Danes. Some way further on in Oxfordshire we saw another, this one is quite different being more of an outline and quite stylized at that; its origins are said to be much older possibly as much as 3000 years old. It is not possible to see this horse properly from the ground so ideally the best way is to take a hot air balloon trip over it, but that would be a summer time thing anyway. It was threatening to rain with a bitterly cold gusty wind on the day we visited still the view over Oxfordshire from this point was very extensive, it looked very pretty with all the green fields and small villages.

As we drove along I noticed that the huge stacks of silage appeared to be almost untouched after the winter so presumably the winter as a whole has been very mild and the animals have been able to graze in the fields most of the time so have not needed the silage. There seems to be some very young lambs about a week or two old and many that are 2 or 3 months old but not much in between.

Newport Pagnell is a village that is part of Milton Keynes and as we drove through the area we passed the concrete cows that have been a feature of the area for many years. A great number of these cows have been stolen over the years and are no doubt adorning the gardens of Mediterranean villas or Reindeer farms in Lapland or maybe someone is putting together a farm of concrete cows, they come is a variety of sizes and painted black and white. The stolen ones have been replaced again and again; someone is perhaps encouraging the thefts so that they are kept in a job replacing them.

Ria, as per usual made us very welcome at her home is this lovely village. Her gentleman friend Brian took all of us on an outing into the Cotswolds one day. The weather was none too accommodating but never-the-less we had a lovely day with a visit to Stow-on-the-Wold where I had once stayed in the youth hostel many years ago and a walk between the villages of Lower and Upper Slaughter then a visit to Bourton-on-the-Water all of which I visited during my stay at Stow. The houses in these Cotswold villages are built of a lovely light cream stone, a very similar colour to our golden sandy beaches at home. When the sun chooses to shine the new building seem to almost glow, they are very pretty. As the stone ages it goes darker to a rich caramel colour or discolours with lichen and mould to a dirty gray colour. All the new houses are built using the same type of stone and usually in a style that blends in well with the rest of the village. Bourton was one of the villages that were badly flooded back in July, the weekend we first arrived in England last year; some of the buildings are still being repaired.

With all sorts of dire weather predicted for Easter we quite pleasantly surprised when Good Friday turned out to be a lovely sunny day but with a chilly wind, still got a couple of light showers through the latter part of the afternoon. Here, in England most of the shops and services are open for business on Good Friday and Saturday, but Sunday will be more like Christmas Day with virtually everything closed.

The weather stayed very changeable right up until the day we left England. We sold the car during the last week and the new owners agreed to take us to Heathrow early on Saturday morning. It was a fairly clear morning and the sun, a glorious orange ball, rose slowly over the tree tops. Heathrow was its usual chaotic self, at least we were departing from terminal 3, not the new BA terminal 5 where nothing seemed to be going to plan.

Our flight left on time and we got a bit of view of the suburbs around the airport before becoming enveloped in cloud that stayed with us the rest of the day as we passed over Europe. We landed in Dubai in the evening and this time got a short while to have a bit of a look about: Several great imitation date palms decorate the hallways and sitting under them on wooden seats, not camels, were some Arabs in white jelabas, their belongings in plastic bags beside them and tapping away at a wifi connected laptop on their knees.

Brunei was hot and sultry when we stepped out of the airport and into the tropical heat that hits almost like a physical force as you emerge from the air-conditioned customs hall. We stayed a couple of nights here but really didn’t see anything new before heading off towards Sabah in Malaysia.

A half hour bus ride, a couple of hours wait, then we passed through immigration and climbed onto the enclosed, narrow and long speed boat that would take us to Pulau Labuan, an island just off the coast of Borneo that is part of Malaysia but a Federally run duty free island, not really a part of Sabah or Sarawak. We had another wait before finally leaving and an hour later arrived in Banda Labuan, the town and port on the island. Unlike most of the other passenger we decided to stay overnight here before continuing on towards Kota Kinabalu in Sabah.

It was on this island that the Japanese forces in Borneo finally surrendered to the allies at the end of WW2. A large war cemetery here is the final resting place for a large number of Australian and British servicemen. We also visited a large Chinese temple that is currently undergoing extensions and we watched some craftsmen at work doing the bas relief on the pillars. They were making the dragons and flowers that wind about the pillars using a fine mortar. The ceiling was moulded and decorated using a vast amount of gold leaf and most of the rest of the interior was tiled in bright lemon yellow shinny tiles.

Took a fast speed boat ferry to Kota Kinabalu: The crossing was smooth but the air-conditioning was freezing, I needed defrosting when we arrived but once outside in the humid heat I soon thawed: this is a fairly big city surrounded by jungle and to the north is the massive bulk of Mt Kinabalu but I haven’t seen it yet. The mountain is the highest in Borneo and the highest in Southeast Asia at around 4100m. Not sure if I’m going to try and climb it yet, I haven’t had much in the way of exercise for a long time so I think it might be a bit too much for me. David probably wouldn’t be able to cope with that altitude though he has been up to that height years ago.

KK is a typical Asian city with a mixture of markets and market stalls selling everything imaginable and many things that are unimaginable and certainly unidentifiable. The smell of dried fish hanging in the stalls is overwhelming and permeates everywhere just as it does in the supermarkets back in Portugal. Mix with that the odour of a vast variety of meats and vegetables cooking on the small street stalls, the smell of spices and the general foul smell of the city and you about have it. The streets have been swept and are fairly free from garbage but not from cats, there are cats of all colours, shapes and sizes everywhere, even less flies than cats. Spread around the city are a number of air-conditioned shopping malls where its possible to find all the top brand names that you find anywhere in the world.

We walked through the late afternoon fish market and saw the massive array of fresh fish and seafood on offer from fish of all sizes to large piles of squid, many rays, and very large prawns. One wonders for how much longer this sort of catch can be sustained.

It seems to rain most afternoons or evenings, that heavy tropical rain that dumps an enormous amount of water in a short space of time then clears away leaving the air fresh and clean. Listening to the traffic report on the radio at the hostel it sounds as if Kuala Lumpur is badly flooded today and the traffic is in chaos, glad we aren’t there.

While in the city we visited the museum that is situated in some quite modern buildings not far from the centre of the city. There are some interesting displays on natural history, the birds, animals, insects, butterflies, fish and sea mammals. Probably far more here than we will get to see in real life: Some archaeology too; pottery burial jars that have come to light on a river bank and probably date from about the 16^th century, and other bits and pieces of pottery that is of Chinese origin. Evidence in some caves of human habitation in this part of Borneo for at least the last 3000 years:

A large display is devoted to the Japanese occupation of the Island during WW2; there were some POW camps here and of course the famous death march from Sandakan on which all the prisoners perished except for 6 Australians who I believed escaped that is how they managed to survive. It is only through them that anything is known of this march; apparently the Japanese didn’t record the event at all.

In the grounds of the museum we looked into a number of native houses that have been constructed. They come from a number of different tribes but are all quite similar in layout. Built up off the ground they have bamboo flooring that allows for the breeze to circulate through the floor, and they all have a veranda on the front and a cooking and eating area at the rear. The walls are timber or bamboo and the roof is a thatch with the rattan vine used to tie things together. In another building we saw a display on the railway that was once constructed here; there is still a small section of line that is used from Kota Kinabalu to Beaufort. The display covered the development of railway in Britain too. Another display I found interesting was one on radio, it even had an old radio studio and TV studio set-up in the room showing equipment from the 1950’s and 1960’s. A large area is an art gallery devoted to local artists covering a range of painting styles and some of the work here is very good.

I mentioned the POW camp at Sandakand a few paragraphs back, there is also a large Australian War Memorial there and this coming ANZAC day there will be a big service there.

We left KK one Friday morning and caught the bus to Sepilok over near the east coast. Our route took us along the main road past Mount Kinabalu that at the time of day we passed was covered in cloud. Our ticket cost included a small bottle of water and a midday meal at a roadside restaurant. The big air conditioned bus was equipped with video that showed a movie for those that wanted to watch it, I preferred the passing scenery. Fortunately the video wasn’t too loud nor the aircon too cold.

We passed through many small villages; in fact the road side has houses or stalls nearly all the way. In the vicinity of the mountain there are some valleys that are intensely farmed and roadside stalls hereabouts sell fresh produce from these farms. Most of the land has been cleared of its native forest, just as in every other country in the world, and where it is not being farmed the land has been invaded by thick, green fast growing shrubs and vines that are really pests and strangle or prevent any native timber from regrowing.

As we got a bit further to the east we came into the large oil palm plantations and wherever you look all you can see are the lines of oil palms marching off in all directions. Thick vines cover the ground and grow into the trees so there must be quite a lot of work involved in clearing this vine out of the trees from time to time. The plantations we saw ranged from those with mature trees to those that have just been planted. In one place we saw that they are harvesting the palm nuts, these come in large bunches that weigh about 10kg and consist of a great many roundish shaped fruit the size of a large marble, generally black in colour but shading to a yellow colour near the base of the bunch. I cannot say if one tree produces one bunch or several or how long they take to mature but I can say that the margarine here is made using palm oil and it tastes ‘bloody awful’.

At Sepolik we visited the Orang-utan sanctuary: This is one of the rehabilitation centres where orphaned young ones are raised and then gradually weaned from being feed by humans until they can fend for themselves in the jungle. The process takes about 7 years and involves many stages. The babies have to be fed every few hours and they must be taught the skills that their mothers would normally teach them such as climbing and what food to eat.

We watched a video on all this training but the only thing we could see was a feeding session. There are two feeding sessions each day and they take place a few hundred metres from the visitors centre. All us visitors and there was a great many of us, could go out to a viewing area where, at one of the trees there is a feeding platform and long ropes leading to it from the large trees in this nature reserve. The ropes are for the orang-utan to come along to the feeding platform so that they don’t have to come over the muddy ground or do damage to the lower branches of the trees by using them too much. The ones that come here for some food have been released into the nearby forest and can find food for themselves and sleep in the trees but have the reassurance of getting food here if they want it. Some days many come along, on other days only one or two may come, it is unpredictable how many will turn up.

Six different ones turned up for us as well as several long tailed macaques, another type of monkey: Orang-utans are similar to the chimpanzees and gorillas in that they have no tail. They have longish fur of a reddish brown colour. At a guess I would say they would be about 1200 to 1500mm (4ft to 5ft) tall and their arms are very long and stretchy and flexible for climbing and swinging their way through the jungle. I liked the way they would just hang onto the rope with one hand, feed on some bananas they were holding in the other hand and cast their eye over all us tourists who were watching them. The chap who brought the food also had a bucket of milk and each one that came had a drink of this milk. The macaques know an easy meal is to be had and make sure they get some too even if it means stealing some from an orang-utan who is departing with a handful of bananas.

Here at Sepolik there is also a rainforest discovery centre. A brand new short section of very heavy rigid ‘canopy walk’ has just been built and wasn’t yet open. We had been told that we could climb the tower but not walk along the walkway as it hadn’t been officially opened. When we got there we did what everyone else was doing and walked along it, not that there was much to see really, just looking down on the trees instead of up into them. Several towers have been constructed but only one short section of walkway about 100m long between two towers is finished. It certainly is not ‘low impact’. Big areas have been cleared for each tower and the area under the walkway has been cleared to make way for the heavy steel supports, it would dam near carry a train it looks that strong.

At this centre there are some walks and a lovely botanical section that has a massive range of plants that is divided into sections for each species. Small signs gave information about the plant, its habitat and how it may be used. I found it really interesting and we spend ages here. The display of orchids was beautiful even though it isn’t the main flowering season for them; there was an area full of pitcher plants too. These are wonderful plants that can grow on very poor soils because they obtain their nutrients from catching insects in its ‘pitcher’. Many of these are very tiny but here in Borneo they also have a very large one that has a ‘pitcher’ that can hold 3.5lt of fluid. These large ones are found in the Poring Springs area and it has been know for these plants to catch the local rats. The insects, and the rats too, are attracted to the plant by a sweet smelling solution that it excretes. They eat this solution and fall into the pitcher and can’t climb out because downward facing spikes prevent their escape. They drown and are dissolved by the liquid and absorbed into the plant. Very clever I think: The pitcher is really an extension of the leaf:

©Lynette Regan 15^th April 2008