After a month of confinement, we were really keen to get ourselves out and about a bit. So this week we hired a car for three days.

There were a number of constraints:

1. This particular car-hire firm permits travel only within a limited radius.
2. Many places are still shut, or not fully operational, because of the covid-necessitated Movement Control Order (MCO).
3. The weather has been pretty wet lately, putting a literal damper on some outdoor activities (the osteoporotic and uninsured among us have to be super-careful around slippery surfaces).

Nevertheless, the Terns refuse to be daunted by restrictions. Hell, we're now brilliant at work-arounds. If you can't do something, then you just crack on and do something else.

Plus, we're lucky in that we derive a disproportionate amount of satisfaction from the really quite low-key. That's a trait that has stood us in very good stead in recent months.

First up, then, we headed for Kubah National Park. We can see this from our flat, so it had long been an objective.

At the moment, because of the MCO, only two routes are open: the path that leads to the summit, and the Belian Trail. By the time our car had been delivered, and we'd arrived at the park, we were a bit late for the summit walk (which takes 5-6 hours return), so we tackled the other one.

At least some of this was a road constructed during the Japanese occupation in 1942. (Not that you'd know that. There is nothing road-like about this track, and it demands a lot of concentration.)

We didn't actually make it to the end, beating a retreat primarily on account of the worsening rain and the growing evidence of leeches.

But it's good to be reminded of life in the forest from time to time. We startled a bat, saw a massive butterfly, and heard a load of birds (but didn't see any -- not an unusual experience with forest birds, we find). And -- again as per usual -- we felt very small and vulnerable, even in a forest on the edge of a national park.










After all your exertion (and forests are notoriously sweaty places), Telaga Air is a lovely spot for lunch, with a range of simple eateries offering not only seafood but also decks over the river to eat it on.

Slightly farcical, however, was the fact that we inadvertently rolled up covered in blood... We should have known that it's not the leeches you see that you have to worry about... I'd been punctured once, and Nigel twice.

I'd had this delightful experience before, when we were in Sabah in early 2009. But Nigel was a leech virgin. And it turns out he bleeds lots... The little blighters pump in anti-coagulant to make sure your natural wound-healing mechanisms don't deprive them of dinner. And in Nigel's case, the bites just kept opening up again. (But he was OK again by the next day, so any mums reading this shouldn't worry.)

Anyway, back at lunch. No-one at the waterside eatery batted an eyelid at our chainsaw-massacre appearance, and we enjoyed our seafood and river views in peace.







Access to Golden Beach was unfortunately blocked off by a gate. I'm not sure whether this is an MCO casualty or whether they normally don't open on weekdays.


We had an interesting drive home. So much water... Just look at the map...


We crossed river after river. The roads are on embankments, and the land around is mangrove forest, which fills up when the tide comes in. Surreal.

On Day 2 we had some duties to fulfil before setting off on our outing.

Firstly, we were due at the hospital for a covid antibody test. (It was quickly determined that we don't have any, as we expected. But antibodies are apparently not the only things that contribute to immune responses, and identifying these elements is a much more complicated business, which is why they took even more blood to play with than the leeches did.)

Secondly, we needed to do a supermarket shop for things we just can't get online. Like decent cheese. And sardines without tomato sauce. And herbs. And balsamic vinegar. And Plastic Pots To Put Things In.

Once all that was done, we headed east to a little place called Asajaya for lunch. To this place, to be precise:


Here they are big on big prawns:


Asajaya is a pleasant little locality for a post-prawnial wander:











From there we headed to Kota Samarahan proper (although this is a sprawling sort of urban development, and it's difficult to define a centre as such).

Canals were today's distinctive aquatic feature. They're there to drain the land so that it can be used for agriculture. This means preventing salt water getting in during the big tides, and preventing flooding during the rainy season. It's quite a complex business, involving tidal control gates, lock gates, culverts, bunds, and bridges. And this is definitely an area that would merit further investigation on a future occasion...



Down at the Sungai Sabang, alongside a big beware-of-the-crocodiles sign, you can see the place where the ferry used to cross. This is the way things have gone at many points along the coast, with the new (roads) replacing the old (ferries). In fact, before 1990, the quickest way to get from Kuching to Samarahan was by ferry. Now, of course, you can zip along the Kuching-Kota Samarahan Expressway.



Among the many things available at the little market there is the awesomest pisang goreng (fried banana), crisped to sheer perfection.


On the way home we investigated Kota Samarahan's mysterious pentagons. We'd seen them on the map: a small inner pentagon of roads, surrounded by five further pentagons, all making up a large pentagon. Surely some futuristic administrative space, we thought, or some upscale housing development. But no. There is a mosque going up, and there are one or two other buildings. But basically, it's bananas...





Throughout our three days' touring, we kept passing armies of diggers, busy levelling off ground, presumably for building. I continue to have the feeling that this place is poised to change, maybe massively, bringing the inevitable flood of good and bad consequences. But then again, maybe not... A lot of "developments" have never really got off the ground, or have lingered long in the take-off.

On Day 3 we got up while it was still well dark, and drove to Buntal. We got there when the merest glimmers were lighting the sky, and ate our breakfast in the car while lightning flickered on the horizon, and the local cockerels heralded the dawn with great vigour. A stroll along the Esplanade, which you reach by heading down the main street, past the knot of schoolgirls waiting for the bus, gives you great views of the morning sky.





Rasli Buang is commemorated here. A Buntal boy, he was killed fighting Communists in Perak in 1971 -- a full 11 years after the Emergency officially ended.


Buntal would also be worth returning to for a visit at a later hour, when the seafood restaurants start to open.


On, through a very misty morning, towards Bau. Unfortunately, our route brought us into contact with the dreaded Pan Borneo Roadworks, sorry, Pan Borneo Highway. We've had this lurching, crawling, dust-filled experience before, but luckily today's instalment wasn't too prolonged.



We were heading for Bung Bratak. The heritage centre is closed at the moment, but the views at the top of the hill, particularly on this atmospheric, cloud-filled morning, made the steep 30-minute climb worthwhile.





We had lunch back in Siniawan, at Yong Tai. We over-ordered... When offered noodles to go with the soup, we asked for two portions, thinking we would be given the modest kind of noodle serving that fits in a bowl of soup. Instead of which, we each got a huge bowl of soup (really delicious, with excellent meatballs, meat-stuffed tofu-balls, beans, and lots of veggies), and a bowl of noodles topped with minced pork. You think: I'll just eat a few of those noodles, but then you put that delicious chili kecap stuff on, and it slides through the noodles, coating them wonderfully... And you eat the lot. This is why we're only going to have away-days once a month...


The final port of call for yesterday was the Malaysia-China Friendship Park. This is in Kuching, but is a little far to walk to from where we live. It's a very pleasant place to walk down an overly large lunch.






Also inhabiting the in-Kuching-but-too-far-to-walk-from-home category is the Sama Jaya Forest Park, which we had enough time to visit this morning before the guy came to take the car away again. Billed as "a patch of jungle right in the city", it really is a rewarding little area. The solid paths make for easy treading, but you get the birdsong and vegetation of the real forest. We even saw a troupe of monkeys.








I've thoroughly enjoyed these days, which were a mixture of the planned and the serendipitous. Sarawak is not necessarily an easy nut to crack, but it's so rewarding when you succeed in extracting some of its many pleasures.