Day 11: Thursday 14 July (Part 2)

Our road trip continues. (For previous segments, start here, and work your way forward.)

We got hopelessly lost this afternoon... We were trying to find Batu Gajah, which we thought would be a nice interim stop on our way to our next accommodation. The Google Maps lady was confident she knew the way, but then started doing weird things as she ran out of GPS and/or internet. No internet, of course, meant no access to alternative sources of information.

Actually, even if we had found the access road, our vehicle probably wouldn't have been up for the challenge. So it's another for the "next time" list.

Then we got lost in the Samalaju Industrial Park. We were looking for the Samalaju Resort Hotel, and again Ms G. Maps had no clue. She's often defeated by Sarawak.



The Industrial Park remains something of a mystery. You can read ra-ra reports, replete with acronyms and phrases like "growth nodes", here, here, and here. It's not hard to find detractors, however (for one academic example, see here).

Anyway, despite its strange situation, the Samalaju Resort Hotel is very pleasant. It has a cliff-top setting, which offers good sea views (no accessible beach, though -- unless you want to ignore the signs and brave the crocodiles).




Day 12: Friday 15 July, aka the Day Everything Turned to Custard

We'd been feeling a little off yesterday evening. By this morning we were feeling no better. Sore throats primarily. Better break out the old covid test kits, we thought.

And -- we're positive...

Not sure exactly what our obligations were at this point, we hung around waiting for one of the helplines to become available. One of the problems about the whole pandemic is that there is a TON of outdated information out there, which no-one makes the effort to update or remove. So it was actually quite tricky to establish exactly what procedure we should be following: turn up at a Covid Assessment Centre, make arrangements to quarantine here at the hotel, or go home?

We eventually accessed the hot line, and the advisor said we could go home. That's much the best option for us, and avoids problems with the hire car, with insufficient medication, and with food supplies. So we checked out, a day early, and we clearly explained why, so that the staff would take due care when cleaning the room. Luckily, we'd not been near any of the communal areas since our arrival.

So, we were homeward bound. But Samalaju is 11 hours' drive from Kuching, so it was a long, long, long day...

And the vast majority of it was spent on our beloved Pan Borneo Highway. Occasionally, you get stretches that point to the road it may one day become: dual-carriageway, sweeping, fast. But these stretches are distinctly the exception.

The chicanes are the worst. You're bowling along, and suddenly there's a line of cones across the road, and you have to do a sharp angle over rough ground to get back on course. They all come equipped with a large pothole (variously positioned), to which it seemed I was drawn like a moth to a flame.

Then there are the sudden rough surfaces. No warning, mostly. From smooth tarmac you hit buckles and bumps and corrugations.

It's often seriously hard to know where to go, amid the cone forests. And it's incredibly confusing to have traffic on the incomplete bit of road (the one that will eventually form the other half of the dual carriageway), when it's not actually in use except by site vehicles and locals who need access. This can be so bewildering -- because it looks as though the whole thing IS a working dual carriageway -- that we did spot one guy actually driving up the wrong side of the road for a while, under the impression he had the run of two lanes, not one...

And then there's the constant need to overtake things. You get round one road-train, only to encounter another. I was never an adventurous overtaker, and the dust and confusing road layout make the operation even more difficult.

Anyway, we made it. We stopped only for toilets and petrol (we masked up well for the former, and chose contactless pumps for the latter). We relied on our own supplies for food and drink. And we just kept going. It was a good job I'd got myself back into driving. I don't know that Nigel exactly relaxes when I'm at the wheel, especially given my predilection for steering us into potholes, but hopefully it was preferable to driving the whole 11 hours himself. I can't remember the last time I drove that kind of distance... Even in New Zealand, when I was still driving, I never went particularly far.


So, this is all a great shame. We weren't due back until Monday, and the curtailment means we have missed out on a number of destinations that we'd been looking forward to.

It's also very annoying. We have been careful for so long. Carefulness is ingrained into us. And we didn't do anything that wasn't careful while we were away.

I have a hypothesis, therefore, as to how, despite all this, we have contracted covid. I've written to the institution involved to ask for clarification. We'll see whether they respond. If I'm correct, they need to make a few changes to the way they do things. They may never admit I'm correct, but hopefully they'll make the changes anyway.

_*_*_

Yesterday was technically the first day of our isolation, and we did indeed manage to keep ourselves out of everyone's way.

We have to isolate for a week. So there's not going to be much to write about, on this blog at least.

Yesterday we reported our positive test to MySejahera, and we have to fill in a HAT (Home Assessment Tool) every day, detailing our symptoms and stats (blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate, and temperature). Luckily, this long, sorry saga means we have the equipment to do these things. A few years ago, I wouldn't even have heard of an oximeter...

Nigel is not doing too badly (touch wood). My main problem is that I have a horribly sore throat. Swallowing feels like I'm dealing with broken glass. I also cough, which hurts my throat yet more.

So it's a reasonably unpleasant experience, although I'm aware it could be much, much worse.

We are, it seems, part of a general uptick: "The Health Ministry said 5,230 new daily Covid-19 cases were reported yesterday, bringing the total cumulative cases to 4,613,998. The last time new cases breached 5,000 was in April, three months ago."

Jeez, is this thing EVER going to stop being a nuisance...?

Let's close with one more sea photo, just to remember how nice most of the trip was: