Welcome to the Jungle

When we come on a 'domestic' flight to the Malaysian Borneo, the first surprise awaited us just after we left the plane and entered the airport – there was an immigration control counter. Our passports were checked and stamped, in spite of the fact that we entered the same country few hours ago. We arrived to the region called Sarawak, which apparently has a vast autonomy, actually this autonomy is so vast that even other citizens of Malaysia cannot stay there longer than 90 days, unless they have a special permit. 

After we exited the airport we were struck by a hot and humid heat wave. This was not a surprise, however, as the capital city of Sarawak – Kuching sits only one degree North of the Equator.

Kuching is a rather blunt, soulless city; it's few highlights are a river promenade where one might think that you are either in Belgium... 

... or in Kazakhstan ...

The only other place worth a visit, in our view, is a night food market called 'Top-spot'. It is surrealistically set on top floor of a concrete, several-storey parking garage. The quality of seafood served there is as top as it's location. 

The main attraction of Kuching is clearly not the city itself, but the national parks that surround it. We went to one of them on a river trip to look for Proboscis monkeys. Unfortunately that turned out to be very elusive ...

  

... we failed to take good pictures of them, though we wholeheartedly recommend you to look them up in google as they are one of the funniest animals we've ever seen. We visited a village on stilts ...

... the locals seemed to be quite excited to see us ...

... whereas we were impressed by sustainable water collection systems.

Kuching surroundings were just an appetiser; the real jungle experience started once we arrived to Gunung Mulu National Park. The only way there is by a small plane landing at a small airport or rather an airstrip beautifully set at the brink of the rainforest...

Off we went for a hike into the wilderness, crossing streams and rivers...

Very tall trees ...

We came across centipedes ...

Insect that abandoned its body, or rather a body abandoned by its insect...

Lizard snacking on its prey ...

Carnivorous plants, most probably snacking something too :)

Snakes slithered across our way ...

We paid a visit to an indigenous village, where a native lady played a flute in quite a particular way ... 

We made it to vast and beautiful caves. As it was dark inside, the photo material we made did not satisfy the quality standards of this blog, so if you wanna see how they look like ask Google.

The day after we parted separate ways: Mariushki went for a 3-day trekking to see the famous Mulu Pinnacles. First I went by boat up river for around an hour, then I hiked eight kilometers to the place called Camp 5. Eight kms does not seem a big deal, but with an equatorial heat and humidity I sweated buckets. 

Camp 5 is picturesquely set at the foot of a mountain and a crystal clear water stream flows by. 

After I got there, I plunged straight away into the stream with all my clothes on. Not only such a bath was nicely refreshing, but a meticulous washing was a must, as the spot was infested with wild bees. It seems that human sweat must be a delicacy for the bees, as they flock to the unwashed bodies and clothes in thousands. 

Next day, the alarm clock buzzed at 5:15 to start the Pinnacles climb before six o'clock. The trek uphill is definitely not a piece of cake. It mercilessly goes up and up, more and more steeply, to reach 16 aluminium ladders close to the top.  

I sweated buckets again, nonetheless, the vistas on top were worth every drop of sweat :). 

The Mulu Pinnacles are a unique formation of 45-meter high limestone spires. 

Some of them seem to be razor-sharp.

Ievunia went on a canopy walk to admire the forest from above. 

Next day, off she flew to Brunei, a small but oil-rich sultanate on the North coast of Borneo. Her plane was scheduled to leave at 12:55, but at 12:50 she already landed in the capital of Brunei - Bandar Seri Begawan (no one can be bothered to pronounce it whole, so it's better known as BSB). Yes, it was Ievunia's shortest flight ever and yes, BSB is just next-door to Gunung Mulu. Although Brunei is similar in size to Kuwait or United Arab Emirates, BSB does not look like Dubai or Kuwait City. It's a provincial town, with several well-maintained mosques,

and the Sultan palace, which is big, some would say grotesquely big - with 1531 rooms, 257 bathrooms, it's four times the size of Versailles and three times larger than Buckingham Palace. Actually, the land surrounding the palace must be also monstrously big as it was so well hidden that Ievunia did not manage to snap a single photo of it. Apart from the 'invisible' palace, there are not many signs of the oil revenue. 

Most of the inhabitants live in houses on stilts, some more traditional... 

... some more modern ...

Most of the country is still covered with rainforest, and the nature seems to be the main highlight in Brunei, so Ievunia went on another boat trip and on another canopy walk, although this time the greater attraction than the canopy, was the walkway itself - 60-meter high aluminium tower ...

... she enjoyed the view of the waterfall ...

... and got a free pedicure from tiny fish living in the waterfall pool.

The darker and the brighter side of Japan

As we said before, we had a great time in Japan. We found Japanese people extremely polite, providing us with a great quality of service. They were much more open to foreigners than we expected. Especially after we heard and read all these stories that the Japanese do not speak English and are very isolationist. Clearly, we got fascinated with Japan and intend to come back there one day. This is not to say though that Japan is an ideal place – a paradise on Earth. Japan has also its darker side. As our travel went absolutely smoothly and our interactions with the Japanese were very superficial, we could not really experience this dark side. To tell anything about it we need to rely on what we have read or heard from other people or just on the minor things that we witnessed and we can only presume that they are symptomatic of something more serious. 

Let's start with the Tokyo fish market. This place is probably the largest fish slaughterhouse on the planet. This is one of those sites, which makes you realise that the Japanese can raise anything to the heights of perfection – even the art of killing the fish. The main victim here is, of course - tuna, the favourite fish of the Japanese ... 

... it's cutting is an art in itself, it requires very long  and very sharp knives...

... lots of practice and concentration ...

... and as the Japanese are obsessed with purity, the white gloves are a must...

... the outcome must be always meticulously arranged.

The fish market is scary, but some specimen of seafood can still surprise with their beauty ...

Sometimes it gets a bit ... hmmm... obscene :)

Sometimes you get surprised by the mere size of things ...

No doubt that everything is very fresh here ...

.

.. and busy, busy.

We've read quite a lot about the eccentricity or even perversity of Japanese pop-culture in general and visual arts in particular. Most of us have seen Japanese comic books (manga) or motion-picture animation (anime) and for Western tastes they seem rather violent. There are not many Japanese films infiltrating Europe, though we can get the taste of Japanese action style in Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill' as it was inspired by the Japanese cinema. In this movie violence is so intense and surreal that it just gets funny. It's a never ending bloodbath, where the blood is splashing all around from freshly chopped off heads and limbs. Of course, there is a long way between the fish slaughterhouse in Tokyo and the human slaughterhouse in Japanese movies. Nonetheless when we see a bloke cutting tuna in white gloves, with a one-meter-long blade, with almost religious concentration on his face, the passage from Ian Buruma's book 'A Japanese Mirror comes to mind: 'One of the most typical nihirisuto heroes is the protagonist of a story, filmed many times, entitled 'The great Buddha Pass': Tsukuye Ryonosuke, a roaming sword fighter whose only purpose in life is to kill people with one clean swoop of his well tended weapon. He is not on the side of anybody or anything; and he is not choosy about his victims, as long as he can practise his murderous skills. [...] What is important is his style. [...]. The grotesque violence of the roaming killer is shown as a piece of a wonderful kitsch: the screen goes red as heads are lopped off and bodies are sliced in half. [...] The hero is the epitome of badness. [...] But he is also as artist and as such he is also admired.' 

Let's look at another downside of the Japanese character - the lack of flexibility. For instance, we come to the hotel at 1:30 PM, they show us a room that is already empty and ready, but there is no way we can enter the room before the fixed check-in time at 3 PM. It is almost impossible to get a SIM card for your smartphone if you are a foreigner; the only exception is to order it online at least a week before your arrival. You need to fill in an online form where the warning keeps on popping up: 'please make sure that all the details are correct as once you completed it, no further change will be possible (for example they cannot re-send it to a different address if you fail to pick it up at the initial one, which is clearly a risk given that you travel and change the address frequently). The story of Sashimi rice we have already described in a previous post.

Obviously, these are very minor inconveniences but again we kept on wondering whether they were symptomatic of some deeper traits of the Japanese character – conservatism, conformism and vulnerability to social pressure. Japanese society is extremely hierarchical and permanently obliges individuals to conform to their prescribed role in the group. 

Often the more socially oppressive a society gets, the more the youth will rebel, or at least try to stand out by a bit unconventional dressing style :)

The typical role of the man is to be loyal first and foremost to his company and to do whatever the boss requires of him. Most of the men feel a strong social pressure to excel professionally, to deliver the best they can. 

Japanese get perfectionist even when it comes to dog grooming :).  

That's why the men spend very long hours at work, which enables the Japanese companies to deliver such a high quality of output, but often has dire consequences for family life. The society where everyone struggles to deliver its best, becomes the society of perfectionists; for those who fail to satisfy the very high expectations the level of stress becomes unbearable, which sometimes leads to tragic consequences. Japan is the world leader in the suicide rate. Even us, indirectly, we experienced that. On the 1^st of April, the transport system in Osaka, that usually works seamlessly, got severely disrupted by two suicides. As we were later explained, that was not a coincidence - the 1^st of April marks the beginning of the new financial year when many people find out that that were dismissed from their job.

Japan is still a male dominated society where the position of women continues to be weak. Many Japanese women are even now expected to quit their job once they get married and have children. The number of women in executive positions in politics and business is still very low. They don't see their husbands very much, as the men spend long hours working in the office or getting drunk in a bar with their colleagues after leaving the office, as bonding with the workmates after hours is a very important part of Japanese professional life. Indeed, we have continually seen men in suits either coming back home late at night on the public transport or just eating, drinking and getting noisy with their colleagues in bars and eateries.

All the Japanese temples, irrespective if they are Buddhist or Shinto, will always show a great care to detail and will always be in perfect condition. 

And one more intriguing Japanese trait, it's not dark at all, rather the opposite - the Japanese are obsessed with purity and cleanliness. One of our most interesting social experiences was a visit to the public onsen (natural hot bath). In Europe the main reason to visit hot baths is to relax in the saunas and soak the body in jacuzzis for a few hours. Whereas in Japan the main reason to go to onsen is to clean your body. It is truly amazing to see the Japanese washing themselves. Before entering the hot springs, they wash and scrub themselves for at least ten minutes, sitting on a small stool in front of the tap and shower handset. The entry into hot water (by hot we mean very hot) is just a dessert, a relatively short reward for all this previous washing effort. And after this dessert the main course of washing is thoroughly repeated again.

We could go on and on about the Japanese spirit. To cut long story short, Japan seems to be a much better place to travel than to live in. While staying only a short time, you get almost only the fruits of the bright side, without almost noticing the dark side. And some of the great things that made us feel so good may be exactly the outcome of the traits that make the life of the Japanese hard. The great quality of service is to a large extent the outcome of the long hours of work and the extreme professional perfectionism. When everyone gives its best the world becomes a better place and Japanese cities are the best testimonies of it. The agglomeration of Tokyo (including the cities of Yokohama and Kawasaki) is probably the largest megapolis on the planet. Nonetheless, there are almost none of the annoyances of the big cities: no traffic jams, no air pollution, no disturbing noises, no thugs.

Already the map of Tokyo underground transport system can give a good idea of the extensiveness of the city and the quality of the public transport. 

Clearly there are millions of people, but apart from some key communication hubs, such as Ginza crossing, these people either miraculously disappear or they just don't bother anyone (streets are spacious, no one smells, no one runs into you).  

All in all, even being in a Japanese big city can be relaxing and for sure it provides a lot of inspiration in terms of the aesthetics of the shops and modernity of its architecture. 

634 meter tall Tokyo Sky Tree is one of the latest and best visible additions to Tokyo Skyline

Tokyo International Forum is one of the many buildings with an impressive modern design