The third day into the journey began early. Very early. 4:30 in the morning early.
This was mostly due to the fact that my thin blanket provided little protection against the chilled air and by then, the fire had died down to nothing more than a lump of lightly smoldering bits of charcoal.
The day, for the people here, begins pretty early. By 5am, the woman of the house was quietly puttering about the kitchen. By 5:3oam, some of my travel-mates had woken up to join me by the now-toasty fire.
I once again say that time and urgency seems to lose all sense of meaning here. Even though most of us had woken up quite early, we did not leave until almost 8am. Not a bad deal though or else I would have never been able to take this photo (one of my new faves).
This was shot from the house I stayed the night in. Though the sun seems to only just be rising, there had actually been light for quite some time (silly mountains were trying to hide it). At the bottom of the photo, there are two girls making their way to school in their white-shirts and red-skirts - just two of the many uniformed children to walk by.
It struck me as odd that the children did not appear to have any uniform-standard for shoes. As kids of varying ages went by, I noticed some wore socks and shoes of various colours while other wore sandals and slippers. In Malaysia, white shoes are the standard. Or it could be that the road they use to go to school is too muddy to waste a perfectly good pair of white shoes on.
Our third day began with optimism and exuberance even. The was not a single drop of rain all night, the sun was shining, the sky wasn’t clear but it wasn’t looking ominously wet either. We were well rested, well fed and eager to get to Long Layu at long last.
Unfortunately, said optimism and exuberance soon melted away.
The night before, I had asked how much further our journey would be. The reply I got was that we were barely a third of the way there. However, I was given a map of the area when in Long Bawan the day before and according to the map, the village of Lembudud was located approximately halfway between Long Bawan and Long Layu.
I chose to discard the words told for tangible, visible proof that we were indeed about halfway there. I was wrong.
Distance-wise, Lembudud may very well be the halfway point. The road, however, gets far worse beyond this village. Too often, we were forced to participate in several road-building exercises, whereby our forward progress would come to a complete standstill, sometimes for more than an hour.
It was definitely a new experience.
Several hours later and enough photos of mud to make me want to tear my eyeballs out, some of us decided to walk ahead.
We would often walk half a kilometer or so before heading back to the cars to see what progress they made.
They never did catch up. I finally found a road where a person walking along - casually - can traverse a distance faster than an automobile.
I did not mind walking though. It provided me with sights that I probably would not have noticed while in the car. Sights such as a pair of civet cats.
The hanging one was the female. She dead.
The one on the ground was the male. He was alive and, man, was he one pissed off furball! We let him go - hissing and spitting and biting all the way.
Unfortunately, we soon found that he had lost mobility in his hind legs. He had been caught by the rope around his hind quarters and lack of blood circulation had rendered his legs useless.
Personally, I think it would have been a greater mercy to kill him. How effectively can an animal survive when forced to drag itself around the jungle. Instant death seemed like a kinder option to slow starvation. The poor fella barely even had the strength to drag himself away. The hope is that he would regain movement in his legs after blood started flowing smoothly.
We had departed Lembudud relatively early; however, by the time the afternoon came upon us, we had made scant progress. We just kept meeting parts of the road that the cars had trouble crossing.
It was thanks to someone’s good thinking and foresight that food was brought. We had rice bundled in large leaves, mini snails (someone had brought a bunch from Ba’Kelalan), and tinned ikan goreng (fried fish) in a spicy tomato-based sauce that was actually surprisingly good for food that comes cooked in a can.
By late afternoon, many of us were tired. It had been a long day. We found a bamboo pondok (hut) by the roadside. I have no clue what it is used for - farming maybe. As the pondok was not occupied, we used it as a convenient spot to rest up.
By the time evening fell, it was decided that we would not be reaching Long Layu that day.
Someone had found a half-built house a kilometer or two ahead of the cars that we could make camp in for the night.
Don’t ask me where the pot and kettle came from. Also don’t ask me where the numerous plates, cups and spoons (that aren’t pictured here) came from. I guess someone was pessimistic enough to believe that we would not make it and have to spend a night camped out in the jungle. Good thing too.
As night crept up on us, a couple of my travel-mates decided to walk on ahead to Long Layu to call forth a rescue mission. Apparently the stretch of road we were on was ‘older’, but after a couple of mountains, the road was newer and would be easier for a car to come and pick us up from the good side as opposed to trying to plow through the bad part.
I asked how old the ‘older’ road was. “A couple of years,” someone replied. I shudder to think what a couple years more would do to it.
And so another day gone. Not there yet. At this point, it was just unbelievably hilarious thinking of how much work it was to get to this one place.
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