PHILIPPINES ADVENTURES 2011

PT1: Manila to Banaue

About Manila

The Philippines is awesome in almost every way. It’s cheap and exotic. The locals are charming and kind. The beaches look like postcards and the jungles look Indiana Jones movie sets. And there is rum, smooth delicious rum, for less than $2 USD per bottle. Go to the Philippines. Go now, go often, and go for a long time but, for the love of God, after you get off the plane get the hell out of Manila as fast as you can.

Unless you’re shopping, looking for hookers, or watching midget boxing, there’s nothing to do in Manila. Aside from a few colonial era churches, the city is devoid of historical attractions. The poverty is depressing, the beggars and touts are aggressive, the prices are the highest in the country, and crime aimed at tourists is common. There is no reason to stay there.

One saving grace of our time in Manila was our stay at the Where 2 Next Manila Hostel. Where 2 Next is a nice clean hostel run by two helpful and friendly Australian-Filipino sisters. It’s quiet, safe, fun, and clean, which makes it unique among budget accommodations in Manila. If you do stay in the city, I recommend you pass your time there. You can book a dorm bed or private room at Where 2 Next through Hostelbookers.com.

Where 2 Next Hostel

The Bus From Manila to Banaue

Jeannie Mark, aka Nomadic Chick (you can read her post about our trip here), and I spent one night in Manila at Where 2 Next while planning our escape for the following day. The owner, Elanore helped us to figure out the bus times. Several companies run busses to Banaue. It’s an 8 – 10 hour trip (give or take) so busses generally run in the morning (travel all day) or between 8pm and 11pm (travel all night). They generally run $400-450 pesos (around $10-12 USD). Don’t expect a lot of luxury. If you are traveling at night expect hard seats, bumps, and swerves to interfere with your rest. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, the bus is COLD. For reasons that I cannot explain, the bus drivers crank up the A/C like they’re trying to climate-control hell. Bring a sweater, jacket, and hat.

The Banaue Rice Terraces

Banaue, Batad, and the Best Ways to see the Rice Terraces

If you want to make your stay as comfortable as possible, stay in Banaue. Banaue is a small town at the foot of some very nice rice terraces. The town has several hotels and guest houses (though its quite hard to find information about them online) as well as a handful of restaurants and cafes with internet access and great views of the nearby terraces. However, the prices do reflect the large number of tourists that stay there and Banaue is about an hours bus ride from the Batad Saddle Point where you begin the walk into Batad where the most spectacular rice terraces are.

If you want to really explore the rice terraces (and save some time and money) I suggest that you try to skip Banaue and go straight to Batad where the most spectacular rice terraces are located. From Banaue you will need to take a jeepney to the Batad Saddle Point. The price per jeepney is $2000 pesos and is split between all occupants (12 at the very most). From the trailhead you will have to hike about 45 min – 1 hr (with all your gear) downhill into Banaue. Banaue has some inexpensive guesthouses with beds as cheap as $100 pesos per person per night. The restaurants are also reasonable and the views are epic.

Waking up in Banue and eating breakfast with a view of the amphitheatre of terraces is itself worth the trip. Even better, however, is geographic position of Batad among the terraces. Here you are in position to jump off into several hikes ranging from one to several days that will take you through thousands-of-years-old terraces and villages that are only accessible by foot.

On our visit, I didn’t have time to go on one of those hikes. Had we gone straight to Batad, I would have. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

The Batad Rice Terraces Amphitheater

Have you visited the Banaue Rice Terraces? What did you do while you were there?

It’s commonly understood among tree-planters, who spend several months of the year covered in the little winged leeches, that only two things will repel mosquitoes; a chemical called ‘deet’ (which is present in varying amounts in most mosquito repellents) and, for reasons that no one has explained, a lotion marketed to old women for a short time in the 90′s called ‘Skin So Soft’. Deet is toxic and the perfumed scent of Skin So Soft if vile, so many of us opted not to wear any repellent at all.

When Haelium offered to send me an odorless sports shirt that was designed to repel insects of all kinds (including mosquitos), my curiosity was piqued. According to product literature, Haelium uses Insect Shield technology , which binds a man made version of a natural repellent found in flowers called permathrin to the fabric. The shirts sell for $35-40 USD.

The Haelium shirt is good-looking and functional. It’s a simple solid black (also available in a variety of basic colors),  is made of a breathable and quick-drying light synthetic fabric that is good for outdoors activities, wrinkles little, and takes up little luggage space compared to a cotton t-shirt–all things that I like.

I was, however, skeptical about the shirt’s ability to repel mosquitos.

Now, I have had the shirt for several months and have worn it in Taiwan and the Philippines. The first day that I wore my Haelium t-shirt around mosquitoes, I realized that there would be a problem with testing it: I would never know if a mosquito landed on the shirt because it’s black (so I wouldn’t be able to see them) and because mosquitoes rarely bite through clothing.

I must admit that while wearing the t-shirt, mosquitoes bit my legs as often as usual. I don’t know, however, if a shirt should repel mosquitoes from your legs. I suspect not. The occasional mosquito did land on my forearm. It’s hard to say whether the shirt repelled the mosquitos from my arms and sent them diving for my lower regions because mosquitoes, I’ve found, seem to have a special attraction to my calfs. My testing, it seems, was grossly unscientific.

I don’t often spend time in places where ticks and ants and the other insects that Insect Shield repels crawl on me, so, in the end, I cannot claim to be sure of how well Insect Sheild repels insects. The literature that came with the shirt did include some very impressive test data and testimonials, and the technology is used by several well-respected outdoors brands (such as Tilly, L.L. Bean, and Orvis) so I’m sure that Insect Shield must work to some degree.

Does it repel mosquitos as well as Deet or Skin So Soft? I can’t say for sure, but those products are so disgusting that I refuse to wear them. The Haelium shirt, on the other hand is comfortable, functional, good-looking and, as promised, ododorless. So, when given the option between a sports shirt that might repel mosquitoes and one that definitely won’t (the price is basically the same), I think it would be silly not to pick the Haelium shirt. In my opinion, Haelium Insect Shield clothes are definitely worth testing out.

Have you ever tried Insect Shield technology? What did you think?

I stopped buying expensive sunglasses whenI was nineteen after a pair of $100 sunglasses blew of my head while I was hanging out the window of a speeding pickup truck throwing an empty beer bottle at a road sign (a popular pastime for bored 19 year-olds living in small redneck mountain towns).I never wanted to buy another pair of expensive sunglasses because I was sure that I would just lose them hanging out of a pickup truck drunk, or doing something else equally stupid.

I’ve long since given up hobbies that involve large amounts of alcohol and proving my masculinity by lifting, throwing, or breaking inanimate objects and traded them for sober (well…almost) hobbies that involve large amounts of Gore-tex and fleece and involve proving my masculinity by walking, swimming, running, climbing, flying, and boating long distances while sober (usually). Despite this, the idea that if I bought expensive sunglasses I would lose them stuck with me. So, for the past ten years I wore nothing but $20 off-the-rack sunglasses.

Then, Switch Vision offered to send me me a pair of sunglasses to review on my blog. I chose their Boreal model. They’re totally my style: wraparound full-frame glasses that look sleek yet are large enough to block out most sunlight. I don’t know what the style is called, but I think of them as snowboarder and surfer sunglasses.

A pair of Boreal retails for $150. That’s similar to the prices of many other, better-known brands. The marketers at Switch know that they need to offer something more than just cool looking glasses to woo buyers away from those brands. So, Switch, as the name suggests, allows you to change the lenses in your glasses. The lenses are held firmly in place by a pair of strong magnets. They pop out with a firm push, but are unlikely to fall out unless you bail super hard (in which case the glasses will probably fly off your head anyways). Switch offers several different kinds of specialized lenses for different lighting situations, such as flat-light skiing, and also offer prescriptions. Switch glasses are usually sold in kits (around USD$150 give or take) that include a case, cleaning cloth, pouch, frames, and two sets of lenses. Not bad.

Sunglasses on in Taroko Gorge, Taiwan

This is Switch’s best selling point. When you have inevitably scratched the hell out of your lenses, you don’t need to buy new glasses. You only need buy new lenses, which only costs around $50 for most kinds.

It is true that good sunglasses help your vision. I realized it one day I while snowboarding on an overcast day in British Columbia. My high-contrast Switch lenses helped me to see the terrain much better. Another time, I was on a banca boat in the Philippines looking for whale sharks. It’s hard to see down through the water on a choppy day. The captain told me that his scouts work polarized sunglasses to reduce glare on the water. I put in my polarized lenses and I was able to see much more clearly down into the ocean. Ah, technology. How you enhance my life.

The one thing that worries me about my Boreal’s is that they are a bit large for me (my head is slightly smaller than average). However, that if your head isn’t disproportionately large or small, then Switch’s sunglasses will probably fit you just fine. I also found that after spending several months in the tropics my magnets began to rust (salty air will do that). I’m not positive, but I think that should be covered by the warranty.

Either way, Switch has converted me. Now that I know the difference that a good pair of sunglasses with the right lenses can make in different conditions, I can’t go back to cheap sunglasses. In fact, I think that I’d like to expand my lens collection.

I’m turning into such a techie-gear dork.

You can check out these glasses on Amazon using he link to the left. I am an Amazon affiliate, so Amazon will pay me a small commission if you make a purchase there after coming from my website (though it will not change the price you pay).

STEVEN’S BOOKS AND APPS
Taiwan for Culture Vultures (app)

**The above are affiliate links

Steven Crook, who’s lived in Taiwan for 20 years, grew up in England. He’s been writing travel and other kinds of feature articles for newspapers and magazines since 1996, and has had three books published. His most recently works include Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide and Taiwan For Culture Vultures, a smartphone travel app released by GuideGecko.

You’ve recently moved from freelance journalism into both guidebook and guide app writing. How did your experiences on these projects differ from your normal routine?

My routine didn’t change that much. I do most of my writing in the morning, a bit in the afternoon, and very little or none in the evening. Usually I’m working on half-a-dozen different things. Usually, that means about four articles and maybe two or three themes which, hopefully, will become ideas that win over an editor. With the guidebook and the app, I was still working on half-a-dozen things – just one was significantly more time-consuming that the other five. I’m used to putting aside and then returning to projects; for a feature article, six months from initial idea to publication isn’t unusual. Something I now make sure happens (and this is very important for anyone trying to make a living from freelance writing, I think), is that my projects cannibalize each other. Sizable chunks of both the guidebook and the app were based on old articles (the information had to be updated, of course, and rewritten to suit the format). Before the guidebook hit the shelves, I was selling feature articles based on the research I’d done for the book. Doing the app wasn’t so different. When I’m on a multi-day research trips, the schedule is more like this: Write from 5am to breakfast, then outside until 9pm or so, then write for an hour or more before sleeping.

App writing is a very new genre of writing. How does it differ from other forms of writing?

When I began talking to GuideGecko and examining the structure of their apps, two things appealed to me right away. The first is that each entry can be as long or short as you want – as long or as short as the destination deserves. With a print guidebook you’re always struggling to stay within the overall word limit, and to maintain some kind of balance between the various places and regions covered by the book. With an app you needn’t worry about this, because there’s really no size restriction. Secondly, you can add links from one attraction to another, or to background articles (my app has one about popular deities, for instance, and another about personalities in Taiwan’s history). This saves both writer and reader from repetition. The entries on individual destinations are leaner and meaner as a result.

I write a blog, but rarely read them. After writing a guide app, would you consider using one?
Absolutely yes! An app is almost certainly going to be more up-to-date than a printed guidebook. It’s also a lot lighter to carry around, and cheaper.

What are some of the better sights from the Guide Gecko app that you’d recommend?

I enjoyed writing about some new attractions which opened after I’d finished researching my guidebook. Houtong Coal Ecological Park offers a bit of history and a good outdoors experience. The Magic School of Green Technology showcases sustainable architecture, a field in which Taiwan leads Asia. If you’re interested in Taiwan’s religious culture and traditional arts, then Tainan and Lugang are must-sees.
You write for some print-only publications like inflight magazines, and some web-only publications. How do you feel that these two markets differ?

Web-only publications seem to pay less than print newspapers and magazines. I assume that’s because almost anyone can set up a website, whereas a print magazine requires more investment and certain skills, such as building a distribution network.

Last year you finished your first guidebook and this year your first app. Do you have any big plans for next year?

I’d love to write another book, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. (That’s a hint to publishers: I’m available!) Certainly I’ll be updating and expanding the app, and continuing to write feature articles.

I shot this video using my favorite new toy, GoPro® HD Helmet HERO™ Camera(affiliate link). It’s small, tough, cheap, fisheyed, waterproof, and can be mounted to anything. Great for outdoors adventure stuff!

About the Jhuliu Trail

The Jhuliu Trail in Taiwan’s Taroko Gorge is nicknamed the Vertigo Trail because of an insane stretch where the trail is just a few feet wide beside a 500 meter sheer drop to the bottom of the gorge.

If you go there I recommend staying with Rihang near the bottom of the gorge.

If you’d like a guide to take care of the details for you then definitely check out Barking Deer Adventures (they first showed me this place)

Special thanks to Freestyle Percussion Magik for the great CC licensed music.

About a year ago I received an email from a company called Leopard Films. It asked if I would like to be on a television show called House Hunters International. I don’t watch TV, so I’d never heard of the show. From the cheesy name of the production company and the strange disco-ball logo on their letterhead I assumed that the email was from a low-budget cable access network of some kind and ignored it. A few days later I happened across the email again. This time I decided to answer it out of curiosity.

The production company asked me to send them a three-minute audition video (you can watch it below if you’re really interested).

On the basis of those three minutes the producers at House Hunters International decided to do an episode about me looking for a house in Taiwan.

I didn’t know how popular the show was until I wrote on Facebook that I would be appearing on the show. Several of my friends commented that it was their favorite show or that they watched it all the time. The director of the episode later told me, if I recall correctly, that the show has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 million viewers.

Two weeks ago an Australian director, Paul, and a British cameraman who lives in Bangkok, Julian, came to Taiwan to film the episode in a very busy three days. Jeannie Mark, also known as Nomadic Chick, happened to be in Taiwan visiting, so she joined in as my sidekick with whom I looked at houses and discussed the pros and cons of each house. My friend, photographer Richard Matheson, also made an appearance playing the role of the helpful seasoned expat showing me the houses.

Rich Matheson and I goofing around on set.

We hammed it up quite a bit for the camera. Many jokes about my personal habits were made. Several references to the suitability of each house for orgies were uttered (although I assume that they will be edited out). Paul and Julian were extremely professional and laidback, so the whole shoot was very chill.

In short, it went great.

And, sometime next year, most likely in May or June, the episode will run and I will have my 3 minutes of reality TV fame.

I was kind of hoping that I would become the next Tim Cahill, but now it looks like I’m closer to being the next Kim Kardashian.

Joking around on camera.

We haven’t finished booking sponsors for the end of the trip, so if you have a business and would like to be featured on our websites, please feel free to contact me for more information.

Days 1 and 2

Activities

Manila Midget Madness
We will spend our first two days getting acquainted with Manila, picking up a few items for the trip, making last-minute arrangements with sponsors, and, most importantly, visiting Manila’s finest cultural establishments: a restaurant called the Hobbit House, which is staffed entirely by midgets, and a bar where they have regular midget boxing matches.

Attractions

Hobbit House Restaurant and Bar
Phone: +63 2-521-7604
Address: 1801 A Mabini St., Malate, Manila, Philippines

Ringside Bar
Phone: +63 2-899-7106
Address: 4853 Kalayaan at the corner of P. Burgos St., Makati City, Manila, Philippines

Accomodations

Where to Next Hostel
Email | Facebook | Twitter
Phone: +63 2-354-3533
Address: 1776 M. Adriatico Street, Malate, Manila, Philippines

Days 3 -6

Activities

Banaue Rice Terraces Next we will move on to the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Banaue Rice Terraces, where we will spend a few days trekking among these thousands of year old rice farms that were hand-carved into the mountainsides. I’ve heard great things about this place, and am eager to see it!

Accomodations

Native Village Inn
Email
Phone: +63-916-405-4743
+63-908-864-6658

Day 7

Activities

Travel to Bohol

Days 8 and 9

Activities

Chilling on Bohol
with Anna Cleal of Flip Flop Tours We will be hanging out and staying with Anna Cleal, an acquaintance of Jeannie’s and the founder of Flip Flop tours. We also hope to find time to check out the very cute, very weird, very tiny, bug eyed, and rare tarsier monkey.

Attractions

Philippine Tarsier Foundation

Accomodations

Flip Flop Tours
Email | Facebook | Twitter
Address: Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines

Days 10 – 15

Activities

Bohol Mountain Tribe My friend’s wife is from Bohol and her family once took a group of our friends to visit a remote hill tribe on the island. The trip sounded spectacular, so I asked if she could arrange for us to visit as well. I’m not sure what to expect.

Day 16

Travel to Puerto Princessa, Palawan.

Days 17 – 19

Activities

Iwahig Penal Colony and Prison Farm
Iwahig is a unique prison colony in which prisoners are not physically detained, but stay primarily because the island makes escape difficult, and because they are allowed to work the land freely and even make money from their labor. It is said that some prisoners even bring their families to join them

Honda Bay Island Hopping
Honda Bay on Palawan is a classic island hopping spot with white sand beaches and lots of coral reefs and marine life for snorkeling.

Subterranean National Park
Recently named one of the Seven New Natural Wonders of the World, this park features the second longest underground river in the world, a full mountain-to-ocean ecosystem, and what are considered to be some of the most important forests in Asia.

Tour Operator

MAG Tours
Email | Facebook
Phone: +63927 234 9293 or +63919-889-2851 or +63 (048) 723-3258
Address #18 Fernandez Street, Masangcay Building, Room 6, 2nd Floor Puerto Princesa City Palawan, Philippines

Accomodations

House of Rose Hotel | Andy and Rose
Email
Phone: +63 (0)48 4341316
Mobile: +63 (0)9065051829
Address: Abueg Road Bagong Sikat, Puerto Princessa City, Palawan, Philippines

Day 20

Travel to El Nido, Palawan.

Day 21 – 29

Activities

We haven’t decided yet.
We have no firm plans, but in El Nido we hope to snorkel and maybe learn to scuba dive, and go kayaking, island hopping and trekking.

Tour Operator

We haven’t booked a tour operator to sponsor our trips in El Nido. If you’d like to be featured on our websites, please feel free to contact me.

Accommodations

We haven’t booked accommodations in El Nido yet. If you’d like to be featured on our websites, please feel free to contact me.

Days 30 – 31

Sadly return to Manila to catch our flight home.

We’d especially like to thank Hostelbookers.com for helping us to arrange our accommodations at the Where 2 Next Hostel (affiliate link) and the House of Rose (affiliate link).

Lead photo by chooyutshing on Flickr.

The relaxing Scottish sport over which businessmen make deals and get drunk on Sundays is certainly not exempt. Man’s desire to take everything ‘to the next level’ has resulted in several golf courses so extreme that, quite frankly, I’d be afraid to play on them.

If you came here looking for a nice place to play a few holes, I suggest you visit www.arizonagolf.com or some other boring plaid-and-cleats website. This post is about three golf courses that few people have the balls to play on (pun intended).

The Third Most Extreme Golf Course in the World: Uummannaq, Greenland

Photo: World Ice Golf Championship Committee, Greenland

Located 590km North of the arctic circle, Uummannaq is frigid, barren, isolated, and has been home to the World Ice Golf Championships since 1997. This town of 1300 is in fact so far north that the local children believe they know which bay on the island Santa Claus lives in. The average winter temperature there is around -17°C. In June and July it peaks at a smouldering 7°C.

This golf course has a backdrop of glaciers and icebergs and the “green” (sometimes called the “white”) is cut away just days before the event. Physical and mental preparedness are essential for playing this course. With windchill, the temperature can drop to -50°C. The scenery, however, is spectacular.

Graphite clubs are not recommended, as they tend to shatter in the extreme cold.

The Second Most Extreme Golf Course in the World: Coober Pedy, Australia

Photo: Morning Calm News

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Coober Pedy. This town of about 2000 is famous for several quirks. It’s known as the “opal capital of the world” for the quantity of opals that are mined there. It’s also known for the desert-like environment and extreme heat, which has forced residents to live underground and in caves rather than houses. In fact, the name Coober Pedy comes from the local aboriginal phrase for “white man’s hole”.

Nothing grows here. The town has but one tree, and it was made out of scrap metal and erected on a hill by a local. Thus, Coober Pedy is home to the only golf course in the world where you carry your own turf with you.

Because of the extreme daytime temperatures (temperatures have been known to reach highs as extreme as 47°C) this course is usually played at night using glowing balls.

The Most Extreme Golf Course in the World: Camp Bonifas, South Korea

Photo: Prince Roy

Those other golf courses may be extreme, but this one takes the cake. Dubbed by Sports Illustrated magazine “the most dangerous golf course in the world”, this single-hole par 3 course is located beside a United Nations Command military post on the South Korean side of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (the ever-tense heavily-guarded border between North and South Korea).

Formerly called Camp Kitty Hawk, the base was renamed to commemorate US Army Captain Arthur G. Bonifas who was killed nearby by North Korean soldiers in what is now called the “Axe Murder Incident”.

However short, this course is exciting—partly because it is surrounded by land mines. The reporter from Sports Illustrated who played it actually set one off with a stray shot.

Have you ever played any of these courses? Do you know of any others that belong on this list?

Lead Photo: mtlin

ADVENTURES IN MALAYSIAN BORNEO

PT1: Driving at Night With No Lights

PT2: Lost in a Monsoon

PT3: Salvation in Sabah

PT4: A Mountain of Bat Guano

PT5: The Eye of the Elephant

When I rented my motorcycle on my first day in Kota Kinabalu, I asked the owner of the shop where I could find bornean pygmy elephants, an endangered species found only on Borneo.

“Here.” He told me, circling an area on the east side of the island that comprised 1/10^th of the province. The province of Sabah is about 74,000 square kilometers, so the area that he indicated was probably about 740 square kilometers.

“Can you be more specific?”

“No. They’re always moving.”

I went to the northern part of that area hoping to find better information once I arrived.

I was staying at a hostel beside the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary.  There I ran into two Swedish nurses that I had met on my first day in Kota Kinabalu. We had met two pretty Dutch sisters the previous night, and I had stayed up very late talking to the younger of the two, a recent MBA graduate named Klara.

We planned to continue traveling as a group. The Swedish nurses and I had already visited the orangutan and proboscis monkey sanctuaries, but the sisters had not, so we decided that we would stay at the hostel one more day to give the sisters a chance to visit the sanctuaries. After that we would go south to Kinabatangan Park to take nature-watching boat rides on the Kinabatangan River.

I asked the staff at the hostel if they knew where I could find pygmy elephants. They did not. From what they told me, it sounded like nobody would. Even the experts rarely know where they are. Pygmy elephants are restless creatures. They sleep only two hours a day and spend the other 22 walking and eating. They can travel as far as 27 kilometers in a day so, even when somebody does spot them, they are often gone by the time word makes it back to the tour guides. To make matters worse, during heavy rains (like the ones that had been flooding the peninsula in the preceding weeks) the elephants tend to move into the jungle.

Despite this, that afternoon my chances of finding them improved dramatically. A few weeks before my trip I had emailed the Sabah Tourism Board to ask if they could recommend a guide to take me to see the elephants. I also mentioned that I would be working while in Borneo, and that I would be happy to write articles for their tourism publications.

That evening in Sepilok, with just five days left to hunt for the pygmy elephants, I received the tourism board’s reply. They said that they wanted photos of orangutans, proboscis monkeys, and pygmy elephants. In exchange for one hundred photos they would provide me with a room and board, a guide, transportation to Kinabatangan Park, and a private boat with which we could cruise the river.

I replied immediately. I wrote that I’d be thrilled to go, but would only have enough time if I left immediately. After a quick email exchange everything was arranged. My guide would pick me up in front of the hostel the following morning.

At dinner I told the girls about my trip. They were excited for me. They had found some good holiday deals, but mine took the cake.

“Do you know where you are staying?” Asked Klara. “Maybe they will have some empty rooms.”

I didn’t know. I only knew that I would be in the village of Sukau on the river. The girls decided that they would also come to Sukau so that we might find each other there.

Things could not have been better.

My guide, Thorpe, picked me up early the next morning. He was a slender Malaysian man with dressed head-to-toe in khaki and wearing a wide-brimmed trekking hat and large glasses.

On the ride Thorpe told me that the guiding company he worked for was the same one that the tourism board sent all of their major clients to: National Geographic, the Travel Channel, the BBC. I was epically thrilled that I was being guided by the same guy that took out NatGeo photographers, but, I was also intimidated. Thorpe had worked with the best of the best. I, on the other had, was young and new. I was afraid that my photography wouldn’t be up to par.

“Is there anything that you’d like to see today?” Thorpe asked me. “We won’t be go out in the boat until tomorrow morning.”

“I read about cave where they collect nests for bird’s nest soup.”

When I was young I had seen pictures of the bird’s nest collectors in National Geographic—slender Asian men climbing bamboo poles hundreds of feet up the sides of caves to pluck tiny nests from the walls.

“Ah yes. The Gomantong Caves. How tall are your boots?”

“Just above my ankle. Why? Is it muddy?”

“No,” he laughed. “Bat guano. If you want to get the good pictures you will have to climb mountains of bat guano.”

My first Bornean outdoors wildlife adventure was going to climbing giant piles of bat poop.

“Awesome!”

Two hours later we walked out of the jungle into a large clearing in front of the majestic caves. The entrance to the main cave was at least 40 meters tall. In front of it was a creek with an arched walking bridge. On each side of the clearing was a long rectangular wooden building on stilts. They were the bird’s nest collectors’ homes. Several were lazing in the shade beneath one of the buildings.

As we approached a man came out of the building on the left. He had shaggy hair, was missing several teeth, and was wearing flip-flops and socks. Thorpe asked him to show me one of the bird’s nests. If you took a hollow softball and cut it into quarters, the resulting pieces would be about the same size and shape as the nest. It was varying shades of brown and looked like it was made of melted plastic. He held it to his hand to show it would sit against the cave wall.

“They’re made only from bird saliva.” Thorpe told me proudly.

I thought it was strange that he would seem proud of such a fact.

Of course, Canadians chose the beaver to be their national animal, so who am I to judge?

“This nest is not a very good one.” He continued. “The color means that there are a lot of other things mixed in with the bird saliva. A white nest is pure. It’s worth much more.”

“Because it makes better soup?”

“Yes.”

“So, bird’s nest soup is actually bird spit soup?”

“Exactly.”

Bird’s nest soup is a perfect example why I love living in Asia—at least once a week you encounter something so brilliantly bizarre that you can only shake your head and laugh. It’s like living on one of the planets in Star Wars, except weirder.

I snapped some pictures and we continued to the cave. The bridge that crossed the creek connected with an elevated wooden walkway. At the entrance it forked, each path leading to one of the cave walls and then following it to the back, enabling people to walk a complete circuit. At the rear of the cave there was a large opening allowing the light to stream in. There were also two fair-size holes in the ceiling. We had come at the perfect time of day for photography. Brilliant shafts of light penetrated the massive dome giving it the appearance of a holy chamber.

The floor of the cave was covered by what appeared to be one giant black sand dune. At it’s peak it was at least 15 meters tall. On one side a small creek ran through it.

“Bat guano?”

“Yes. Bat guano.”

“I can walk on it?”

“Yes. But be careful. In some places it’s firm, but in other’s it’s soft. I don’t want you to get stuck.” Thrope grinned.

I didn’t care about the mountain of bat poop. I was too excited about shooting the cave. I pulled out my tripod, put my wide-angle lens on my camera, and climbed over the railing of the walkway, and began hiking up the black dune of excrement.

It was a surprising pile of poop—not at all what one would expect. It was dry and springy underfoot, but overall it was surprisingly firm—except in certain places where my boot would unexpectedly sink in and I’d have to try to pull it out quickly before the bat guano reached the unprotected skin above my boot. Some areas, which I avoided, teemed with cockroaches the size of field mice. Strangely, it didn’t smell at all.

Thorpe opted to stay on the wooden walkway. He had taken out a camera of his own and was also walking around the cave taking pictures.

Thorpe, it turned out, was an amateur photographer with a passion for wildlife photography. On our way back to the car we talked about gear.

“What do you shoot with?” I asked him.

“A Nikon D700.”

“Wow, that’s a really nice camera.” A D700 is a professional-level Nikon worth about three times as much as my high-end amateur D80.

My guide had a better camera than I did. This made me self-conscious. I began to think that I had been given this trip in error. Would my photos be good enough for the tourism board?

“What lenses do you have?” Thorpe asked me.

“I have a 50mm, a 35mm, and an 18-135mm.”

“You don’t have a telephoto?”

“No.”

“How are you going to shoot the elephants? We will not be able to get close to them.”

At that moment I realized that I really had stepped in a giant mountain of bat guano, both literally, and figuratively.

There are some moments in life when you question what you are doing. I felt that way as I stood shivering on a rock ledge above a raging sea into which I was meant to jump. Being neither a fan of heights nor being told what to do, I felt particularly put out.

Jump or not to jump, that is the question

Let me rewind a little. You see the day had started brilliantly when I arrived at Lulworth Cove, Dorset, UK, filled with boyish enthusiasm and boundless energy. Some friends and I had booked a coasteering day course with the intention of getting back in the saddle after a two year absence from the sport.

With the sun on our shoulders and a full English in our guts (that hearty British breakfast which so clogs the arteries) we set off up the steep coastal path in search of our instructors.

Trekking along this stunning piece of jurassic coast, it was not hard to understand why it has been granted UNESCO World Heritage Site status. It is nature at it’s most grandiose, wild, ragged, and extreme. As such I think we all felt we’d lucked out on the location of our coasteering course–until tit began to rain that is.

And then the heavens open

There’s something mesmerising about watching a solid wall of rain come towards you from a great distance. You feel as if you’re watching a painting until said wall of rain hits you and soaks you to the bone. Still, its good fun standing at a 45 degree angle against the wind trying not to be blown off a cliff. It somehow makes you feel ready to plunge into the September sea.

So what is coasteering anyway?

Think swimming, scrambling, and then free climbing in a wetsuit without really going all that high. It’s more of a horizontal movement as you grip the rocks with your fingers and toes and manoeuvre across the face. Coasteering is landscape to free climbing’s portrait.

Follow that with a bit more swimming, being battered against rocks, and then jumping off cliff ledges into the sea and you’ve got it.

This neatly returns us full circle to the beginning of the course, a ledge, and the conundrum; to jump or not to jump. In my book you only live once, so GERONIMO!

With thanks to Mulan for documenting our day courtesy of a hangover and unwillingness to get wet! And thanks to Purbeck Adventures for a great day in the water.

About the Author
Josh and Mulan run the travel blog www.londonlaunchpad.com which deals with their adventures around London and the world beyond. Connect with them at any time for travel chat, tips and advice on the website or at London Launchpad Facebook.

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