Next stop, new swamp.

The last week has not been so eventful, or maybe I've just got a bit more used to this hot island. It's a bit cooler here in Miri, which is quite an affluent oil&gas town on the north east coast of Sarawak (I think I've got the pronunciation down now), and closer to the coast than Kuching was, so a bit more breezy. I'm still itching though, a lot, but my foot blistering has reduced and I've not got may new mosi bites, so am nearly de-bumped.

Since I last wrote, I collected about 5m of soil from the transmission station of Malaysia's equivalent to the BBC, RTM (Radio Transmission Malaysia). I was very fortunate to get permission to do the work on there, seeing as it's a bit of a top-security site. I think the peaty work attire I was wearing when I went into their headquarters in the town to meet with the Director may have done the trick. An eager smelly white girl from Oxford asking to dig peat from under their pillons probably didn't look like too much of a terrorist threat. And there were some lovely smiley men who helped us out when we got there, and strongly encouraged me to use their washroom at the end of the day before I left the site. (I've attached a photo of what I looked like, to perhaps explain why.)

The day before collected that soil, I, well, my wonderful assistant, Kit, interviewed three lovely village heads for me, whilst I tried to keep up with facial expressions and note down all that Kit was translating to me. It seems that most people are wanting to, and indeed often being encouraged by the Government, to plant oil palm everywhere now. Forest regeneration is not considered a viable, or necessary option. It was quite an eye-opening day for a naive DPhil student from Bubble-land. I found out that pineapples grow very well on peat though, and was sent home with two delicious ones, plucked straight from the bush/very-spikey mother spike, by a wonderful old man. So much kindness.

The day before that, the day of 'rest', I spent in a Bidayu village in the limestone (I think) hills behind Kuching, mostly eating fruit and drinking langkau, the distilled rice wine. Gosh, it was strong. Luckily I wasn’t made to drink as much as the boys, as the lovely Robert, host Kelvin’s friend there, kept me supplied with water to wash it down with. There was a lot of drunkenness about, which I wasn’t quite sure what I thought about (slightly sad to see but did appear quite harmless), but all very jovial and not British loutishness. It was fun being the only girl, as usual! I’m really being quite spoilt here.

The last few days have been less eventful, touring around in an air conditioned car looking for peatswamp forest. I could have been so much more prepared for this trip....but will hopefully learn for next time (if I’m allowed back, and away from the microscope on my return!).

The internet cafe/cheesecake bar is closing so I’d best go back to Mr Khoon’s (the Miri host). Terima kasih for reading (I know about 20 more Malay words now – still getting plenty of laughs/concealed smirks though).

My yellow wellies.

The wellies and the peat. It's hotter than it looks, I promise!

10 hours....

....and I didn’t go to the loo once. I didn’t even think about the toilet. I was too busy sweating, warding off mosquitoes, and wondering whether I can actually hack it as a tropical biologist. That was yesterday, when we spent the day in a fragment of peat-swamp forest in an area called Sri Aman, just west of Kuching, the main town of the area.

Sarawak (which I’m working on pronouncing correctly) is an interesting place. I felt a bit disillusioned by everything earlier today, perhaps because I’d just woken up from a nap after having quite a lot of sugar (I’m working on it, Dad!). It’s been quite a realization to come out here and see the incredible speed of development, massive number of cars on the roads, expanse of oil palm plantations and shocking lack of forest. Obviously I was very naive before coming here, but from what the Sarawakians I’ve spoken to have been saying, there was forest covering most of what is now housing, shopping centres and multi-lane roads, just 30 years ago. Just to bring the orangs into it, there are so few patches of forest left now for them, and those patches are so isolated. I looked at a 2005 published map today of the ‘Totally Protected Areas of Sarawak’, with the ‘Proposed’ ones in green (perhaps to disillusion the observer into thinking they are forested areas?!), published by the Forest Department of Sarawak, and apparently most of the proposed areas are already being logged with companies, given logging concessions by the Sarawak Government. I think it might be quite a challenge to save the rainforest in 3, well, 2 and a half years now, using palaeoecological data! Oh, naive Lyd.

As I’m just about to go to sleep (or try to – it’s so hot and I’ve got some kind of foot monster (I’m hoping I’m not growing some tropical toadstall to add to the itching mosi bites) that wakes me up every night....anyway....

Food – noodles for breakfast with suspect fried onion on top, which could be any bit of any animal, for all I know. It was tasty though, although I don’t think my tummy is quite used to this sort-of food.

Drink - thankfully, I’ve only had one night of heavy Sarawakian drinking so far, partly because my poor lovely host (Kelvin, the very interesting anthropologist who has successfully explained to me Marxism, Communism, Socialism, Communality, Politics, and many other things I should have understand years ago) is on antibiotics. I was pleased that I could escape beer that night (not that I was being brave anyway, shandying it quietly) and have rice wine instead. The local rice wine is quite good, although illegal. Legal/illegal seems to be much the same thing here though, especially if you belong to the Chinese mafia. My lovely host only needs 4 hours sleep a night though, which would deem me pretty hopeless the next day, so I’m going to have to be decisive and demand I get taken home before the drinking starts next time. 2am to sleep on a school night followed by a 7am wake up for a day of field work was tough for a non-seasoned temperate blondy.

Leaches – I survived! They tried to get a bit of me, but amazingly didn’t get a hold, despite my entering the leach-infested peat swamp forest completely unprepared the first time, with ¾-length trousers and holes in my socks. The second time I re-entered more prepared, with my lovely spotty leach socks on, up to mid calves, matching beautifully with my new yellow willies (see photo).

Orangs – there are none in the hutan that I’ve been into so far. But there were many busy lizards. They were so curious of what I was doing. It was nice to have company other than mosquitoes (I’ve got hips covered in mosi bites – I really hope they’re not malarial ones, or Dengue for that matter), as I pulled up my 3 metres of soil. I was very priviledged to visit an orang’utan rehabilitation centre this morning, and watch, along with maybe a hundred Chinese tourists and a mixture of other white people. As my friend said, this might be the last time lots of the kids there see forest of this type, and perhaps the last time they want to. The world of plastic and pavements is what most of them seem to be used to, evident in part by the trouble they had walking along the slightly uneven forest path to the feeding site. Such a different world.

Oh....I know Asian’s generally age well (as Pav tells me!), but there’s a guy at Kelvin’s office who looks mid-30s and is nearly 50. He’s a very enthusiastic guy who is probably unofficially gay and so excitable. He kindly invited me for lunch at 11:15am a few days ago. I wasn’t sure I could manage rice before noon after having noodles an hour earlier. I might come back with more love handles than I’d like.

But this research malarkey is tough – I hadn’t realized. I really was/am naive. I hope I can work through my uncertainties and atleast come back with enough data to get a DPhil out of, and then rethink how I might help to regrow the forest after that. Or perhaps the future is plastic....no, not giving up hope yet.

Right, ‘sleep’.

And I'm off....

....nearly. This time tomorrow I will be, so I've got about 5 days worth of things I'd like to do before then, as usual. Bed time now though before I turn into a toad.