The cramped minivan is actually a relief after the so-called Super VIP overnight bus from Bangkok. The bus itself is amazing but it comes with three drunks in the back who smoke and shout all night. By this morning my clothes reek and my sandals are sticky from their spilled beer.
We run into Justin from Vancouver for one leg of the journey. We met him first in Bangkok on Christmas Eve. The world is a tiny tiny place.

We spent the last leg with Gerald who teaches diving on the islands off the coast nearby. He seems to know everyone in Kota Bharu and helps us settle in. He recommends a good clinic for Kiran to get her stitches out.

"Easy peasy lemon squeezy." Rosselan the tourist information guide says there will no problem finding a home-stay for us with a shadow puppet master. I think he says "Don't worry, no problem" and "jolly good" a hundred times in the short time we stay with him. I don't think I look worried so it must be habitual.
We cross the river and are introduced to Yusoff in his stilt house. Yusoff is a master of Wayang Kulit, the traditional shadow puppetry of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. We hope to make puppets while we stay here. I hope I can get rid of the pounding head cold I picked up on that VIP bus ride from hell.

Yusoff is a sweet man with infinite patience. I think he developed this trait along with his wife as they raised their 11 children. We don't share more than a few words so everything is done with sign language and plenty of smiles. With his help we're transforming two pieces of dry, hairy goatskin into works of art. Meanwhile his wife brings plates of food to us in an endless stream.

Last night I knelt in the backroom of their house with my head over a bowl of steaming water. It was so soothing that I almost didn't notice the geckos chasing the bugs up the wall and the roaches chasing the geckos back down. Today I feel much better and Yusoff's wife, Zaharah, is trying to float my eyeballs with tea. I have to pee every half hour.

Today I try durian for the first time. It's a spiky fruit adored by locals but banned in many of the upscale hotels we've passed. I learned why. It reeks. It smells like nothing I could describe, though if I tried I might say rotting mango with liverwurst. It has the consistency of snot. I don't even want to think about it. We politely decline seconds.

We busy ourselves the entire day with our puppet making. It is hard work, and it is HOT in Malaysia. Hot and humid. I grumble about having to keep myself decently covered while in this Muslim province. Yusoff's daughters return from school covered from head to toe in school uniform. I perspire empathetically.

Zaharah remains in the background and refuses our offers to help with the cooking. About eight times today she has brought us meals and snacks between meals. I will surely dispel the myth that backpackers lose weight on their travels when I return to Canada a ball of well-fed flesh.

Our puppets look great. Some students arrive this morning to watch Yusoff perform a short play. Not long ago this would be an illegal gathering. The Malaysian government cracked down on the art form because the Wayang Kulit puppets depict characters from the Hindu pageant Ramayana.

We say goodbye to our Malaysian friends and take the train south, all the way down the middle of Peninsular Malaysia. We pass palm forests with so much variety: fan palms, tall palms, round palms. On the forest floor are wet streams and marshy land from the daily rains. We pass flat rice paddies with farmers, represented only by their wide-brimmed conical hats, bent over doing their daily work. All the houses are on stilts, some lone huts, some in village clusters. Out of nowhere a massive, skyscraping limestone cliff scratches the sky, the sides lined with strata from long ago. We are in the center of the peninsula, also home to the Orang Asli, or indigenous people of this part of Malaysia.

As we travel deeper south, the scenery returns to lush green palms and my attention turns to the video screen in front of me, just in time for the start of a movie. The screen tells me it is rated "UV, Universal Viewing. Suitable for all levels of society." Phew! Thought I might have to sit this one out. It's a Clint Eastwood flick and we reach our changing point about 25 minutes before the end. It's not the greatest movie but nevertheless we are disappointed that we won't find out whodunnit.

We go to the ticket office to buy our tickets for the next train and good news: the connecting train is late! We had been prepared to wait the 8.5 hours until the next one, had it been on time. And, like that wasn't good enough luck, the film on our new train was the same as our old one, and it was halfway through. Small happiness on big train track.

We're in Kuching now. What a rush to be on the mythical isle of Borneo at last. It's the land of orangutan, headhunters and endless jungle. My shirt is already sticking to my skin.

Kiran and I eat laksa from a stall on China street. We patiently instruct the elderly cook what not to put in the spicy coconut broth. What's left is glass noodles, lemon grass and a lot of chili. It's amazing.

We wander the riverfront and plan our strategy on how to meet the Iban longhouse people. We run into a local who suggests a few drinks at the local pub might open some doors beyond the usual tourist route. The drinks end up being gin tonics and I am reminded once again how low my tolerance is for alcohol. The pub has been a goldmine though and we stumble back to the hostel armed with directions to a little visited village up the Rejang river. On the way I almost step on a scorpion the size of my shoe (size 10 ½). It shuffles its huge body across the street in front of a small café full of late night coffee drinkers. Kiran and I are so amazed we shout at the patrons to look. They don't venture into to the rain to see it, but they raise their glasses and smile encouragingly. I'm not sure what they're encouraging us to do.

We've made it to Kanowit. It looks like a town that nobody has stopped in for years. It has one main street that ends at a small dock jutting into the brown river. These waters used to be a dark green before the erosion from logging filled them with silt. As Kiran and I sip our sweet coffee, men keep walking by with long rifles slung over their shoulders. Is this a dangerous place? We learn later that it's gun registration time and this happens every January.

Last night was spent singing karaoke songs in a dark, neon lit bar called Princes. We met an Iban man named Raymond who works at the local palm oil plantation. He went out of his way to make sure we drank as much beer as we could hold and danced with each person at the bar. I did my best to sing songs of unrequited love in Iban. I think I sung a few Beatles songs too, just to prove I could hold a tune.

Now, slightly hungover, we eat fried rice and dream of sleep. It's not to be though as we meet Patrick who tells us he's been watching us eat, trying to figure out if we speak English. He offers to take us to a nearby longhouse. We can't refuse because that's why we're here, we'll sleep later.

What a whirlwind. We spent the last three days in the Iban longhouse. It's an entire village under one roof. The whole thing sits high on stilts and the pigs and chickens slug it out underneath for territory. Stairs lead up to a long veranda crowded with chilies and cocoa drying on rattan mats. This is where we take our shoes off when we enter the longhouse. Through one of the doors we enter a long common hall with 15 doors lining the back wall. Each door belongs to a separate family and opens first to a living room, then to the kitchen and bathroom. Everything is separated only by thin wooden walls. Each morning the doors open and a horde of children stream out to start the days mischief. These children hang on our arms and demand our attention at all times. One child keeps yelling 'Tahsan Tahsan' at me. I can't tell if this is an Iban word or Malay until I realize he's calling me Tarzan because of my long hair.

We're married now in the Iban tradition. The Iban wedding ceremony was full of sound and chaos and plenty of tuak (homebrewed rice wine). Since then we've played with the children, sweltered in the heat and eaten, eaten, eaten. One Iban word we'll never forget is 'makai' which means eat. At night each family would insist that we eat as much as we can with them, only to be led to the next room to eat just as much again. The food is locally grown and we've been lucky enough to go out onto the farms of some of the longhouse families. The farms look like pure jungle to our untrained eyes until we're shown star fruit, pineapple, banana, cocoa, pepper and tapioca. Just to name a few.

The hospitality of the Iban is legendary and the reputation is well deserved. Our hosts invite us to stay for two months more and we know they mean it. Unfortunately we're on our way. We hope to see some of the Chinese culture here as the lunar new year is in two days.

Chinese culture is strong in Miri, where we are now. At midnight fireworks and noise makers explode all over the city. It reminds me of the footage from Baghdad during the gulf war; a lot of noise and the occasional flash of light. There are red lanterns hanging from many of the homes and they look beautiful as Miri loses the day's light. Everywhere we go there are signs wishing prosperity and good fortune. A local fast food chain offers free orange pop if you buy the 'Prosperity Fish Meal'. Lottery ticket sales are soaring and yesterday I saw a lineup at a place called Dr. Fongs Fate Analysis Center.

The bus ride here took 6 hours longer than we were told it would. We're used to that by now. I wouldn't even have noticed except I'm nursing a violent outbreak of prickly heat of the groin. It's like my private parts are made of sand paper and happen to be hosting a fire-ant convention at the same time. It's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy. I was warned in the guide books that this equatorial humidity might have this effect.

The cave is immense. Our headlamps barely touch the far walls. In some places holes open up to the jungle canopy above and sunlight and mist come streaming in. You could fit two or three of my highschools in here. It's beautiful, eerie and incredibly smelly. The floors are caked with the guano of the half a million birds and as many bats that live in this cave. There is a whole economy based on scraping the guano for fertelizer and we see people deep in the caves looking for good deposits. They're so far away they look like fireflies. Occaisonally we see one or two of the collectors leave the caves with huge sacks suspended from their foreheads.

The other economy is bird nesting. The Swiftlets who make their homes in these caves use their own saliva to make their nests. When steamed or made into soup, these nests are an expensive Chinese delicacy, unfortunately for the birds. Bamboo poles extend to the roof of the caves. Nesters perch precariously on the end of these poles to get the nests. It's very dangerous for them but they can make a month's wages in a day if they're successful.

After an hour of spelunking we head for the mouth of the cave to watch the bats fly out at sunset. We meet Leslie C. Hall, an Australian who studies bats. He tells us his official title is "chiropterologist" but we resort to calling him Batman. He shows us his Batmeter S-25 which can detect any type of bat by its squeak. He tells us how not too many people are interested in bats these days. He says the general public is too preoccupied with what he calls "the charismatic mega-fauna" like monkeys and bears. He's anxious to find a particular bat here that has markings like a motorcylce jacket. We leave him to find his 'Hell's Angel' bat and head back through the jungle. It's dark now and we see some real fireflies. The bugs seem to get bigger at night as well.

Niah caves live up to the mystery and jungle romance that I always imagined Borneo to be.

The day before yesterday we took a local bus from central Kuching to the town of Bako. We stopped along the way wherever the locals asked to be let off. One stop was a colorful village on stilts, the wooden houses painted bright colors from which children streamed in and out, goats huddled around and mothers did their cooking in. The scene reminded me of a conversation I once had with a friend, Chris, who couldn't understand why rainy and grey Vancouver didn't paint their buildings sunnier, brighter colors. He would approve of this village, I think.

We arrive in Bako and change modes of transportation to longboat, with two boatsmen. They take us, crashing through the waves for about 15 minutes until we are in sight of a beach with huge, multicolored, limestone cliffs. The boatmen tell us to take off our shoes; because it is low tide, they can't take the boat up to the jetty, so we have to jump out of the boat and walk onto the beach with our heavy packs on our backs. The boatmen wave goodbye and leave us wondering where exactly we're supposed to go... No worries, we're on a deserted beach watching the little crabs furiously dig their homes out of the sand. It is really beautiful here.

About half a kilometer later we have checked into the National Park headquarters and left our bags in our dormitory to take a quick walk into the jungle before it gets dark. We follow a plankwalk while the sun is setting, the best time to spot Proboscis monkeys. We round a corner and a black, thin snake slides through the water of a little pond. About fifteen minutes later we hear something crashing through the trees, so we stop and are silent. There are about four of them overhead; the males have huge, banana-shaped noses and grunt noisily. At the moment before dark, it starts to pour, tropical rainstorm-style, and we have to head back. We slip and slide on the planks back to our cabin and arrive, soaked through with big grins on our faces. Only moments later Geoff is calling me over to the verandah to watch the local Bornean Bearded Pig (must have been around 4 feet long) rummaging around for scraps of food.

Kuala Lumpur, or "KL" as everyone calls it, is a bit of a culture shock. There are more skyscrapers here than I've ever seen and they're all competing for most interesting shape. Today we check out the Petronas towers. Twin towers jutting into the sky to a brain boggling height. They look like rockets preparing to evacuate the entire population of South East Asia. They taper off at their tops like some giant cyborg has taken too strong a pull on his aluminum cigarillos. It's all very unnatural and a stark contrast to the stilt houses we've been around for the last 3 weeks.

After getting a shopping fix in, we walk back to our hostel. We don't really know our way back but we have a map and a mini compass on my watchstrap. Our zigzag wanderings bring us to a large cage set on the hill of some sort of museum complex. In the cage are grown men howling and jumping with glee. We ask permission to watch their game and it turns out they're spinning tops. They are playing a traditional Malaysian game of fighting tops. They wrap two meters of string around a huge metal top and almost as much string around their wrists. With a dramatic flying toss they set their tops spinning for what seems like ages. We can't quite get the jist of the game but it appears there are two teams of three. The first team sets their tops spinning in a small square of earth and the other team uses their tops to bash them out. The men are having a blast and their shouts of joy put us in a great mood for the walk home.

We decide to share a beer and buy one from a vendor in Chinatown. The vendor is selling them from a cooler at 6 ringgit apiece. I say "How about 2 for 10" at the exact moment Kiran says "2 for 8?" If I'd kept my mouth shut we would have got the better deal I'm sure, he agrees to 10 far too easily. We're almost back when we remember that our hostel is a Muslim establishment and alcohol is strictly forbidden. We end up having a picnic in a small circle of palm trees that serves as a median for an eight lane highway. It's an interesting little oasis and a nice way to say goodbye to KL before we catch the night train.

Thaipusam is a Hindu festival held in Johor Bahru, Penang and Kuala Lumpur. It is banned in India, possibly because of the masochistic rites demonstrated to extremes by its devotees. We've already been to Johor Bahru (yawn), and the day before yesterday we checked out the site for the festivities in Kuala Lumpur- Batu Caves. The 272 steps to the top, extreme heat of the day, and million people in attendance recorded last year made us turn to the more intimate choice: Penang. We arrived yesterday and were welcomed by Justin, a Canadian we met in Bangkok a month ago. Without really even knowing us, he and his roommate have offered us a place to stay. We are thankful for the warm welcome in a foreign place. This foreign place is an island on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, predominantly Chinese but with many people of Indian descent, from Tamil Nadu.

Justin and Bobak's friend, Bas, has offered to introduce us to his friends, who will be taking part in the festival. Yesterday evening he brought us to the temple where his friends have been preparing and fasting for 5 days. The temple was doused in red light and incense, and in every corner was a lot of quiet activity. A man organized wreaths of fresh flowers, a group sat together to put the finishing touches on a kavadi (aluminum and styrofoam structure about 10 feet high), while others prepared their offerings of limes and small aluminum jugs. The temple is for men only. Bas told us that women participated as well, but were fasting and preparing in a different temple so as not to distract each other from their meditation.

A group of younger boys sat on the floor in front of the temple, sharpening silver hooks. Geoff asked them if they were nervous. One young boy nodded his head, he was a little nervous. The others said that they had been very scared the first time as well. Since this would be their second or third time, though, they felt calm. This time they know what to expect.