YB2 Snake

Here's the green snake I saw yesterday when I was walking to to town. He was near these green bananas.

Making Myself at Home

I was back at the Bintang supermarket by early afternoon on morning three of my month-long stay in Penestanan, a small suburb of Ubud, Bali. Just yesterday, I'd been delighted that the Balinese coffee I'd purchased had come with instructions.

1) Mix 1 tsp coffee with one cup of hot water. You may also add sugar and milk.
2) Let coffee settle to bottom.
3) Drink. Do not drink the sediment at the bottom. 

Great! I’d been willing to give it a try. I'd had this style of coffee in East Timor a decade ago and it had been all right. You just mix in the finely ground coffee powder with hot water, then don't drink what's at the bottom of the cup. No problem. 

Then, the morning—blech. Maybe I’d had a bigger coffee cup in Dili. I got to the bitter grounds in just a few gulps. 

I'd consumed bad coffee all around the world during my travels this year, after more than a decade of carrying my own along. I had a marvelous little mug-with-plunger I normally carried, but the years had made me lazy and I'd taken to drinking whatever yucky instant coffee was on offer. But I didn’t want to do that for a month of working in my own apartment.

Morning Two in Bali

The rice fields glittered vibrant green at me from my breezy verandah on my first afternoon in my brand-new flat in Ubud, Bali. I’d spent all day looking at apartments before settling on this two-story bungalow in the suburb of Penestanan, and I allowed myself a few moments to take in my good fortune before racing off to the supermarket, unpacking, and starting in on my paying work on my laptop. I was lucky enough to be the first inhabitant of the flat. The new house ceremony, common in Bali, hadn’t even happened yet.

I hoped the Balinese gods didn’t punish me for moving in before the ceremony.

House-Hunting in Ubud

Morning.

Time to go look at a half-dozen apartments and bungalows for my month in Ubud, Bali.

I'd only given myself a single day to find a place. I couldn't afford the hotels here...I'd been shocked at the low vacancy rates and high prices in Ubud compared to a decade ago.

I'd done all the research I could ahead of time and was armed with a list of prospective places. What I'd discover over the next month is that there are loads of inexpensive bungalows in family compounds within the confines of the Penastanan rice fields. If you walk around the paths away from the road, you'll be approached every few days by a landlord looking to fill his bungalows.

Borneo to Bali

My hotel in KK was many things—cheap and friendly, mostly—but it was not really that on-the-ball as far as having a clue what to do with a tourist. And so I left in the morning and carried my luggage to the nearest taxi stand. Because asking at the front desk resulted on in my obviously incorrect assessment that the hotel had never encountered a tourist that might need to go to the airport before.

I left my bag at the AirAsia luggage drop and sniffed around the discount terminal—with its disappointing options—for some coffee.

Sniff turned out to be the right word. The KFC was open this early, but someone must have vomited in the nearby bathroom. The workers had set up a fan directly across from the registers, but I didn't think I could hack breakfast with the stink of vomit in the dining area. I fled to passport control and found coffee behind the departures barrier.

Air Delaysia lived up to its nickname but still got me to Kuala Lumpur in plenty of time to catch the flight to Bali. Though their free-for-all boarding was a mess. But they redeemed themselves by singing Happy Birthday to a passenger.

Back to Nature for a Night

I was in for a long evening, heading on a tour bus to see proboscis monkeys and fireflies, two hours back towards Sarawak in southwestern wetlands of Sabah.

I'd booked the trip yesterday after talking to several travel agents long enough to realize that they were all trying to book me onto the same trip with Only in Borneo Tours. I checked out their web site, then went to their office and asked for the online booking discount. They were fine with that.

Yesterday had been kind of a wash-out. I'd spent some time arguing with the front desk at my hotel. They'd given me a single room that included wifi, knowing full well that the wifi didn't reach the single rooms. I went up the ladder through four people until a woman made a call, and I was moved to a slightly larger room with an actual signal.

And then I got lost. In my room. I mean I had another one of those moments where I had to struggle to remember where I was. Not just what city, but what country and what part of the world. For a brief second, I thought "I'm near Bangkok, right?"

Sort of.

I'd spent the evening at Kota Kinabalu night market. It was a market. At night.

Obviously, I needed this trip out into Sabah. I was starting to lose it.

Brunei to Kota Kinabalu

My plan for the day was to catch a Bandar Seri Begawan city bus to a boat to the island of Labuan, then catch another boat to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia. I was following these instructions, more or less, in reverse.

Easy, right? Anyway, there were three local buses and one express bus from the Bandar bus station to the port, so I shouldn't have any problems although the distance was 25 kilometers. I thought. I didn't set out to catch the express—it left obscenely early and I couldn't think of any reason to go on the first boat out. Plus, I wanted that excellent free breakfast at the Brunei Hotel.

But when I ended up waiting 45 minutes for the bus, and then had to change buses once, I started to see the merit of the early express bus.

I was still on the bus when the ferry I'd been planning to catch left. On to Plan B! The final ferry of the morning was the 10 o'clock to Lawas, Sarawak, where I'd have to catch an onward bus to Kota Kinabalu.

Grass and Humidity

I was allowed onto the new air-conditioned bus bound from Miri to Brunei half an hour before the 3:45 departure time. The bus wasn't even half full. We left promptly and cruised quickly to the border, where all of us passengers were stamped out of the Malaysian state of Sarawak. We reboarded and drove to the other side, where we all got off the bus again.

We were all stamped into Brunei, then moved into a small, older bus. An Irish passenger who lived in Sabah groused "This isn't a 40 ringgit bus."

But I'd read about this…there are rules about Malaysian buses going into Brunei. Never mind that the Malaysian bus was vastly superior to this Brunei bus. Rules were rules.

The crappier bus headed out along the Pan-Borneo Highway, a perfectly paved road that runs parallel to the coast, passing through small towns that looked like suburbs of Houston, complete with lawns, garages, fences, joggers, oil derricks and Shell signs.

Rain kicked in just before we arrived in Brunei's capital city after dark. This was the tropics, the weather reminded me.

At 7:30—the bus freezing from the overpowering air-con—we pulled into the drizzle of Bandar Seri Begawan, passing Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Ah, that was near my hotel! I'd seen it on my map. After circling round the block past the bus terminal, the little bus pulled up nearly in front of my hotel, Brunei Hotel, which I'd booked into for two nights on my bank points.