On on ... to Hong Kong

I couldn't have timed my departure from Kuching any better ... Five thousand Hash House Harriers are descending on the city for the 17th World Interhash. It could get very trashy!

Last night was a farewell dinner with Emily, Rita, James, Ramsay, Michael and Moses at Tarot Salmon. This new Japanese restaurant is attached to the very funky Batik Boutique Hotel. Great food and excellent dinner companions. James took pics.

I've had such a wonderful time here in Kuching, Sarawak. My hotel, the Lime Tree, has been brilliant. Lovely people.

It aint over until it's over

I'm perfectly OK now, but I burned and then crashed (literally) in my race yesterday afternoon.

I overheated, got the staggers, and then apparently passed out. I have no memory of what happened after I first started lurching around, until I came to surrounded by blokes from the mosque. My only physical injury was a big lump on a left knuckle. I don't recall seeing any other runners pass by, which makes me think I might have wandered off course. For about 20 minutes I lay propped up against the roadside embankment, where I vomited, panted, and answered questions. A couple of blokes fanned me with bits of cardboard.

I begged a lift to the finish line back on the waterfront, and two blokes took me in their car. I was disappointed to see it was less than a kilometre away. The St John's Ambulance people there didn't know what to do with me. When I said I was going to be sick again, someone handed me a container the size of a soap dish. I brushed it aside, spread my feet, and vomited a huge spray all over the pavers.

An ambulance arrived, and we went (with the siren blaring) to the Kuching Specialist Hospital where I spent a couple of hours on a drip. On the way, Rita gave me some treatments and held my hand, while Emily and James went back to my hotel to get my passport and some clothes. They have been *amazing* friends.

It was a hot day, and there were hills. I should have taken water if I wasn't sure there'd be some available along the course. By the time I was in trouble, I wasn't thinking right.

A lucky escape. A damned shame about the medal, though!

It just goes to show that, in a race, it aint over until it's over.

Postscript:

Yesterday, Emily and Rita and I retraced my steps from the last part of the course I could remember. When I "came to", I was about 500 metres off course. I apparently fell at some stage, and must have staggered through traffic. I was headed totally in the wrong direction. We talked with some people from the kampong near the mosque who had been there. They had seen me staggering and had stopped me and sat me down. They gave me something to drink. That's when I vomited. They were understandably confused by my thinking they were involved with the race. I must have been off the planet for 15 minutes or more. Given that I went into a kind of coma, it's possible I had heat stroke, and not just heat exhaustion, brought on by dehydration in the hot and humid conditions.

But I still won a medal. It turns out I was in a category of one "VIP/Guest" running the 7K. However slowly I had jogged it, I would have come first.

Who has time to work?

I'm having difficulty squeezing in work around my busy social life here in Kuching!

Rita picked me up this morning for a two-hour remedial massage therapy session at the holistic healthcare clinic where she has her practice. She shares it with two retired GPs who now practise complementary and alternative medicine. Rita is an Emmett practitioner. It was fantastic. I also got to talk with Drs Leong and Yao. I wouldn't hesitate to put myself in the hands of these three people if I ever had any issues with my health. I'm going back on Monday for another session with Rita, and I'll do some other therapies with the docs when I'm back in December.

I squeezed in a couple of hours' work before heading out to see Ramsay mid-afternoon. I wanted to get a couple of gifts, things made by him. In the gallery, he was talking with Bob Reece, who is the author of articles and books on Borneo, including "The White Rajahs of Sarawak". He told us a bit about an article he has just written on a previous Sultan of Brunei. I ended up buying that book, and Edric Ong's book "Sarawak Style", on Amazon.com and using the Central Park West address in New York for delivery. They are both heavy coffee-table books.

I gave Emily her gift. She showed me some of the drawings she does. They are really beautiful. (The one accompanying this note isn't one of Em's.)

Tomorrow's race is at 5.30 pm. Emily said James wants to get some video footage at the start and along the course!

Going bananas in Borneo

This is Ritchie, the alpha male out at Semenggoh Wildlife Reserve. There are about three dozen orang-utans that have been rehabilitated to life in the wild or born there. It's amazing watching them tree surfing.

I had a half-hour interview at Radio TV Malaysia in the afternoon with Jennifer Lau for her program, "The Living Room". I got in a good plug for the charity run on Saturday. (The guest before me was Edric Ong, who I met through Ramsay!) Daryl called yesterday to tell me that despite my age (!), they were making an exception yet again for me and allowing me to run the 7K course. The other guests are entered in the 3K event.

Emily picked me up at 5.30 and we went to her brother James's video editing suite. He showed me the corporate video he was working on when we were there a couple of weeks ago, plus a music video and a couple of other more creative things he's worked on. Rita met us there. We went for dinner nearby. The girls and I went to see "Sex and the City 2". A bit of fluff. There wasn't enough of New York for my liking!

Ran c. 10K with the Kuching Rat Pack this morning. We backtracked when it started to sprinkle with rain. It seems December is monsoon season here...

Worked all day today.

I've got less than a week left here.

I was catching up the other day on some "Borneo Posts" from when I was away and in one issue I knew two people who were written up (the mayor of Miri, and a trainer who came to my talk there)!

A "welcome home" hug from Kuching

The Kuching running rat pack appeared on schedule just after six this morning near the Hilton. So good to see them!! We did the basic 10K run over the bridge and back to the kampungs, but Sim threw in a few extra hills. I think she has a slight sadistic streak!

Daryl Leong, from Saturday's race sponsor, arrived at 3 pm for an interview for an article that may come out in the "Borneo Post" tomorrow or Thursday. My event is over 7K.

I called in to see Ramsay this morning, and he and Michael Lim called by the hotel early evening to drop off the work of Ramsay's I've bought. I'll have it here to enjoy for the rest of my stay, then it will be sent down to Albury.

Saw Emily this morning after my run. Having dinner with her tomorrow.

I've decided after talking with Sim and Madeleine this morning to come back to Kuching on 22 December and spend Christmas through to mid-January here training for the Mumbai half marathon on 16 January. I love this place, and I've been really lucky to find such a great bunch of people to train with.

Medamit–Limbang–Miri–Labuan

Instead of staying the last night of the trek at a longhouse an hour upriver from Kampung Medamit, I asked Han to negotiate a price for me to go by longboat down to Medamit, from where I could get a van to take me to Limbang. This was all because I had no dry clothes to change into! The chief of the area ferried me downriver. If it hadn't started to pour with rain halfway through the trip, I might have felt a bit like Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen". Instead, I just felt very soggy!

The air-conditioning in the vehicle that took me on to the market town of Limbang was fierce, so I was soggy and shivering by the time I checked into the commercial traveller-type hotel that was home for the night. It was the best available in town and was very ordinary. I bought some cheap clothes in a shopping centre attached to the hotel and after a hot shower I felt a lot better.

The next morning I checked out all the wet and dry markets around the main part of town, then headed out to the airport.

In Miri, Jennie Soh collected me from the Mega Hotel for dinner with her husband Matthew, daughter Cheryl (a perky businesswoman who spent five years studying in New Zealand), her NZ partner Chris and their NZ colleague Oliver. The three of them run an IT business. Miri is an oil town. Shell seems to run the place.

Jennie picked me up at midday on Saturday for lunch. We then went to Pustaka Miri, where there was a notice up saying: "A Moment with Robyn Flemming from Australia: A collaboration project by SOSWE (Society of English Writers Northern Zone Miri) & Pustaka Miri".

There were only about 20 people, so it wasn't as scary as I'd feared. I talked about my career and about travel writing, and answered questions.

After the talk the mayor of Miri, Lawrence Lai, presented awards to some students who had won a writing competition and also presented me with a gift.

Today I flew up to Labuan. I went straight out to the War Memorial to see the plaque with the name of Dad's Uncle Alf, who died during the forced march of Australian prisoners across Borneo in 1945. His body was never found, but if his spirit is there, he's in a good place. It's by the sea, and the place is well maintained and very peaceful.

I walked back to the hotel along the sea. Lots of families were out having picnics and barbecues for Father's Day. I wished a few of them who greeted me a "Happy Father's Day"!

After a quick look around the town—it's a duty-free port and offshore financial centre—I've been working.

The thing to do here is scuba diving. There are four great wrecks, one of which, the Cement Wreck, is apparently "the world's most colourful and photogenic wreck".

A Girl's Own Adventure in Borneo

This is a preview of my second column about Sarawak...

When I emerged from the jungle on the last day of a four-day trek through Gunung Mulu National Park, in northern Sarawak, I was relieved to find I had provided lunch for only one of the half-dozen or so leeches that had chosen me as a possible meal ticket.

The Headhunters’ Trail is a dank-smelling, 11.3 km path once trodden by Kayan headhunting parties. Today, it forms either the start or finish of a trek that takes in some of the highlights of this UNESCO World Heritage-listed park. Our group of trekkers and guides had started out from park headquarters, near Mulu’s airport, after a night spent in basic dormitory-style accommodation.

The Mulu Caves are mindboggling. Lang’s Cave (a wonderland of dripstone formations) and Deer Cave (its cave passage would fit eight St Paul’s Cathedrals) are an easy 3 km stroll along well-maintained plank walkways from the entrance to the park. Deer Cave is home to an estimated three million small bats that emerge in waves most afternoons in search of insects for supper.

I enjoyed the Canopy Skywalk, about 15 swinging bridges suspended high up in the foliage.

The next morning, after a journey up the Melinau River by longboat, we visited the Cave of the Winds and Clearwater Cave, which extends for over 170 km and is popular with adventure cavers. Following a further stint on the river, including some whitewater longboating, we disembarked and walked for over 8 km through dense rainforest to our camp for the next two nights.

Camp Five is the starting point for an all-day return climb to the summit of Gunung Api to see the limestone formations known as the Pinnacles.

Readers of this column will know that I enjoy hard walking. The more effort a trek requires, the better I like it. However, I started to reconsider making the ascent when our guide, Han, described it as "a really, really high-risk activity". I think what clinched it for me were the hazard warnings, complete with 13 exclamation marks, on the map of the route on the information board at camp.

I decided to complete only the first of the three distinct stages of the climb, a distance of 900 metres, from where I could descend on my own. From there on up, it’s considered dangerous to descend unaccompanied. The final stage of 400 metres is traversed mainly on ladders; technically, it’s more climbing than trekking. And in a landscape with razor-sharp limestone outcrops, a slip could prove very nasty.

I really enjoyed the effort of clambering up to the first rest stop, sometimes using the ropes strung along the more difficult sections. The descent—which I made with a young English lawyer who was feeling unwell—was harder than the ascent.

Back at camp, I washed off the sweat and grime in the river, and then headed back out along the trail we had used to reach camp the day before. For two hours, I walked alone along that track through the Borneo jungle.

I am in awe of everyone who did the Pinnacles Walk, and feel some regret that I wasn’t among them. But, a girl can still have her own adventure.