Arriving in Batu Puteh and the jungle trek

COUNTRY: Borneo & Cambodia
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Building & Conservation
WRITTEN BY: Maddy King

We all arrived safely in Batu Puteh after a long and bumpy bus ride. We gathered our things and went straight to our homestays after casually being briefed about what to expect – how to behave politely and respectfully as we were staying with Muslim families. After being told I wasn’t going to be allowed to use my left hand to eat (we had to use our hands) I was feeling a little anxious. As were all the other left handers (there were a strangely large proportion of us.)

Amy and I were placed in a homestay right next door to a school, which I can imagine was largely convenient for our homestay parents as they had five children! We met the father Abdu Sani and the mother whose name was Bebe. They were instantly welcoming; the dad was showing us many cultural pictures of Muslim weddings and photos he’d taken on his various jungle treks – the pictures included pigmy elephant’s and orang-utans. He told us hilarious stories about leeches and silently chuckled to himself as two left handers attempted to eat curry and rice for dinner with their right hand as their only tool. The kids were lovely as well – we did lots of colouring and drawing with the young one Lila – who on one occasion asked me to draw a mouse for her, after I’d finished she pointed to it saying ‘cat,’ I said ‘mouse,’ she laughed and said ‘nooo cat!’ It was so cute because even though there was a language barrier she knew she was being cheeky.

We went to the jungle the next day, our boat pulled up on a muddy river bank and we all hopped out – proceeding to get our feet trapped in the deceptively thick and dense mud. We soldiered on, we were all adorned in head to toe protection despite the 30-40 degree heat, and had packed on the 80% DEET due to fear of leeches. I can proudly say that I never got a leech although other members in the group were not so lucky. We were shown an array of poisonous trees; the black spiky ones were deadly and introduced to the concept of deadly swarms of bees. And the next night we were expected to spend a night in this obviously habitable environment – habitable to everyone but humans it seemed.

Fast forward, and the jungle trek night was finally upon us, we arrived at the camp scene – the first thing we did was take care of our hammocks, which most people did successfully. Then we just relaxed around the communal camp area – although it began to rain heavily and the wooden chairs began collapsing into the mud so it was more of a relaxing standing – but this didn’t dampen our spirits. The jungle night walk just wasn’t for me but I saw many photos from the brave hearted of white tarantulas and alien vs. predator looking bugs, they were quite fascinating. The next day we’d all survived the jungle trek night and managed not to be consumed by crocodiles lurking in the river banks. Our daily activity was to clear the area of shrubbery for reforestation – so we got to use machetes which were so much fun! We all got really into it.

Our last night in Batu Puteh consisted of everyone getting dressed up in tradition village clothing and participating in traditional dance. Everyone looked so hilarious in their costumes, and attempting to dance was all a bit of a laugh. We’d all enjoyed getting stuck into this community, learning about their culture and being a part of a family for a few days – it was an amazing experience. One I will treasure forever. Now that I’m back at home in Australia I wish my mum would feed me noodles and doughnuts for breakfast with extra sugary tea – like my homestay mum did!