The very next day, the whole bunch of us split into two groups. Daveency, Chris and I were headed for Kampung Giam, while the others were to spend a night in Kampung Krokong.
No hiking for us today! Giam is at the foothills and thus accessible by road. Daveency drove us there, and with us was Ai Fern, the spunkiest journalist I'd ever met.
We stopped for lunch at an apparently famous kolo mee stall at tenth mile. Ai Fern warned us that the mee here was more expensive than tasty (RM 6-12 instead of the regular RM3-5), but Chris and I decided to try it anyway. As it turns out, she was right. Each bowl came with three huge prawns, but the noodles were more bland than all the others we'd tried so far.
We arrived at Victor's house, where we were putting up for the night, sometime mid-afternoon. Victor, a bespectacled retired headmaster, spoke to us in English the whole time we were there. He was also the person in charge of all matters pertaining to land in Giam, so he seemed like a good starting point to find out more about the NCR situation in the area - more on that later.
After a little chat and some tea and biscuits, the four of us went to check out the river behind the house.
We wandered upriver, coming across a quaint little homestay house and lots of villagers filling buckets of water for their homes (there is still no water supply to houses in this area, although it seems that the pipes have been installed for a while now - people smile wryly and give good-natured shrugs as they tell us).
Ai Fern chatted with a couple of tattooed local men carrying fishing guns, even exchanging phone numbers with one guy who offered to bring us to the caves the next day (for a negotiable price, of course). I marvelled, not for the first time, at her extraordinary ability to warm up to people and get them talking in any language: English, Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, Malay... guess that's what good journalists do!
Many of the folk we spoke to told us cautioned us against playing at the nearby waterfall. There is now a NO SWIMMING sign posted near it, but there have been countless drowning cases at the small but pretty deadly waterfall, mostly involving tourists. The latest incident was just in May last year, when two picnicking Kuchingites were sucked into the bottom of the waterfall. The second guy, a doctor, had jumped in to save the nurse... Clearly no lack of drama in the inlands.
After an hour and a half or so, Victor phoned and said the headman was waiting to meet us at home (we had requested an interview with him). So back we went, to begin the serious stuff.
No hiking for us today! Giam is at the foothills and thus accessible by road. Daveency drove us there, and with us was Ai Fern, the spunkiest journalist I'd ever met.
We stopped for lunch at an apparently famous kolo mee stall at tenth mile. Ai Fern warned us that the mee here was more expensive than tasty (RM 6-12 instead of the regular RM3-5), but Chris and I decided to try it anyway. As it turns out, she was right. Each bowl came with three huge prawns, but the noodles were more bland than all the others we'd tried so far.
 |
| My fourth kolo mee since arriving in Kuching four days ago! |
After a little chat and some tea and biscuits, the four of us went to check out the river behind the house.
We wandered upriver, coming across a quaint little homestay house and lots of villagers filling buckets of water for their homes (there is still no water supply to houses in this area, although it seems that the pipes have been installed for a while now - people smile wryly and give good-natured shrugs as they tell us).
Ai Fern chatted with a couple of tattooed local men carrying fishing guns, even exchanging phone numbers with one guy who offered to bring us to the caves the next day (for a negotiable price, of course). I marvelled, not for the first time, at her extraordinary ability to warm up to people and get them talking in any language: English, Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, Malay... guess that's what good journalists do!
Many of the folk we spoke to told us cautioned us against playing at the nearby waterfall. There is now a NO SWIMMING sign posted near it, but there have been countless drowning cases at the small but pretty deadly waterfall, mostly involving tourists. The latest incident was just in May last year, when two picnicking Kuchingites were sucked into the bottom of the waterfall. The second guy, a doctor, had jumped in to save the nurse... Clearly no lack of drama in the inlands.
After an hour and a half or so, Victor phoned and said the headman was waiting to meet us at home (we had requested an interview with him). So back we went, to begin the serious stuff.
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