Dubai and Beirut

Dubai - Vegas meets Lawrence of Arabia.

On the plane flying into Dubai, Arabs flock to the restrooms prior to landing to change into their burquas and white robes with tablecloths on their heads, ready to rock the Kasbah. As I walk through the airport, hundreds of black-veiled women are shooting me disapproving looks at my western attire, but yet one stops me to ask where I bought my dress. Some veils have slits where all you can see are their sexy eyes.

The women distinguish themselves from the rest of the black-clad women by wearing the most expensive Paris Hilton Sunglasses and big, gaudy, expensive bags. I think most of these Saudi girls are more spoiled than our hotel heiress. Currently I am reading the Girls of Ridayah, acclaimed as the Middle-Eastern Sex and the City, which is opening my eyes to the hypocrisy and tyranny of this culture.

I met with Raphael’s friends in Dubai – Martin, Sarah and their two boys – Peter and Luke, who is Raphael’s godson. Martin is the director of an architecture firm there and they took me on an amazing tour of the city. He moved out there in 1997 to work on Emirates Towers and has not left since. They dropped me off at the Emirates Mall to Ski Dubai, where you can take a pain-stakingly slow chairlift for 15 minutes to ski down a 30 second slope that smaller than a sled hill.

For dinner, I went to the Burj Al Arab, the hotel that looks like a sailboat to see on the menu the world’s most expensive cocktail. $27,321 AED for 55-year-old scotch served in an 18 karat gold cup. The view at sunset over on of the three Palm Islands is beautiful. The architecture itself may look opulent from afar, but is of relatively poor quality, much like Vegas.

Dubai is a giant construction site. Everything is under construction and playa dust is in the air. 20% of the world’s cranes are in this city alone. I had an impromptu interview in the gym with a PM group and the next day with Martin’s company. Both companies need help on projects pronto, but I am afraid it is too hot for me there, I am too blonde and too female to succeed there in construction and they cannot afford me. Even though both companies are UK-based, I still think it would be hard for me to break through the gender barriers.

Lebanon
A family that belly dances together….a.) stays together, b.) is hell of a lot of fun, c.) is it wrong for cousins to dirty dance? Not in Lebanon! I am in a mountain town near Beirut visiting my brother’s fiancé’s family, prior to their wedding this weekend.

Nancy’s family here should be cast for TV programming. They are all beautiful people, from Grandma’s flawless skin, to the high-school boys with their stunning good looks that would make up a good boy band, to the adorable children running around being bad in French. Uncle Elias keeps wanting me to drink Arak and dance on tables, Grandpa wants to marry me off to a nice Lebanese boy, and 14-year old Mejd wants to marry me for a green card to the U.S. Since cousins can marry here, we are trying to match up which ones will make the best combination for supermodel babies.

Kelly’s Lebanese Boy Band – Babaganoush ->

We are speaking an mélange of French, English, Arabic, and now Spanish that friends from Venezuela have shown up. The food is amazing. The tabouli, babaganoush, lammwurst, homemade hummus, kibbeh, schwarma, kafta, fatoosh, and numerous other dishes keep coming our way and the eating is endless. Most dinners last until 1am followed by Arabic dancing.

My daily walk with Brian in the mountains is not much different scenery-wise from my view in the Oakland Hills, except every fourth home is bombed and gutted, covered in bullet holes or I am passing (hot) Lebanese Militia Men heavily equipped with tanks and machine guns. It does not scare me though and feels completely safe here in the hills of Bhamdoun, where Nancy’s family’s summer home is located. The people and cars here are from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Many Saudi women come here to get their nose jobs and are wandering the streets in bandages.

In Byblos, we visited the medieval town and the beach with infinity pools emptying into the azul waters of the Mediterranean, followed again by a feast. Friday we took an excursion out to Beit Eddine near Beyrouth to the Palais Emir Bachir Chahabi where we were able to see some amazing scenery, the palace and Turkish baths. The scariest part of the trip though is Jimmy the Camel. He is the dirty old man from the hotel who offered to drive us there in his Land Rover, playing the Pet Shop Boys.

The ride there was very educational, but as the trip progressed, he became increasingly sure that I was to be his next wife and was ready to negotiate with my brother for me over another Lebanese feast. Luckily the fact that I am left-handed cancelled all-bets on me, as I am no longer worth ANY camels now, maybe because I am eating hummus with the same hand I am supposed to wipe my arse with. Jimmy drank and entire karaf of Arak (the Arabic equivalent to Ouzo) and was in no shape to be driving us home on the mountain roads. We tried to escape him in one town when he stopped to buy peaches but he got irate with us and we realized there were no taxis for miles and finished Mr. Toad’s wild ride. The rest of the ride was in silence.

Another Hanna-Haber family tradition is the Hubbly Bubbly, aka hookah, at every dinner table. This is basically a giant bong with flavored tobacco smoked. Uncle Elias is always offering to bring down his home-grown stash for the hubbly-bubbly, if that will help get me to dance on the tables.

Friday afternoon after the Arak ride from hell, we encounter another bad driver in our taxi to Beirut. Not only did the driver get lost in his ancient Mercedes with no AC in the blistering heat, but also his car broke down on the Avenue de Paris, a main thoroughfare along the shoreline of Beirut. Then he tried to rip us off and caused a commotion when he left us off in the middle of the street in rush hour traffic.

Clubbing in Beirut
There is no club in Beirut that a blonde girl cannot get into. It is amazing to think there was fighting here as recent as two months ago, but the town is in business, Buddha Bar has reopened despite the protests across the street, and it is safe to walk anywhere at night. We are clubbing with Nancy’s 17-24 year old cousins until 4am. I love this town where the 20-something year old boys are ALL good looking with glassy-blue eyes and think I am their age. One guy asked me to go home with him and when I asked his age and told him I was old enough to be his mother, he had the rebuttal, “But you can be like Demi Moore…”

Reema and Lilia are fun to dance with. They both just graduated from high school and are close to six feet tall and look like supermodels. One club we went into, the entire club gathered around us in the center to bellydance. It was fun because I actually knew this particular arabic music since I used it in a bellydancing class I taught in California (you didn’t know I taught bellydancing, right? I don’t, but I faked it pretty well in Berkeley and in Beirut where the music is catchy.) I threw in some of my Bollywood moves, like screwing in my light bulbs and petting my goats. Nancy is an amazing bellydancer and actually knows the correct way to do it.

Nancy’s Big Fat Lebanese Wedding
Is this an MTV production? There are 10 people following the bride and groom around with cameras and flood lights. They have equipped the Intercontinental Phoenicia with the Dance Fever set and a man is wailing on the violin a tune that puts the Devil went down to Georgia to shame. The reception starts with the Dancing, then you eat through the block-long table, then dance, then pyrotechnics, then dance some more, then many men with cakes and sparklers emerge onto the dance floor were the bride and groom are to sever the six-foot cake with a sword, then they dance, then the bouquet and garder throws, then the cousins perform strip teases for each other. Wow.

The 700 year old church where the ceremony was held is tucked up into the hills with an amazing view as well. What could have been a quaint ceremony, is making my brother melt with the amount of lighting and cameras imposed on the structure and the sound system is having a bit of difficulty as it belts out Toccata, Dracula’s music, at high decibels.

We were able to do a live video cast for our relatives back in the US who could not make it to the wedding and skyped my parents into the reception hall. This is a Jetson world.

DOHa
Am I playing the Amazing Race all alone? My trip ended with an unfortunate, stranded Kelly in Qatar. I questioned my 30-minute layover in Doha numerous times from the reservation process all the way to the morning check–in and notifying the crew on my flight of my quick connection. Unfortunately, Qatar airways still chose to sell my seat to someone else. This stranded me in Doha and caused me to miss my Singapore Air connection in Dubai. Not only was there no customer service, but I had to buy one way tickets home. All flights to Singapore from Dubai and Doha were sold out, so I ended up in Kuala Lumpur the next day. Raphael helped me with flights over the phone as I stood in lines for over 3 hours at the airport to find my luggage and get someone to help me.

Overall, it was one of the most culturally amazing trips of my life. I love my new family in Beirut and when I am old and scraggly, someday I hope to return for my boy toys. Nancy did an amazing job on the wedding planning!

San Francisco and Raphael

Just returned from my home leave back to San Francisco where it was amazing to catch up with friends, garden my yard watching Kelly’s sunsets, teach my old aerobic classes and put out forest fires friends start in Yosemite. I was only gone for ten days, but it was apparent that I now have two lives on each side of the globe along with a portion of it traveling through Europe right now.

Two weeks after the trip to India, I met Raphael, yes he is named after a Ninja turtle, at the cycling team’s jersey release. He is a very handsome, athletic, successful German who speaks six languages, including Japanese, lives down the street from me in Singapore, trains with the ANZA team, and is a member of the gym I teach at. We had five dates in five days in Singapore before I left for Hanoi and he for Frankfurt, where he will be until I return back from the Middle East in July.

After three weeks of long distance communication he joked about flying to San Francisco for the weekend to visit. Four days later, I picked him up at SFO to spend 48 hours together. What an amazing weekend. We were able to spend a day mountain biking Mt. Tam above the fog and the other in San Francisco hanging in North Beach and the Presidio.


A Jetset Girl living in a Jetson World
So the new communication mean we are using is Skype. The Jetson age has come! I am talking to a guy in a tapas bar in Mallorca, Spain with flamenco music in the background, while I sit in my living room in Singapore or I get a tour of Raphael's childhood home in the Black Forest while I sit at my desk at work in SSF. Not only can we hear each other over the internet, but we can see instant video.

I am getting ready to leave for Dubai on Friday where I will meet up with a couple of Raphael's friends, including one who is the director of an architecture firm there. On the 6th, I'll head to Beirut for a week to attend Brian and Nancy's wedding.

Hanoi, Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam!
My flight got in late Thursday night, so I woke up early and headed to the lake to go for a run. Vietnam wakes up at the crack of dawn in Hanoi and whole city is exercising between 6-7am around Hoan Kiem lake. The streets around the perimeter are transformed into badmitton courts, the plaza has over 100 people worshiping Jane Fonda aerobicizing, one area is lined with muscle heads who brought their own weights and benches, old people moving in slow motion in their tai chi stances, soccer in any turn large enough to kick a ball, and hoards of people shuffling their feet in the Asian-style run counter clockwise around the lake. I, of course, am running against the grain. Music is pumped into the city through loud speakers, but some people are practicing their karaoke in the park.

The architecture is very French and I am speaking more French than English this weekend. The cathedral looks like Notre Dame, stripped of all of its décor and French cafes line the major streets. Each street is focused on selling a different item. All shoes are on one street, silks on another, hardware, bicycle parts, furniture, art, and of course streets of food and ladies carrying baskets balanced across their shoulders. I had to buy a bottle of snake wine, which, in fact, has a full cobra preserved inside of the bottle.


Ha Long Bay
3 hours outside of Hanoi is a beautiful World Heritage Site featuring thousands of limestone karsts, or islands. ‘Junk’ boats troll tourists through the cliff hanging islands, some containing enormous grottos lit by discotheque lighting. A sound system would make this cave a great place for a rave.




I am hanging with 2 French girls, a couple from Wales, an Aussie and a Thia-French family on a boat for the weekend. The crew makes amazing food, the views are spectacular, and the weather superb. We embarked on a sunset Kayaking trip into floating villages where believe it or not, they had cable TV run by generators and a floating bank with an ATM! No monks at this one though.


When the sun went down, we opened a bottle of Bordeaux on the roof of the junker and watched the stars emerge through the sky. I was the only one to spend the night up there under the stars and in the middle of the night, I awoke to the moon lighting up the islands around me and I was covered in dew.

Back in Singapore, the Genentech brigade is invading the island. For 6 months I was the only FTE from SSF. 5 expats arrived in January, and now over 50 temporary employees will migrate from SSF to the Genentech dorm at Orchard Scotts, my serviced apartment. Makes it a little odd to hang at the pool in my bikini.

You also probably never thought I would return to India so soon, but this week a colleague and I were invited to present in Mumbai at the International BioProcess Conference in October.

Indi(an)a Kelly and the Nightmare-sicle of Doom

Spent 8 days in India, ate one full meal, it was on average 115 degrees, and I am on 6 medications now. This is the most beautiful, yet polluted, place I have ever seen. My gum is crunchy, my phlegm tastes like dirt, the kids look like pig pen, and when I blow my nose at night, looks like I have been sitting next to a campfire way too long.

The Cow Yogi?
Yes, India is the land where the cows are even happier than they are in California and Wisconsin. That is because they are holy here. Where else in the world can you walk through a major city and have cows by your side, even in a restaurant? People even play with their patties to form little hamburger-sized pellets to cook and clean with! They do not have green pastures of grass, but garbage does suffice their four stomach chambers. This is a great place to play What Scat is that? Cow? Camel? Dog? Monkey? Elephant? Goat? All these animals walk the streets of major cities and even the people poo in the streets. I actually broke down crying after stepping in a holy load of dung in my flip flops.

Varanasi
We started our trip in Varanasi – “The Oldest Continuous City in the World” (Taj Ganges wait staff, 2008). It is the City of Shiva – the holiest place in the Hindi culture to wash away your sins and the crossing grounds between the physical and spiritual world where people send their dead to be burned into the Ganges River in a cremation ceremony. Steps, or Ghats as they are called, line the Ganges in this town where 60,000 people a day bathe in the same area as others burn their dead and 30 large sewers discharge into the river. 400 million people live along the basin of the Ganges. There are 1.5 million faecaleoliform per 100ml of water. To be safe to bathe in, it should have no more than 500 (Lonely Planet 2007).

Varanasi is has 2000 year old architecture through the maze of streets which make up their Old City inspired by Buddhists, Hindis, and Muslims. Puja happens every night at dusk, where people gather for the ceremonies along the ghats. Sitars and music play through the loud speakers which also distribute prayer calls, as little boys and girls pester you to buy post cards and candles. They LOVE Goldie Hawn here and want to know if we know her in California.

Bodies wrapped in colorful silks are being burned along the shoreline. The air smells of spices, urine baked in the sun, barnyard animals and burning flesh.

The Nightmare-sicle
Of course the first day of the trip in the extreme heat, when I see an ice cream man selling dreamcicles for 10 rupees (about 25 cents), I am ecstatic and run to get in line. As I enjoy my yummy Popsicle and ask Craig if he wants a bite, I notice his look of disgust.
“I’m not eating a home-made popsicle!”
“It’s home-made?” I inquire as I notice the recycled stick inserted crooked. Of course I walk back to inspect the packaging of my ‘dreamsicle’ and the FDA would probably not approve this operation, but I finish it anyways.

Shiva Shits
My India welcome package came today! Complete with draining my plumbing, projectile vomit, dehydration, and body aches. It is 115 degrees and I have goose bumps. I am confined to a beautiful room in a medieval mansion along the shore of Assi Ghat, decorated in antiques, colorful silks, beautiful light fixtures and a four-post bed with a trippy god painted above it which makes for great fever hallucinations. It hurt to even sit up in bed.

Considering I had perfect attendance in school and have only taken two real sick days (one for a sprained ankle and the other because I was slipped a ruffie at a local bar) this sitting home sick thing is horrible, especially when on vacation. Craig kept me alive and found a doctor in town to get some medication and electrolytes. Fever broke the next morning in time to see the sunrise over the Ganges.
About 10 km from Varanasi and dating back to 290 BC is Saranath, the Monastery of the Turning Wheel of the Dharma.”. This is where the Buddha gave his first sermon. We spent the day here before flying to Udaipur in Rajasthan, North India.

Octopussy
Many of you would know Udaipur from 007’s 1984 adventure in Octopussy. Most of the movie was filmed here and every rooftop terrace in town plays it at 7:30pm. The Monsoon Palace sits above a hill in the horizon and the floating palace is literally right in front of hotel room view, which is good since Shiva has struck again and I am confined to the room for the morning.


During the afternoon, while the temperatures soar over one hundred degrees again, we went to tour the City Palace with beautiful mirrored mosaics which made some of the rooms feel like you were inside a disco ball. Other rooms of the palace reminded me of Jeannie’s bottle.


In the afternoon, I had to return to a silk shop, since I was so rude to some girls that tried to sell me a sari while nauseated. They were surprised to see me come back and began wrapping me in two meters of fabric. I knew I could never dress myself alone this way and asked if they had something more modern like the girls on the streets wear. The teenagers took me up to their room and opened their closets to try on their clothes, while showing me their school photos, pictures of their boyfriends and the shrines to their gods.

After the fashion plate session, I ended up clad in a Mother Theresa veil with a dress in the international colors of McDonalds, but it fit, it was authentic and I paid some Indian girl 500 rupees to steal clothes from her closet. They stuck a dot on my head, tried to henna my hands, and placed rings on my toes.

Our second day in Udaipur, Craig rented a motorbike and we tried to head in the direction of a fort 85km out in Rajasthan, but after going in circles for a couple of hours, we decided ride through the desert and explore the lakes around Udaipur, stopping in hill tribes, the TB hospital, and finally finding the Monsoon Palace and wildlife preserve, which we deemed to expensive for what it was worth. In one village, my Blackberry was the highlight – all the village kids came out to see the magic phone.

Our last day, we ventured almost 200km out to the massive and majestic Chittorgarh Fort situated on a hilltop in Rajasthan I don’t even have the energy to climb the stairs of the bell tower (and you know how much I love Stairmaster), but after seeing Craig’s photos, I wish I could have made it. I stayed on the ground while the monkeys and children terrorized me. Again, I was a tourist attraction in this town as families wanted their pictures taken with me. What am I, a freak of nature?




Taj
That evening, we hopped a plane to Delhi and a train to Agar, home of the Taj Mahal. Train stations in India are the dirtiest, grimiest, most polluted endroits. Of course the stomach cramps and vomiting started again for the three hour ride from hell where I was either in the fetal position or throwing up into a squatter in which no one has made it into the hole, including me.

I can not go to India a without seeing the Taj, so at sunrise, I forced myself out of bed to join Craig to the mausoleum before the bus loads of overweight tourists can get into our pictures. The structure is beautiful white marble which is great to moonwalk in the shoe covers they make you wear. It is hard to enjoy when you feel like crapola and are dehydrated, but outside the walls, I find the dentist/doctor/veterinarian to prescribe me medication that I can not find in town.

Tried to lay low during the afternoon to sleep in late and relax on the roof terrace with a view of the Taj compound, however, I didn’t close the main door to the stairwell and accidentally let a band of monkeys into the hotel who raised havoc and got chased out by the manager with his rifle.

To stay out of the sun, we visited a boutique hotel that costs $1,200/ night then headed to see a Bollywood film. I was excited to see a McDonalds and after not holding a meal down for six days, I was curious to see if my Bali-Belly cure would solve Shiva’s revenge, but WHAT?!?!? No Big Macs or hamburgers at McDonalds!?!?!? What the? That is like having the News without Huey Lewis! I guess in India it would be equivalent to having the body of Christ on a bun.

To end, I would just like to share with you the biggest news stories in India:

‘Stray Cattle are still a big problem in Delhi,’ –but they still can not do anything about it.
‘The Dalai Lama doesn’t have horns.’ - ?
‘Man-eating Leopard is loose in Dhaurahra’ – he has already eaten six people.
‘Housewives are forced to have unnatural sex’ along with a whole page dedicated to molested children. And the largest story which made the news every day was the fury over the scantly clad cricket cheerleaders in Bangladesh, who happen to make the front page of the papers every day. As one of the put it, “wouldn’t a sari be hard to kick in?”

Namaste.

Dirty Countess Vice President as certified by the Pilates Institute Happy Fun-time Barbie

This week in Asia I am finishing up my final projects for my MBA classes, taking 15 hours of Pilates certification courses, competed for ANZA in the 100km Mountain Biking Race for BIKE ASIA 2008, was elected Vice President of the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE) in Singapore, and I still had time for a pitcher of Margaritas.

http://results.dirtraction.com

go to RESULTS for the Mixed Quad!

We took 1^st place! I only had to get off the bike twice and I finished in 40 mins to keep our ringer’s lead. My main goal was just to get down the course without crashing. The trail had a little bit of everything from rolling hills, single tracks, a mud pit, jungle riding, demonstration obstacles, and an open bermed-up site. It ended with a short run through the pit stop where my legs felt like Jell-o and I was covered in mud.

There are not many girls in Asia capable of riding a bike, let alone a technical course with a bunch of guys. I was the ‘token’ for the Australian-New Zealand team (ANZA) and got to ride with an Australian mountain biking champion. The rule is to have one women cross the finish line in the relay. The morning before, I was suffering anxiety attacks, waking up every 2 hours, felling sick to my stomach. If I f*’d up, the team would be disqualified and I didn’t even have a bike yet.

Friday morning I should have stayed in bed, but went for the 6am training ride. Half-way into the ride, the monsoon rains hit and we got power-washed. I learned a new bike command - ‘car wash’ means a lorrie (that’s English for truck) is about to pass you in the flooded lane. It is equivalent to being hit by a tidal wave while riding a bike. It took a whole day for my cell phone to dry out.

Abs of Titanium
After the race on Saturday and all day Sunday I took fifteen hours of Pilates testing for my certification. FIFTEEN HOURS! Most people are sore after an hour, but 6 hours of Pilates after being dehydrated in the race, and then drinking a pitcher of margaritas to celebrate was a mistake. When I got up to go to the bathroom at night it felt like someone inoculated my buttocks. It hurt to breath, my core was so sore.

Mo & Bid in Asia
The past few weeks have been busy on site with the arrival of the modules and the second delivery has hit the port in Tuas. We have had many of the Genentech engineers out from SSF. Also visiting Singapore last week were my mom and dad, aka the Constanzas. Luckily the weather was good for their visit and while I was working during the week, they visited the Indonesian island of Bintan where my mom had an allergic reaction to some sea creature and has blood blisters still covering her legs. On their last night, they were able to meet my Singaporean friends in a traditional US BBQ. Bid brought four lbs of hot dogs and red hots from Chicago in his suitcase.

Jadoo
This means magic in India. The day after my birthday I’ll be taking off for my next adventure in India – traveling to Delhi, the Taj, Varanasi, Udaipur, and Jodhpur. I am hoping to practice yoga and meditation at an Ashram in Rajasthan, an area of North India. Literally the meaning of Ashram is 'work, volunteer and purify self'. The purpose of an Ashram is to complete the process of self purification under the kind guidance of Swamiji. Can anyone imagine me meditating? I can not sit still for a minute.

Jungle Boogie

Borneo and Brunei

Kelly's Jungle Book

Royal Brunei Airlines on the morning of Chinese New Year – heading for a Muslim country since everything will shut down in Singapore for the next four days. Our flight is blessed with a television screen of a mosque superimposed with Arabic phrases as a man speaks in tongues.

Once we arrived, we took a taxi to the boarder of Brunei and Borneo to meet Lim, our guide who drove us to Medamit to catch a long boat into the jungle.

“Don’t worry, the man is handicapped and can not speak very well, but he can still drive the boat.” Lim explains as a guy comes up with one arm put on backwards, his knees do not bend and he has three teeth, but as promised, he is one hell of a jungle boat driver. We wait on the dock for the driver’s mom, grandma and grandpa to finish shopping in town. Lim says we are lucky today because the tribe has hunted two wild boars for dinner tonight.

Up Shit Creek with 3 Paddles

The river winds through the jungle with dark clouds above. The water is the color and consistency of chocolate milk. An hour upstream, we reached the Long House of the Penan Tribe, the former cannibals who once ruled the jungle of Mulu National Park. They were featured in the August 1999 issue of National Geographic. The driver and our guide are the chief’s sons and I believe this to be the chief in this photo, but when I saw him, he was in a baseball cap, t-shirt and shorts.

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/penan-tribesman_pod_image.html

We spent the night in a Longhouse, which is exactly that – a long house with many families living next to one another. Their homes are on stilts and connected by a long exterior porch which becomes a communal street for the village. Again, I make friends with the jungle kids who love their new glow bracelets and want me to hang them upside down by their ankles.

The slaughtered boars are out back with their heads cooking on the grill and carcasses being chopped up for dinner tonight. The bugs are Jurassic Park sized. Ants have bodies the size of wasps and a delirious cicada is mesmerized by a fluorescent light and has been banging his body repeatedly against the ceiling. I thought one of the kids was throwing a tennis ball at the roof.

At night we play blowpipe darts, which was their way of hunting before guns. You put a poison dart in a long wooden tube and blow. I ask to see their skulls, but our guide informs me that they have been buried. The Christians were good for one thing in Borneo – eliminating cannibalism. The missionaries brainwashed the tribes into good souls who now farm and kill pigs instead of eating people. Yey Jesus!

Jungle Hickeys

From the longhouse, the chief drove us three hours upstream to the beginning of the Headhunter’s Trail of Mulu National Park where we began an 11 ½ km trek through the jungle. We waded through calf-high murky water, swamps alternated by wet roots that are hard to tell from the snakes. The forest canopy is high with red monkeys flying overhead with prickles and vines hanging in the air, all covered in moss. Leaves are the diameter of hoola hoops. You can feel the photosynthesis happening around you. Blood sucking, malaria-ridden bugs and worms are driving me nuts.

I am traveling with my friend Tim from the ANZA bike team. He is a former outward bounds instructor who came prepared with gators and Gortex boots. I’m in my aerobic shoes with ankle-high socks, so the leeches are having a feast on me. Wild boars are crossing our trail and at km 5, the downpour begins.

When we reach Camp 5, our 19 year old guide is pulling the leeches off me. I run to the bathroom to clean up and as I squat to pee, I notice my shorts are filled with blood. One little sucker crawled almost to China and attached himself to the crevice between my inner thigh and buttocks and he is STILL sucking my blood. All the other bites have turned into dark purple blood freckles.

Camp 5

Backpackers gather from all over the world at camp 5 – Norway, Australia, Wales, Japan, Holland, KL and South Africa are all represented. Even though it is pouring, I occasionally get a glimpse of the limestone cliffs above us, which look like Yosemite. Our 19 year old jungle boy cooks for us too. Everything is a carb-overload and I will not be eating rice for a few weeks after this trip. Bats are dive bombing our barracks which consist of outdoor sleeping quarters covered from the rain.

Since I do not have my backpacking gear in Asia, I look like a tool with my 1200 count pristine white cotton duvet cover I stole from the serviced apartment with matching pillow case and fluffy white towel covered in a pink mosquito net. I feel like Paris Hilton in the rough life.

I wake in the middle of the night hallucinating. With my eyes closed, I see snakes and centipedes transforming into roots and trees winding in and out of giant leaves that turn back into snakes. With eyes open I see glowing objects floating in the pitch dark. a.) This is the onset of malaria, b.) Someone has slipped me some acid, or c.) The correct answer is my mind is so stressed from the hike through the jungle. I have a horrible nightmare that our long boat is lost down stream in this storm happening outside and we’ll have to walk back to the longhouse.

Pinnacles
5am and it is still storming, but we are going to try to summit anyways. The river has raised at least a couple of meters by now. I went pottie with a preying mantis.

Our guide has calves of steel and is carrying a machete. There are no switchbacks on this trail, only straight up, pulling myself up on roots and trees, trying to aim for the ones that are not alive or have 1,000 legs. The rocks are encased in moss and intertwined with vines feeding back up to the rain forest. Some points have ropes and cables to hold on to.

At 1800m of the 2400m view to the Pinnacles, our guide turns us back due the danger of the impeding rains and the fact that if we slip, we may be impaled by a limestone pinnacle. We are soaked from head to toe and know there is nothing to see in the cloud above us.

It takes more time to maneuver down the cliff than up. At one point I remember feeling like Bat Man spelunking down the side of the bat cave, just as my tree gives way and my back hits the limestone shaft on one side and flies me back to rack my stomach on the other side and send me into a small pool of water. This is not a trip for the weak or light-hearted. I think I saw this on TV once when it was called the Eco-Challenge.

36 hours straight of rain flooded the river an extra 20-30 feet, but luckily the chief managed to hold tight of the longboat. He has been waiting for us to come out of the jungle for two nights. The usual 4 hour trip downstream only took half that today with the speed of the flood waters.

Brunei

One night back in Brunei to dry our feet. The opulent mosques look like they are ready for the Vegas strip, but the main mosque I wanted to see was under scaffolding. The Sultan must have been at the height of his wealth during the 1960s and early 70’s by the looks of the Brady Bunch era architecture. Our goal is to find something that does not contain rice for dinner and we discover the only Italian restaurant in town along side of the lagoon. Across the lagoon is a community on stilts and ‘water coffins,’ as they call their water taxis, cutting through the choppy wakes in front of us. The thing that sucks most is Brunei is dry and we can not even have a glass of wine.

Brunei is one of those been there, done that types of destinations. Our flight is blessed for its way back to Singapore. I’m glad we did the trip – it was an adventure of a lifetime. Kelly’s Jungle detox too. Breathing pure oxygen, sleeping dusk to dawn, full moisture treatment, absence of sun to ruin my skin, my carbo diet and new blood. I feel great – like Keith Richards after a transfusion. My psyche will take a little longer to recover.

Borneo & Brunei

Borneo and Brunei
Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!

We have an extra two days off in Singapore this week, so I am heading to Borneo for the CNY! Even though I hate monkeys, I will be looking for the ugliest of them all- the endangered proboscis monkey! He has a nose that looks like a dong! Poor ugly monkey.

We'll be flying to Brunei and bus to the boarder to find our jungle trekking guide to take us into Mulu National Park - the Yosemite of SE Asia. We'll be staying in a longhouse on the river the 1st night while trekking the head-hunter trail, which yes, used to be the thoroughfare for cannibals.

From there, we will go to camp 5 to summit the Pinnacles route, complete with cables - just like Half-Dome. Look for pictures next week!

http://www.mulupark.com/html/activities/jungle_trekking_headhunter.htm