Welcome to Borneo!
It felt as if Borneo secretly knew we had some trouble in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, selling our bikes. We were received with open arms, a lot of heat and amazing people everywhere. Hello Kuching! We like you. On our first walk through the city we met a lot of people, fellow travellers, who have been on the road for quite some time. Sometimes days, sometimes months, sometimes years. People travelling in an old army truck, people travelling on motorbike, people hitchhiking and people using public transport. All different means of transport, all different ambitions and all different interests, but all brought together by an urge for freedom. An urge to see the world with their own eyes instead of simply believing the messages spread by the news and social media. Obviously, there are disappointments on the road (as you could read in my previous blog), but the rewards are much bigger.
For the first time in my life, I saw orangutans. Imagine that! And we saw a proboscis monkey. Not to be mean, but dear proboscis, you are quite ugly. Huge, cute, lovely to watch, but a little ugly. These big animals are only the beginning. There are huge ants, colourful beetles, enormous millipedes and the most beautiful butterflies I have ever seen in my life. All hidden below the canopy of century-old jungles. Mind-blowing! To make things even better, we got back the stunning sunsets we were so used to in India. Probably this is common knowledge, but for great sunsets you really need to be at the west side of a place. I never realized this before being on the road. Vietnam, no nice sunsets. Laos, a few above the Mekong. India, the best sunsets, especially along the west coast and in Rajasthan. Borneo, in turn, combines the colourful sunsets with thunder and lighting. A spectacle of nature.
It has taken quite some getting used to, to travel without motorbikes. Being on time to catch the bus or the boat. Getting places suddenly became more of a hassle. And it is so expensive! It may sound crazy, but no day goes by that we aren’t talking or dreaming about our next big adventure, our motorbike around the world trip! Which bike shall we take? Which route? Will we be able to start some online business before we leave? So many questions and we can’t wait to find the answers the future will bring! The upside of using public transport is that we suddenly have way more time to do small things that had to happen or that we just like to do. Things like getting my blog up to date. And I started to love travelling by boat! Taking you across the sea and further into the jungle. Winding rivers passing along the tiniest villages, hidden houses and dropping you off at a city with no roads connecting it to the rest of the world. Every time I see yet again one of those wooden houses along the water, I wonder what life must be like for the people living there. No roads, just a small boat. A house in the middle of nowhere. A garden. That’s all the eye can see, but hidden behind the walls there are human lives. Stories, struggles and experiences that probably are totally different from mine. It’s mesmerizing to realize that there is not one way of life. It’s just about choosing your way of life! Life doesn’t just happen. Give your dreams a voice, put your plans into words and eventually deeds. Step by step, make your life to what you want it to be!
