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    A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, Can this travel writer be green?
    A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, Can this travel writer be green?
    A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, Can this travel writer be green?
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, Can this travel writer be green?

    By Heather Hapeta

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    About this ebook

    A travel writer explores Malaysian Borneo and uses her travels on the world's 3rd largest island to consider how green she is - or isn't. From kayaking and trekking in sanctuaries and national parks she falls in love with Sarawak and Sabah -she also loves the music at the Rainforest World Music and Borneo Jazz Festivals along the way. Food features high on her interests but of course it's the animals that draw us to the region: orangutans, endemic Proboscis monkeys, the naughty macaque, the Bornean gibbon, slow loris, and she even sees a clouded leopard beside a palm oil plantation: they all feature in this small book.

    The uncomfortable truth about travel is, bloggers, like this writer, are helping destroy the very world we long to see and protect. It's a double-edged sword, we need to love it to protect it and to love it we want to see it and read about it. The kiwitravelwriter certainly loves to travel and this book will encourage both armchair and actual travellers to travel, and to tread as softly as possible. After reading this, Borneo will be high on your bucket list.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHeather Hapeta
    Release dateApr 10, 2015
    ISBN9780473312879
    A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, Can this travel writer be green?
    Author

    Heather Hapeta

    A freelance travel writer, blogger and photographer: She lives in New Zealand and is still travelling , photographing and blogging the world.

    Read more from Heather Hapeta

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      Book preview

      A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo - Heather Hapeta

      A Love Letter to Malaysian Borneo: Or, can this travel writer be green?

      Author Heather Hapeta 2015

      First published 2015

      Cover photo by Cristian Morettin, taken at Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Sabah

      The author has asserted her moral rights in the work

      Travel. Memoir. Essay

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Published by Passionate Nomad Publishing

      Wellington, New Zealand

      Email: kiwitravelwriter@gmail.com

      www.kiwitravelwriter.com

      Discover other titles by Heather Hapeta

      Naked in Budapest: Travels with a passionate nomad

      Surviving Suicide: A mother's story

      Dedicated to Malaysia;

      To all green travellers and,

      To all tourist activities and destinations that seriously aim to be

      sustainable - in the whole sense of the word.

      Special thanks to Renée Sara for converting my words to this ebook

      Table of Contents

      Why write this?

      Enough talk, let’s travel

      Meeting the hairy locals

      Ecotourism

      Same-same, but different

      Delightful Kuching

      Bintulu beckons

      KK

      Racing heartbeats and big bellies

      Spending your dollars

      Off to Brunei

      Sabah's east coast calls me

      Kinabatangan and Tabin

      Back to my 100% pure home

      Greenish - but not as green as I'd like to be

      Connect with Heather Hapeta

      Why write this?

      I’m surrounded by noisy, diesel-fumed boats, nudging each other, racing their engines, drivers manoeuvring so their passengers get the best view. It is an example of mass tourism almost at its worst - a slick operation where numerous vehicles have brought us to see proboscis monkeys. It’s marketed as an eco-trip but it doesn't seem green to me.

      It makes me wonder: can a travel writer, or any traveller, really be green - or is this just an oxymoronic dream, given the air miles needed to get to destinations?

      Of course if I lived in Europe I could travel far and wide by train or boat, but here at the bottom of the world I really need to use a plane whenever I travel. Getting to the world’s third largest island was no different. Borneo had been on my bucket list for years - so was living 'green'. Just as my parents did, I brought my kids up to pick up rubbish on the beach, to ‘be a tidy kiwi’ as old TV campaigns encouraged us, and to reduce, reuse and recycle.

      But how realistic is it when I not only travel, but then pen articles and blogs about places I've been, perhaps influencing others to visit them, increasing their environmental footprint, just as I do when I add yet another destination to my travel bucket list.

      In this essay-cum-travel memoir I’ll consider how green I was, or wasn’t, while exploring this ‘seething hotspot of bio-diversity’ of an island. (‘Planet Earth’ BBC TV). Mainly of course I’m really just taking you on a trip with me through parts of Malaysian Borneo - and giving myself an opportunity to relive some, but not all, of those magical times. As their tourism tagline says, ‘Malaysia - truly Asia’.

      I’ll also consider, briefly, my own islands: New Zealand.

      Please note, during the eight weeks I was in Malaysian Borneo, my travel was arranged by the Sarawak Tourism Board for one week and, for another one week period, by the Sabah Tourism Board. As an ethical writer, you will see no difference in my writing about those hosted two weeks, and my six weeks of self-funded travel. I write it as I see it, not because of who paid for my bed, transport or activity.

      I paid for my return airfares between New Zealand (NZ) and Malaysia on Malaysian Airlines - a distance of over 15,000 kilometres, and so blow any green-credentials I could claim. But what is eco-tourism?

      It seems there’s no universally accepted definition of ecotourism, and there are considerable overlaps in the meanings. It’s perhaps the most over-used and misused word in the tourism industry and it is often deliberately misused for marketing purposes.

      I’m a self-taught writer, not a journalist, or an ecologist. This is not a scientific paper with lots of facts and figures, merely the musings about green issues by a traveller who wants to walk as lightly as possible on Earth, and is using a particularly wonderful journey as a way to explore the issues. I visit places on my bucket-list rather than the destination-flavour-of-the-month and would like to be considered an eco-traveller.

      Time-rich, I’m a slow traveller, so stay longer in more places than most, trying to absorb the culture and flavours, to sit and watch people. It also means that although I don’t always sign up for an expensive eco-tour, I do try to practise the principles of ecotourism.

      Enough talk, let’s travel

      The annual Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching, Sarawak, (East Malaysia, Borneo), which started the day after I arrived, surpassed my expectations. Set on the edge of the jungle, in the Sarawak Cultural Village, it has become a signature tourism event in Malaysia’s largest state, Sarawak. By the time I left New Zealand I’d learnt that in Malay the letter k at the end of a word is silent so had begun to say ‘Sarawa’ as Malays do rather than pronouncing the harsh k.

      I stayed at Damai beach Resort during the three-day festival, and along with great shows nightly, during the day attended workshops with artists from various bands, combining to jam and show how their instruments work. This meant the Australian didgeridoo was playing along with other wind instruments such as a saxophone or Iranian bagpipes, making it hard to choose which event to attend. I loved the informality of them while learning about different countries, their music and instruments - it was clear the musicians loved them too.

      World-wide, the music festival circuit is full of competitors want to use our travel dollars to introduce and support local and international musicians, and of course to promote their area. This is a great one for your bucket list - either as a destination, a stopover, or as a side trip while in Asia and, as I’m looking at green things, I need to note Heineken provided recycling bins & sponsorship for the festival. They also gave me a reusable bag which I’m now using for shopping in New Zealand, helping my eco-credentials by reducing my use of plastic bags.

      Sarawak Cultural Village, 35 kilometres from Kuching, Sarawak’s capital city, is situated between Damai Beach and a rain-forested peak. The two stages are nestled among trees at the foot of the legendary Mount Santubong, and throughout the village screens are up so everyone has great views no matter where they are. I sat on the ground on the rise in front of the stages.

      Talking to a couple of the music writing professionals while at the 16th festival, I was told by Kate Welsman, from ‘The Good, The Dub & The Global’ on Australia’s largest community radio station 3RRR that she was gob-smacked

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