The back of beyond

If the profile had said…

 “Come to our rain forest retreat, it’s suitably in the back of beyond that the only way to access it is via 2 hour drive along a dirt track and there’s no internet or phone reception. You will have neighbours as such, in the shape of loggers (a couple of which have threatened us with a gun before, our closest neighbours once to spite us (when we wouldn’t allow them to take one of our trees) falsely told the police we were growing drugs, and another group beat me up and broke my wife’s hand with a stick when we asked them to leave our land) and you can be reassured by their proximity as you can hear them chain-sawing every day. You’ll be staying in your own accommodation which is a room in the workshop next to where our elderly mum lives. She recently got bitten by a pit-viper just outside your door, and prior to that, by a scorpion which sneaked under her doorway (previous Wwoofers found a scorpion in your room-you should probably keep something under the door to stop anything nasty sneaking in). You get to share our lovely home with 3 huge dogs, one of which is a Rottweiler-doberman cross, another of which is a giant Alsatian. One of your chores will be to give the Alsatian eardrops every day and powder his balls as he has eczema. He doesn’t really like it. We used to have a rabbit too, but he escaped and the dogs killed him. They also killed a dog from the village. It wasn’t very nice and we apologised, but it was good propaganda for us as it makes us look dangerous and keeps the locals away. We also have two cats. They’re lovely, but we’re currently having problems with them crapping on the balcony and pissing on our lounge chairs as they’re so scared of the dogs they won’t venture down beyond the steps. You won’t definitely see a snake, but I did come face-to-face with a King Cobra on our land a couple of months ago. Luckily I was carrying a shovel so I smacked it in the face and chipped its fangs, otherwise I would have been a goner.….”

…then we might not have made the three hour coach ride to Lawas, followed by the bumpy two-hour ride to Suka-hutan, Inthemiddleofnowhere to spend two weeks by ourselves in the jungle with no internet or phone.

Luckily the webpage showed a pretty picture of a beautiful wooden house nestled neatly amid a luscious rainforest, and boasted of a pet deer, friendly local family of macaques, and visits from hornbills, one of my favourite birds. Plus we were enticed by the fact that Stephen and Sarah who own the property, own over 300 hectares of rainforest which they are desperately trying to protect for the future, and that sounded like our cup of tea.

However, the information above is roughly the shape of our first conversation with our new host and owner of the property Stephen on our way from Lawas to Suka-hutan, the home we were due to be staying in for two weeks, house/land/animal-sitting whilst he and Sarah visit family in Australia. I would quite like to have seen our faces at the end of that crazy jeep ride. I imagine they would have looked a little like Macualy Caulkin looked at the moment he discovered he was home alone. Times 100.

What had we let ourselves in for?!

Well that’s what we asked ourselves the second we had a moment alone together. We had three days with Stephen and Sarah in which we were supposed to learn everything about the place before they left us to it, so we decided we’d be sensible to see how we felt about the place, and how safe we felt before we let them dessert us in the middle of the jungle with no forms of communication.

Thus we endeavoured to emerse ourselves in life here and ask as many questions as we could to make an informed decision about whether we were being foolish to stay or not.

To give you a taste for the kind of things we asked about, one of our conversations with Stephen and Sarah in those first couple of days went something like this…

B and E: So we need to look out for King Cobras right?

Stephen: Yes. And pit-vipers. They’re far more common and will just sit there and not move. Both can kill you so always check the ground in front of you. Some of them hang around in trees-we call them ‘lazy vipers’ as they wait for prey to come to them before they strike. So make sure watch out for branches at head height. 

B and E: Right, so no flipflops then, just trainers?...

Stephen: Sure. But always check inside your shoes before you put them on. Otherwise you might stand on a scorpion and you don’t want that…sneaky little buggers.

B and E: So look out for snakes and scorpions…

Stephen: …and spiders of course. And it’s the wasps you want to watch. The big orange ones. They’ll get you at night as they swarm around the lights.

B and E: Ok so snakes, scorpions, spiders, wasps…anything else?

Stephen: Millipedes are OK.

B and E: Phew!...

Stephen:…but watch out for the centipedes. They have a nasty sting. And if you’re wondering around at night look out for the wild pigs.

Sarah: And the porcupines! They come and steal my pineapples! Maybe carry a stick with you if you’re walking around after dark.

Stephen: Your biggest worry is the snakes though…

B and E: OK, so what do we do if we get bitten by a snake?

Stephen: Get to hospital fast.

B and E: Which is?....

Stephen: …In Lawas.

B and E: As in…a two hour drive away? And we don’t have a car?!...

Stephen: Yeah, the spare jeep isn’t in action I’m afraid (Nb. We had been promised this would be available before arriving). So you’ll have to walk down our access path (Nb. This is a 2km long dirt track) and get yourself down to the main road and hitch a lift from there.  

B and E: So hitch a lift from someone who happens to be driving that way down the long dirt track all the way to Lawas. Right…and then?!...

Stephen: Get them to drop you at the hospital.

B and E: And they’ll have anti-venom?

Stephen: Well…apparently they only keep antivenom in KK.

B and E: KK?!!! As in 3 hour drive away KK?!

Stephen: I’m afraid so. So just don’t get bitten, OK?!

B and E: Crikey. OK. So you don’t have Leopard Cats then?

Stephen: Oh yeah, and look out for the Leopard Cats.

You get the gist of it. This is Bornean Jungle….There’s no messing around!!

Thankfully what sounded in theory like some messed up horror story actually has actually into a wonderful place for two nature lovers to absorb themselves in. We actually started relaxing into it, and very soon realised that whilst there are lots of scary things around, if we made sure we were sensible and respected the fact that there were lots of nippy stingy things in our neighbourhood, then there’s no reason we can’t all live in happy (hopefully) non-stingybity harmony.

So we decided to stay....