DAY 92 BORNEO – IMAGINATION

Here in Borneo, I am sitting on our porch eating cashews smuggled in from Thailand. Contraband always tastes better. We have a place on the beach. I am staring at the South China Sea right now – facing North. We have not had many opportunities to explore Northern facing beaches. On a clear day here near the equator, which I am sure does not happen often, you can imagine the coastline of southern Vietnam where the mouth of the Mekong River spills into the ocean. My imagination works better when I am holding a world map in my hand. We did see a traveler on a train who had tattooed the world map on her feet so that when she crossed her feet the maps would line up and she could imagine where she was. The temperature was nice when we went on a walk this morning. My first investigative observation revealed water buffalo hoofprints leading West down the beach. Hopefully we will go on a walk every morning. We walked West all the way to where a large river prevented us from crossing. I wil look at a map, but that could be the Papar River. Plenty of beach here to walk upon. The water is warm and not that clear and the shoreline is sandy with lots of little sand crabs. Little no-SEE-ums disturbed our otherwise perfect setting. They seemed only to be biting Ezra and me. The waves were coming in and we could have used a boogie board. The apartment is a good size and has plenty of places for hide-and-seek. “You want to see the BIG SPIDER I was hiding with?”, Ezra says to Viena during their hide-and-seek game. From what I have seen so far, the bugs are bigger in Borneo. When we returned home, our hosts, Jo and Peter, asked us to go to the Sunday market (TAMU) in Papar. I guess TAMU means Sunday Market in Malay, so being from UT and TU, I guess this is where I would put in my witty comment for all my Aggie Friends (Philip) on how you received your education from a Malaysian Sunday Market. But I cannot think of anything witty or funny – It’s actually a pretty good education just hanging around a Sunday Market. Lots of good prepared food, lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, and homemade clothing items with other arts and crafts. Unfortunately for us we arrived at mid-day with the sun directly overhead and providing zero shade while shopping. So, the TAMU at mid-day with children was a bust, and was nothing special compared to the Day/Night markets of Chiang Mai. We were all piled in Peter and Jo’s car stuck in the traffic of Papar. Everyone drives cars here and not many people ride scooters which creates many traffic jams. Even in this small place like Papar, we sat around in quite a bit of traffic. They definitely have an overcrowding of cars on the roads. I do no think I will be doing much running along these well-used shoulderless roads. We drove by a fresh fish market and seeing the little fresh fish was neat. We finally broke loose of the traffic and arrived home. They were just as excited to arrive home as we were and even taught me the word for “we have arrived” in Malay, “chegamos” in Portuguese, but I have forgot the word already. We have returned to the land of Selamat PAgi, and Termia Casi, And Jumpa Lagi, And Sama-Sama. A windy rainstorm came by and dropped the temperatures 10 degrees. I felt lik I was back in summer-time tropicalstorm hurricane on the Gulf Coast of Texas. However, instead of battening down all the windows, we opened up all the windows to receive that fresh rain smelly breeze. The “storm” only lasted 10 minutes though. To give you an idea of the apartment situation here, we are in building 30, and each building has 4 stories with each level with 10 units. 30 times 10 times 4. That’s alot of people. But we don’t see too many people. I think each building is at half occupancy, but I can tell at one time this place was once full of luxury RESORT owners and then something happened. I am not sure of this and maybe we will find out the real story, but that does not matter. We will see what Borneo has in store for us. If nothing else, no-SEE-um bites on early morning beach walks while following in the sandy hoofprints of water buffalo.