Day Three: White-water rafting

Our first activity.  We picked up from the hotel at half nine and travelled through some rural areas to the Cue Lu river. It's fair to say that this is our first experience of what looks like jungle.  On the way we saw occasional stalls with very lonely looking attendants selling fruit and veg and a lot of construction.  Lovely scenery but very difficult to capture from a very fast, VERY bumpy van.

When we arrived at the start of the course it was hot and jungle-ish.  There was a group of cattle, maybe oxen, all crowded into the shade of one tree and a bridge that looked and felt as rickety as anything in a spaghetti western.

The boat was a thick skinned dingy that fitted six of us plus the instructor on the back.  One of the girls was nervous and when asked if we'd like to try capsizing the boat to see what it's like looked like she'd been asked if she'd like to jump out of a plane for kicks.  So we all bundled into the boat with Dad and me at the front and in charge.

The route is a grade I/II, which apparently means it's safe for kids.  I'm not sure I can agree.  Dad fell out when the boat went head first into the rocky sure, the rapids weren't huge, but were enough to show you that water can be powerful.

I little later it was my turn to go for a swim.  I came out when the boat hit a rock in the middle of one of the more exciting rapids.  At first, seeing my boat sailing away in front of me, and another boat trying to help me up, I felt a little silly, especially as they were our undeserving nemesis and would receive a thorough splashing whenever they came near.  As I was thrown against another rock, and then another rock and then again and again I started feeling less silly and a little more concerned.  I could see that the rapid wasn't large but these rocks were proving to me both hard and immovable and were starting to bloody well hurt.  When the rapid did decide to hurl me ungracefully out, it did so at high speed toward a particularly large rock on the bank.  I only just managed to stick my feet out before hitting it.

Once I was sure I was still alive it was fun, stopping occasionally to swim and racing down rapids is exciting and scary.  The next grade up is, apparently much faster and more dangerous.  It's a two and a half hour drive, so it's unlikely to happen.

Getting home we still had to decide what we wanted to do for the rest of the holiday.  We had vague ideas of splitting out time between Sarawak and Kutching.

We wondered around more in the afternoon in a hope of figuring out how we'd see the Borneo we'd read about.  In our undirected wondering we founf Go Go Sabah and wandered in.  We told a nice, well fed, chap called Alex what we wanted and he immediately umderstood what we were saying.