The Second Hundred Days of Baby Darwin

"Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."

Horseradish (2007) by Lemony Snicket

Consider this a sequel to my previous post, A Hundred Days of Baby Darwin. Yes, you blinked and missed it because my sole progeny have made it to 200 days old last month! He is now a harder, better, faster, stronger baby and is scientifically proven to be 200% better than his closest competitor.

Here are the snapshots (and two short video clips) of him from day 101 to 200.

Day 102 of life: S'up.

Day 107 of life: BLEURGH HEURGH BLAAARGH!

Day 112 of life: Darwin reclining on his fuzziest, warmest pillow.

Day 115 of life: Darwin at a local Toys "R" Us in his brand new perambulator being attacked by a T. rex that Cheryl wouldn't let me buy for him.

 Day 121 of life: Here's a video of Darwin's parents having a laugh at his expense.

Day 123 of life: This bean bag gets a footsie thumbs up from Darwin.

Day 123 of life: Cheryl introducing her Samsung Galaxy S III to Darwin.

Day 125 of life: Darwin celebrating his mama's birthday at Bla Bla Bla. That face needs no caption.

Day 128 of life: A HOT CHICK KISSED ME!!!

Day 135 of life: Darwin eating his first ever Lunar New Year red packet given to him by a bloke dressed like Cai Shen at the Summer Mall.

Day 136 of life: Sitting by a pretty fountain, watching the water dance.

Day 136 of life: Here I am playing Darwin's favourite game. He has the most adorable and infectious laugh.

Day 141 of life: 7.3 kilograms of cute.

Day 145 of life: Sitting in a baby chair for the very first time.

Day 148 of life: Future Coke addict. Like his mom.

Day 148 of life: I think babies just look around a room thinking "What does THAT, THAT and THAT tastes like?!" all the time.

Day 150 of life: "OH NOES HE'S GETTING AWAY!!!" Darwin playing with his cousin.

Day 152 of life: Darwin noticing that he has hands for the first time.

Day 167 of life: This is the face he made after his first ever taste of rice porridge.

Day 168 of life: At less than 6 months and 3 weeks after his first seating in a baby chair, Darwin perfected the Malaysian kopitiam slouch.

Day 168 of life: For his first holiday, Darwin spent a night at a boutique hotel in Penang called Noordin Mews. He was simply fascinated by the dancing dots cast by my laser pointer.

Day 170 of life: Darwin REALLY wanted our makizushi at Minoru.

Day 172 of life: Darwin frenching a Pringles can passionately.

Day 184 of life: WANT.

Day 190 of life: Darwin (sort of) sitting in the driver's seat of our car for the first time. The bib was purely a happy coincidence.

Day 190 of life: Yay, mommy bought a breadmaker! SOOO PSYCHED!

Day 196 of life: SOPHIE!

Day 196 of life: Darwin, seconds away from pulling a handful of fur from Mikey's face.

Day 197 of life: He went through a phase where he would stuff his mouth with a hanky and then wave his arms around like a drunken squid.

Day 198 of life: Darwin experiencing grass for the first time at the Borneo Highlands Resort's Kalimantan border viewpoint.

Day 199 of life: Darwin snarling and flashing his two lower incisors (they first appeared nearly 3 weeks ago).

Just like Darwin's last picture album (and in all the posts I write, really), there are secret captions written in all the photo's hover texts which can be summoned if you just let your mouse cursor linger over them for a sec. So scroll all the way up and start again. Chop chop!



RELATED POST:
A Hundred Days of Baby Darwin
The Third Hundred Days of Baby Darwin



Darwin's fat landlord,
k0k s3n w4i

Preying on the Tabulae Rasae

"There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity."

Arthur Schopenhauer

I am a member of a Facebook group called the Philippines Atheists and Agnostics Society (PATAS) and someone put up this question there:

How will you introduce atheism to a 5 year old kid?

Here are the answers (copied and pasted unedited) that were given by the members there within the first hour the question was dropped.

• "you don't. Doing that is acting like any other religious nut trying to shove a belief system down a kid's throat. You let them come to their own conclusions and their own faith. it's a 5-year-old, for crying out loud. He/she can believe in the flying spaghetti monster if he/she wants to."
• "You don't"
• "I won't , I will just teach him or her to have an open and rational mind and to use logic. I will teach him not to be afraid question what he or she thinks is illogical."
• "Let them learn by themselves. IMO we shouldn't impose it on the younglings"
• "Teach kids critical thinking instead."
• "Let his/her curiosity run. :)"
• "no, I would teach him/her some science tho"
• "Let him/her be."

You get the idea. I don't get many opportunities to be proud of something I am part of but the responses I read really made me want to tell them "You guys are awesome!"

None of the atheists participating in the thread wanted to establish their atheistic worldview in that hypothetical child. None of them were worried that the kid in question would go on to embrace religion later if left to his or her own devices. Almost everyone baulked at the idea of telling a child what to believe in, preferring instead to equip that child with the means to assess beliefs.

I think that stood in stark contrast to the typical religious mindset and paranoia. It is their thinking that if they don't instil all the values of their own tribal religion in their children at an early age, these kids might get "lost", embrace another religion or - God forbid! - become atheists.

Just look at Malaysia alone. Children born to Muslim families can expect to attend "tadika Islam" or Islamic kindergartens before they even go into Primary School where they are then separated from kuffar kids for a few periods a week to attend Islamic study classes. This would go on until they graduate high school while they are tested on their Islamic knowledge in every major academic exam along the way. They are also expected to pray in every morning assembly, and at the start of every official school function.

Christians too would take their kids to church as soon as they are old enough to sit still and feed them Biblical stories in Sunday schools at an age when they still have trouble telling if Barney is a real dinosaur or not. At the same time, it is also fashionable for Malaysian Buddhists to offer their children as godsons and goddaughters to the Goddess of Mercy in hopes that she would protect them. I mean, even the temple I "served" back when I was a committee member of my high school's Buddhist Society have their version of Sunday classes for kids.

Of course, the reality is religious parents start even earlier than that. Just after a few days a baby is born, it is registered and its birth certificate would be slapped with a label indicating whether it is a Muslim baby or a Christian baby or a Hindu baby or what have you. In the case of babies born to Muslim parents, that label means that they are not allowed to leave Islam for the rest of their lives! I mean holy shit, they just barely got here! They have not even mastered the art of keeping their heads steady and already they have understood the tenets of their folks' religions sufficiently to embrace it in a meaningful and permanent way?!

That shit is bull.
 

Clockwise from top left: (1) A baby girl wearing a hijab and holding a copy of the Qur'an, (2) A baby boy being circumcised by an Orthodox Jewish mohel, (3) The immersion baptism of an infant, (4) A toddler monk in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, (5) A young boy shouldering a kavadi during Thaipusam, (6) A baby tossed about to be tossed down from a height of 50-feet in a ritual practiced by both Muslims and Hindus in India.

Atheists are perhaps unique in their awareness and conscious effort in avoiding the indoctrination of children with their personal opinions on the hypothesised God - frequently favouring the idea of letting the kids make their own discovery and choices when they are ready to do so for themselves. I believe that this pattern of behaviour is motivated by their own upbringing. As children, their own defenceless minds were assaulted with religious dogma by their parents which they could only abandon with great pain, and thereafter when their loss of faith was made known, they were likely met with rejection and estrangement from their family. It is very understandable that do not want to put their own children through the same coercive cycle of indoctrination they had to endure. They just want their kids to have the choices they were denied.

That and also because any rational human beings should be able to recognise that there can be no such thing as a Muslim child, a Christian child or a Buddhist child - there are only children born to Muslim, Christian or Buddhist households. Now, I have filled the religion field in my son Darwin's birth certificate with "None" because that is true. He has not decided on a religion, does not know what a religion is and now at 7 months old, still can't even pronounce the word "religion" yet. Of course, it would be delusional of me to consider Darwin an atheist in the way I am an atheist because meaningful atheism only exists when someone capable of comprehending it have regarded the God hypothesis but subsequently fails to develop a corresponding belief. Having intrinsic (inborn) atheism is by no means an impressive feat considering that a rigorous application of the definition of atheism would effortlessly encompass my two cats, my toilet bowl and the majority of houseplants.

Besides atheists, I wonder if the adherents of any other worldview would be so progressive as to respect their children's rights to grow up and make their own decisions about faith. Why can't they refrain from encumbering their offspring with years of cultural and scriptural programming instituted against them at a time when they are at the their most trusting and gullible? When they would readily accept the existence of Santa Claus and Batman if you just say so?

Can't you Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Sikhs and the rest of you Power Rangers see how predatory that is?



Does not like washing brains,
k0k s3n w4i

Veni, Vidi, Vang Vieng: The Blue Lagoon at Tham Phu Kam

"In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better."

Ellen DeGeneres

The Blue Lagoon. Bet you can't guess why it's named that.

After our mini-trek up the Silver Cliff, we jumped back on our rickety bicycles and pushed on westward towards the overly popular Blue Lagoon that moats the sacred Cave of the Golden Crab (or Tham Phu Kam in Lao). The Blue Lagoon is what falang (foreign) visitors to the region calls the Ka River waterhole due to the rich cerulean hue of its cool water and that name got so popular till no one remembers what it was originally called.

The site is about 7 kilometres west of Vang Vieng town and if you don't want to ride a tuk-tuk there, it is totally walkable or bike-able. The picture I've shared above may have led you to think that it was a serene isolated spot but the reality of travel photos is that they are often snapped in little opportune moments when the mob randomly thins during the course of a day or when the attraction in question is closed to the public.

Here is what the Blue Lagoon really looks like most of the time.

Humans.

Throngs of foreign picnickers are strewn about on both banks of the lagoon at most hours of the day. The villagers that run the place have installed many tables and benches, strung up volleyball nets, and erected plenty of wooden huts to cater to the flood of visitors. Of course, they didn't do all of it out of the sweet loving kindness of their hearts - you have to pay a nominal fee of 10,000 kip (1.25 USD or 4 ringgit) at the entrance.

And you know it's a party place when they have signs put up to specifically ask visitors not to gas themselves with marijuana.

But cocaine is totally fine.

There is a surprisingly large population of fish living in it.

I went for a dip while Cheryl laid herself out in one of the waterside huts. The lagoon itself is a perfect natural swimming hole. The water is clean and refreshing, there's no slimy, gooey, swampy gunk to deal with, and it was very deep - so if you can't swim, you should probably stay out of it.

It was precisely because it was so deep that dive-bombing oneself into the water became a thing there.

A middle-aged man leaping from the top branch.

A large tree grew serendipitously by the lagoon-side and its thick horizontal branches were convenient platforms from which swimmers can kamikaze into the pool. There were two jumps - one from the lower branch that's just 2-3 metres, and another from the higher branch that I estimated at about 8 metres from tree to splash. With so many other swimmers in the lagoon and no lifeguards on duty, one would be considered thoroughly reckless to attempt a dive from the topmost branch and no one with a lick of good sense in them should do it.

Which was why I did it.

Unfortunately, I have no photo or video of my plunge to show you but let me paint you a word picture: The ladder that goes up the tree was wet from all the swimmers who have been doing the stunt all day, and the surface of the top branch was likewise slippery. I, for one, was thankful for the bamboo handrails that they have nailed in place so people won't fall off until they mean to. When it was my turn, I started to freak out a little and I found my legs trembling in anticipation. I was essentially going to leap off the 2nd floor (or 3rd if you are American).

I realised then that I have never free-fallen before in my life (the closest experience I had was tandem paragliding in Manali but I was floating down then). While I love mountains and am completely unfazed by great heights, I discovered in that moment that I have an almost crippling fear of falling - which is a different thing altogether. Then again, isn't the fear of falling normal? Studies into infant animals have shown that it is probably a universal instinct, not an acquired or learned thing.

Aside from that, I was also worried that I might finally hit that bottom of the lagoon or hit the water surface in a bad way, but remembering that no one came out worse from the act, I silenced my screaming cowardly inner voice. If  I am religious, I would probably have said a prayer before I do it but being atheist, I whispered "There is no God," and out I went. It was only 8 metres but it was terrifying beyond all sense and reason. The moment I went under, all my breath was knocked right out of me and I felt the water boxing both my ears. Feeling more alive than I've ever felt in a long time, I thrashed back up towards the light and sucked a lungful of air the moment I re-surfaced.

And no, even dropping straight down, I couldn't reach the lagoon's bottom.

A Korean girl breaking water. Can't remember which branch she jumped from.

A white lad poising to take a puppy for a swim.

After having enough excitement to tide me over for an entire week, I got out of the lagoon, towelled off and found out, to my disappointment, that Cheryl totally did not see my death-defying plummet from the tree. Still, I didn't feel like repeating it in case I bring on a heart attack from the sudden adrenaline surge.

Next, Cheryl and I climbed some rocks to get to the mouth of Tham Phu Kam, which was so named due to a wet rock formation found in it that looks like a pair of crabs. I didn't know this at the time so I wasn't keeping an eye out for it (besides, pareidolia is more of a pastime for people who see faces on Mars and the Virgin Mary on grilled cheese sandwiches).

The main chamber of Tham Phu Kam.

Shrine in Tham Phu Kam.

A Thai-style bronze reclining Buddha napping in the cave.

Tham Phu Kam's size does not reach epic levels (like the Sarawak Chamber, which I hope to one day visit) but to someone like me with limited caving experience, it still inspired awe. No one had piped electricity into the limestone tunnels so if you venture just a little further in from the cave mouth, you'll find yourself in utter can't-even-see-your-own-hands-in-front-of-your-face darkness. You can rent a headlamp at the base if you like but for me, I brought my ultra-bright laser pointer and it proved to provide illumination enough for me to walk around by.

Cheryl reckoned she had quite enough of climbing up and down rocks for a lifetime that day so she elected to just hang out at the cave entrance and enjoy the soothing chill of deep earth.

The last patch of sunlight before the shadows.

There were no maps, markings or guides so exploration is done at your own risk. I am going to be caving at the Gunung Mulu National Park in a month's time and from what I gather, you can't even pee there without a guide holding your hands - so I am really appreciative of this cavalier attitude towards safety in Laos. Of course, we are talking about Laos here where taking a walk in the countryside means you run the risk of being blown to bits by unexploded ordnances, so it is understandable that they would have gotten a bit jaded over the decades.

A bottleneck in the tunnel where countless inconsiderate retards have despoiled the walls with their names and inanities.

Anyway, I just climbed deeper and deeper down into the belly of the mountain until I have enough, and I turned right back. I had no idea how much further it would go but I wasn't about to try to find out.

Long exposure of one of the deeper chambers. The light belonged to some other caver's torch as he was mucking around.

We left the Blue Lagoon and Tham Phu Kam in the late afternoon faced a 7 kilometres return trip laid before us. I was fine but Cheryl wasn't used to cycling, and the road-like object back to would prove arduous to even experienced cyclists. The offensively noisy Chinese tourists on ATV's weren't helping things with the amount of dusts they were kicking up every time one of them passed us by. We made a quick stop at a convenience store in Ban Na Thong for a drink (where a mentally-challenged boy wanked his willie in full view of Cheryl) and about halfway through, I managed to hail a tuk-tuk to take my significantly-tired other the rest of the way.

I rode my bicycle as furiously as I could and for most of the way, I actually managed to keep her in sight. But then I stopped a couple of times to take some pictures so I fell behind. Even so, I rolled into town just a couple of minutes after she did. I don't know what it is about holidays but I always feel like I can never tire when I'm on one.

In fact, on the morning of the very next day, I undertook a solo mountain biking trip, this time to the east of town, to visit Kaeng Nyui Waterfall.



RELATED POSTS:
Vive La Vientiane: Part One
Veni, Vidi, Vang Vieng: First Night in Town 
Veni, Vidi, Vang Vieng: Climbing Pha Ngeun
Veni, Vidi, Vang Vieng: Solo Mountain Biking Trip to Kaeng Nyui Waterfall
Veni, Vidi, Vang Vieng: Tubing Down the Nam Song
Veni, Vidi, Vang Vieng: Last Day in Town at Pha Poak and Lusi Cave
Sabaidee Luang Prabang: The Night and Morning Markets
Sabaidee Luang Prabang: Phou Si Hill, Haw Kham and Wat Xieng ThongSabaidee Luang Prabang: Out Alone in the City 





No fear of heights or depths, just of falling,
k0k s3n w4i

Darwin's First Ever Word

"My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."

Clarence Budington Kelland

Cheryl and Darwin is currently in Penang with Cheryl's parents and I am missing them terribly. A few days ago, Cheryl told me in a text that Darwin's first word is "Papa", in spite of my best efforts to teach him to say "Mama" whenever I can. He also started crawling (actual locomotion) after weeks of perching on all fours and lunging forward rhythmically until he falls on his face.

Today, Cheryl sent me a video recording of Darwin attempting to wear out his first word by repeating it ad nauseam.



At the time of recording, Darwin is in his 210th day of life - or seven months old. According to my DENVER II chart, that puts him right on schedule in his developmental progress.

This doesn't mean that Darwin loves his old man more than his mother. It just meant that he learned a word that he does not know the meaning of i.e. his use of the word is non-specific. He may be able to say it over and over again but he certainly hadn't associated that word with me. The first words of babies all over the world, regardless of language and culture are going to either be "papa", "mama", "baba", or "dada". That's just because they happen to be easiest words to say. Seeing as 3 out of 4 of those words can be construed as paternal references in the English-speaking world, it is no wonder that most mothers are lamenting how their little babbling cherubs started calling their fathers first (if online parenting message boards are any indication).

Research have shown in 2 to 3 days old babies that words that end with repeating syllables tended to cause increased activity in the temporal and left frontal lobes of their cute little brains - and it is no coincidence that the language centre on the left side of the brain is dominant for most right-handed adults. This makes for a rather convincing argument that our human ability to process language is not learnt but rather, it was hardwired. This may also explain why our babies' first words are repeating syllables - we are programmed to recognise these repetitions as language.

It makes sense that the simplest, most primitive form of meaningful language of our species arose from our ancestors making a sound and doubling it.

Incidentally, this can also be a powerful explanation to why the words for mother and father in most languages in the world (particularly "mama") are identical or similar even though those languages do not share any common roots. We parents, foolishly in love, think that we are teaching our infants the words to call us when in actuality, it was they who named us. In prehistory in a cave somewhere, a cave-baby said "papa" because it was easy to say, and its cave-daddy thought that his kid was calling him that.

And hundreds of thousands of years later, in spite of all the sciences and all the knowledge in the world proving to him otherwise, this modern day father still can't help but secretly feel a special sort of private joy, thinking: "Darwin called me papa! He's calling for me from a thousand miles away!"



Papa,
k0k s3n w4i

To the Edge of Sarawak at Penrissen's Peak

"Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion."

Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination (2008)

by Robert Mcfarlane

On the 23rd of March, in wee-est hours of the morning, I set out from my hotel room, abandoning my sleeping wife and baby boy to their dreams. I intended to climb Mount Penrissen that morning. The outdoor activities guy who mans a desk in the lobby of the Clubhouse told me a day before that if I start the hike from Hole 13, I can make it up in just two hours while the descent would only take an hour. It sounded like a piece of fairy cake. Normally, you are not allowed to attempt the hike on your own and you are suppose to engage one of the guides employed by the resort - but I pooh-poohed all that, lied about me being an "experienced hiker" and asked him to show me the trail on a map instead. He did one better and gave me a photocopy of the resort's map detailing all the established trails. He was letting me do the trek solo on the sly! I suspect that he wasn't feeling up to scrambling up that damn mountain for the umpteenth time in service of yet another fat tourist.

Red was ascent. Blue was descent.

The peak of Penrissen clocks in at 1,329 metres in height, which dwarfs Santubong's 810 metres, but while the summit trail of Santubong starts at near sea level, you are already at about 1,000 metres up to Penrissen if you begin your climb from the Kalimantan viewpoint - which was the route I chose.

View of Penrissen shrouded in mist. Picture taken the day before in the afternoon.

On my request, the outdoor activities director have unlocked one of their mountain bikes for my use free of charge because I was a guest there, but I ultimately decided to leave it behind because the road to the Kalimantan viewpoint (where I was starting from) is all uphill. Also, it was raining, darker out than Snyder's Superman reboot, and the thick mist looked like it might be harbouring dangerous extradimensional creatures from Stephen King's imagination - so I was forced to hang back in the lobby to wait for a more auspicious beginning. I would end up leaving at seven instead of six as originally planned.

Oh, since the trek was so short, I had little more than some overnight vegetarian samosa (which I had sent to my room the night before in prep) and a cup of tea for breakfast before setting out. I also brought no water and no food with me. As you may have already realised, this reads exactly like a set-up for a disaster story, and you are right.

The early part of the trail from the Kalimantan viewpoint.

I neither believe in gods nor ghosts, but even I have to admit that wandering into a forest before the sun is up while highland mists were still weaving between old growth trees can really give someone the heebie-jeebies. It felt as if behind the endless tree trunks and vapour, some unspeakable ancient Lovecraftian horror was breathing slowly and heavily in anticipation. It was probably a kind of predator anxiety, a throwback to the sort of dangers my cave-dwelling ancestors face back in the Pleistocene. The ground was fertile with the scent of rot and life, and before long my pant legs were wet with dew - so I detached them. You see, I was wearing convertibles because I was already married and have no need to impress anybody.

It wasn't long before I started feeling odd ticklish sensations on my calves punctuated by barely perceptible pricking pains. I looked down and lo! An army of slimy leeches have latched on to my bare shins and were feeding merrily away!

Still better vampires than Twilight's.

I identified two species of leeches which were breakfasting on my limbs but I might be wrong as I am no expert on leeches (just a meal for them). There were the shorter, dark-brown "limatok" or brown leeches (Haemadipsa zeylanica) which have a painless bite, and the nastier, bigger and more colourful "limatang" or tiger leeches (Haemadipsa picta) which have stinging bites.

Like frogs, the presence of leeches in an ecosystem is an indicator of its health and judging from the number of these vampiric worms sucking gleefully on my legs, I'd say the forest of Penrissen was too healthy for my health. I read that one should never salt or burn a feeding leech off one's skin for fear of making them regurgitate their stomach content (and all of its cornucopia of gut bacteria) into the wound so I scraped then off with my fingernails.

I happened to have some specimen jars in my satchel so I took one of them prisoner for further questioning.

Anyway, I got lost on my way to where the Hole 13 and Kalimantan viewpoint trails meet due to some a confusing trail marker. Someone had erected a large "X" along the trail I was following using two thin intersecting sticks to warn trekkers from progressing. It took me some time blundering around the marker trying to look for the right trail before I decided to just ignore it and proceed. As it turned out, the marker was a dud!

Aluminium ladders bridging the hardest hurdles.

The ascent portion of my trek was unexpectedly hard. The trail up, while very clearly marked, barely existed any longer. The horizontal two-by-fours that they have fixed along the steeper parts were mostly detached from their anchor points and in various stages of disintegrating into wood pulp from the constant damp. The annelid-rich dirt was looser than a Kolkata whore and segments of the trail have been turned over by mini-landslides. Some trees have fallen right across the trail along with the sliding terrain and at one point, I had to climb over the corpse of a tree that was wider than a family car. Naturally, I had begun using my hands as much as I've been using my feet, which I find distasteful because I could see countless leeches extending their body out of the soil and waving their anterior suckers in the air, waiting to latch on to my exposed fingers and palms.

Of course, the invertebrate biodiversity that Penrissen has to offer isn't limited to just leeches. I had also come across (and accidentally touched) a myriad of caterpillars, spiders, and millipedes. The mountain was teeming with legless and too-many-legged critters of all sizes and description.

I saw a few of these dangerous looking bright orange snails...

I couldn't identify it. Gastropods is not one of my strong points.

... this hairy caterpillar floating down at me from above, using its hirsute bristles like a parachute...

I also couldn't identify this.

... and this giant pill millipede, which one can easily get confused with the very morphologically similar woodlouse (or pillbugs). I can only narrow it down to the order Sphaerotheriida based on geography alone. I have also seen photographs of the exact same creature on the web - all taken in Borneo - but no one could reliably pinpoint which species this fella belongs to.

A thousand feet? I don't even have half of a hundred!

One of the surest ways to distinguish pill millipedes from pillbugs is to turn it over and look at the legs. Pillbugs, like all isopods, have one pair of legs per body segment while pill millipedes have two. Pillbugs also have only 11 body segments (most of them small and cramped up at the tail end) while pill millipedes have 12 to 13 segments with a large shield like posterior segment. This is a very cool example of convergent evolution where some specimens from two entirely different subphyla that live and feed in very similar conditions evolve very similar adaptations.

Speaking of millipedes, I encountered this evil-looking orange-legged beastie hanging out on one of the aluminium ladders.

Camouflage fail.

It gave me quite a fright initially because it resembled a centipede but upon closer inspection, it has two pairs of legs per body segment so it was most assuredly the less scary of the two myriapods. Centipedes have one pair per seg.

This ghostly pipsqueak here is also a millipede.

See? Two pairs of legs per segment.

And there were entire too many of these enormous tractor millipedes.

Some of its legs broke off. I wonder how that happened.

The smaller size and lighter colouration might mean it is a juvenile?

They are also known as "flat-backed millipedes" and belong to the order Polydesmida. They are characterised by the horizontal keel-like projections sticking from either side of each body segment called "paranota" (singular: paranotum). I have looked at many pictures of polydesmids online but I have yet to come across one that displays a single dorsal stripe like the ones I've seen on my hike.

Apparently, hundreds of new species are discovered every time some scientists make an expedition to Borneo and this region is recognised as one of the richest, most under-explored and most bio-diverse places on the planet. Surely, I must have came across or stepped on a new species or two by now in all my hikes. Anyway, if you have gotten suitably itchy from all that bug talk, let's go back to the story of my hike proper.

It was nice that the temperature remained lowish all the way up but the humidity still made me sweat like a Christian in the Colosseum. It wasn't long before I started kicking myself in the ass for thinking that I can go climb a mountain without carrying any water with me.

The tallest ladder on the trail. You can only see half of its length here.

At one point, I had to walk over a narrow ridge flanked only by crude rotten handrails. The view on both sides was obstructed by mist (maybe clouds) so it was a rather ethereal experience. I couldn't see it but I know there were deadly drops on either side of me.

Stitched photograph of the precarious ridge. Click to see large copy.

There were no springs, streams or falls I could quench my thirst at until I got pretty near the top. I was walking under a mossy, ferny overhang which was dripping shower-like from all the condensed dewdrops up top. I plucked a large leaf off a nearby shrub, rinsed it and collected mouthfuls of the cold, crystal clear fluid. I can't describe it beyond saying that it tasted green.

Real Mountain Dew.

It felt great washing my face with it though.

After moving on from my all-natural water dispenser, I rounded a corner and in just a few moments, I suddenly found myself on terra plana. There were no immediate signs or marker but I knew I've reached the plateau on the summit of Penrissen.

How creepy it would be if I were to hear a voice call my name at this point?

Aside from the sighs of the wind and the whirr of insects, it was silent and watchful. The trail up there had almost been thoroughly reclaimed by shrubs and ferns. It didn't look like someone came this way in recent months. I guess the patrons that the Borneo Highlands Resort cater to aren't the sort to usually grapple with vines and wrestle with mud to get to a top of a mountain.

A couple of minutes later, after trampling some plant life flat, I came to a small clearing at the edge of the peak.

Note: the arrow is actually pointing in the direction of where I came from.

There was no hut or shelter, or helpful signage there. The only landmark there was a solitary block of stone standing in middle of the clearing.

On one side, it reads,

MALAYSIA

SARAWAK

I thought it should say "Sarawak" first, then "Malaysia". It's only proper.

And on the other side, facing outward to the blinding white infinity, it was engraved,

REPUBLIK

INDONESIA

Fun fact: Do you know that "Kalimantan" refers to the whole island of Borneo in Indonesian?

It was a borderstone marking the boundary between Sarawak and West Kalimantan! The image of Mandy Moore straddling the state line between North Carolina and Virginia in A Walk to Remember came unbidden to my mind, but I wasn't about to get all giggly about being in two places at once.

I did however, piss across the border onto Indonesian soil while standing in Malaysia.

After tiring of seeing nothing but shifting mist for 15 minutes, I began my descent. I managed to reached the top in the stipulated 2 hours from Hole 13 so I expect that the outdoor activities director's prognostication of a one hour descent would be accurate as well.

Not so. The climb down was a butt-clenching experience. Everything was as wet and slippery, which is far bigger problem downwards than upwards. I must have slipped a dozen times, planting my hands and ass into the mushy dirt. I also didn't want to risk twisting or breaking something so I took extra care with every step I took - which didn't do me a lot of good. There are some sections of the trail that wouldn't hold no matter how gingerly I lay my feet on them. Footholds crumble. Vines and branches I hold on to come to pieces in my hands. Entire sections of the ground slid downhill with me surfing on them.

I realised that I wouldn't be able to make it back to the Clubhouse by noon - when I was suppose to check out - so I called the reception and asked, pretty please, if they can allow me to check out late. They said okay. I knew most of their rooms are empty so I didn't expect that they would give me hardship over it anyway. I also knew I would be too late to get my complimentary breakfast but what can one do? You win some, you lose some.

Panorama of the forest surrounding the Penrissen peak from the fairway of Hole 13. Most of mountain hidden in mist.

Two hours later, I found myself on the green of Hole 13, all mucky and thankful to be alive. After discreetly checking my unmentionables for leeches, I walked the 2 kilometres back to the Clubhouse where Cheryl and Darwin were having their lunch (they already had breakfast).

"I suppose I'm far too late for breakfast?" I asked the waitress of the vegetarian Annah Rais Café. She said she'd check with the kitchen and before I could say "breakfast of champions", she laid a luscious spread of jam, butter, tea, assorted small cakes, beans, tomato, hash brown and two eggs before me.

An ovo-lacto vegetarian spread, but a spread nonetheless.

I practically licked the plate clean before heading back to our room to shower. I discovered two more leeches in the process, one in my shoe and the other sucking merrily at the back of my thigh through a tiny hole in my pants. Whatever it was in the saliva of these damn bloodsuckers, I'm getting a reaction to it. The puncture sites are still itching more than a week later.

I know I'm not about to climb Penrissen again in a hurry.



P.S. If you can identify some of the bugs in my pictures, I'd be really grateful if you drop me a comment and tell me.

RELATED POST: Surprise Weekend at the Borneo Highlands Resort.



Stood in one country
while urinating on another,
k0k s3n w4i