Peace Corps Malaysia

Freezing on top of Mt. Kinabalu

Letter on Kinabalu,  May 6, 1967

Dear Folks, 

Hello again from the tropics. I am happy to report that all is still well in Kuala Lumpur, and that Big Len is looking and feeling great. So is Gig Sam, for that matter. I want to thank you for all the materials and letters I have been getting from you – a huge heap of stuff was waiting for me when I returned from Borneo, and I just finished giving it the once-over. The Stanford Daily's were much appreciated, but the Observer is my favorite. You can forget the former, as long as the latter keep coming. Kaplan‘s article, The Assassins, has sold me 100%, and I now look back on my doubts after reading some of Lane’s book with shame and embarrassment. I still enjoy reading any and all viewpoints on Kennedy‘s assassination, so anything else of interest that comes your way, Big John, I’d love to see, too. I am reading Whites, The Making of the President, 1964, and will soon move on up to Sorenson. Got any others in the house? And while we're on books: Mom, go check out my math books for a stack of looseleaf magazines on computer programming (some published by IBM, some Burroughs). Please send me (by sea mail) all of them – I’ll be needing them if I get my job at the university next year. Thank you.

My mother continues to impress and amaze me. I tell all my Malaysian friends that you are going to school now, then I show them that picture of you and your bathing suit in Greece, and I have them in the palm of my hand. I can’t wait to practice my German with you, and maybe even start some Italian, too. My Cantonese lessons are continuing full tilt, but I’ve asked my teachers to slack off a bit on the language side to make room for some history, culture, etc. Both Miss Kok and Mr. Yap are practically red guards themselves (most of the Chinese in Malaysia think Mao Tse Tung is second only to God, but then, why shouldn’t they?), so the digressions should be great fun. Next year, if I’m still in Malaysia, and still on Cantonese, they will begin teaching me calligraphy. I think the only possible way Big John can keep up with me, then is to get a Ford Foundation grant to Tibet.

I’d like to give you a real detailed report of my trip through Sarawak and Saba with Big Len, but my heart isn’t in it right now. Remember Terry Rajaratnam, the Indian teacher at VI. I lived with last year and kept referring to in my previous letters? We were planning to tour India together in December, and maybe even California at the end of my term. He lost his leg to cancer a few months before I arrived in Malaysia. Well, the doctors didn’t get all the cancer, and now he has an advanced case of cancer of the lungs. One of his lungs collapsed last month while he was home in Ipoh on medical leave, and he was rushed to a hospital in KL to have it pumped up again. The doctor gives him only a few more months at best. I have been visiting him every day for two hours, and my classes, meals, and sleep has all gone to the dogs. In fact, I’m not really fit enough to write you sensibly about Raja right now. But I just had to tell someone else what is happened to probably the closest friend I have ever had outside of my family. Raja is one of the finest persons I’ve ever met, and now it looks like our relationship is going to end very soon.

But now a little on the trip (which Raja forced me to go on -  he wouldn’t let me stay back with him over the holidays). Mart Lind (another volunteer), and I took the night train to Singapore, and shopped for about 15 minutes before jumping on the SS Kinabalu Friday morning. I brought with me a small bag of clean clothes, and a very large stereo tape recorder for big Len, who was slowly going insane sitting beside 100 hours of recorded music, and a recorder which wouldn’t accept the tapes. The SS Kinabalu took two days and three nights to reach Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, where we were joined by another volunteer, David Almquist; we three stayed on board another day and night to reach Miri by Tuesday afternoon. Greek boats are nothing compared with the SS Kinabalu. Did a Greek boat ever have 200 pigs traveling on deck, drugged with opium to keep them quiet and happy?  But the sea was calm, the nights, beautiful, and the other passengers, fascinating, to say the least. It was great fun.

We stayed in Miri about three days with some volunteers, eating good food and sleeping late, and then took a series of buses, ferries, and boats to reach Brunei town, capital of one of the all-time loser countries. Take away the oil, and Brunei dries up and blows away. Even leave the oil, and you don’t have a very improved situation. But the central mosque is rather fabulous, (made out of imported Italian marble at an unbelievably cost), the "Kampung Ayer", with its hundreds of homes built over the bay on stilts, unique to my experience, and the beer is duty-free. Next morning, we took a long speedboat ride across Brunei Bay and up the Lawas river, and there was Big Len, standing before the spanking new Lawas Secondary School. Yada yada. Brothers reunited in the tropics. Unfortunately, Buff the water buffalo ran away the previous week, so no kerbau to ride on. Lawas is a lovely little town on one of the most gorgeous rivers you have ever seen, even by Borneo standards, populated by all sorts of Chinese, a few Malays, and lots of Muruts (Len can tell you more about them than I can). Len’s school is really a marvel: shiny and new on a hill, freshly cut from the jungle, with facilities equal to any I have seen in Malaya. He looked very healthy and very well-adjusted, and I’m afraid he may spent three years in Malaysia, too.  Anyway, no need to worry about the big fella, on any account. He and the job are made for each other.

We for took off from Lawas two mornings hence, first by boat (which promptly sank in the Lawas River, to the great amusement of all concerned), then, by jungle trail, then by Land Rover, then by train, and we were in Jesselton only two days later. Boy, is transportation lousy in Borneo. at Jesselton (the capital of Sabah) we picked up some more volunteers from Len’s group and continued by Land Rover to Ranau, a small town at the base of Mount Kinabalu; for, as you know, it had been decided long ago that Kinabalu Must Fall. Ranau was such a charming spot – 2000 feet above sea level, hence good weather, clear, and hardly any humidity, plus a great mountain stream for swimming – we spent an extra day there just for fun.

The climb up Mount Kinabalu was begun on a beautifully clear evening, and completed on the following beautifully clear evening, and boy, were we ever lucky on the weather. Conditions were so fine the climb was a little more than a brisk two day hike, but, had it rained, we wouldn’t have made it at all. The trail is extremely steep, so that we were going up ladder fashion a good part of the climb, and the first level spot was the site of our cabin for the evening. The cabin we stayed in supposedly slept 24, but the park ranger had set a new Southeast Asian record by signing up at least 40 people that evening. Well, we got there first so we got the beds. The rest sort of heaped up together in the middle of the floor.

The next morning we were aroused at 4:30 by our faithful guide, and we stumbled on towards the summit, using ropes to haul ourselves up 45° rock slabs with zero visibility, and 50° temperatures. It sounds pretty terrible, but we were all so sleepy, we didn’t even think about it. The last 2000 feet of the climb is above the forest line, on a huge saddle of granite that stretches off into the jungle on three sides, and into a peak on the fourth. We reached that fourth side by 8 AM, excited and frozen, enjoying a panoramas from Jesselton to Sandakan, with even some Philippine islands visible in the distance. Mount Kinabalu is 13,455 feet high, making it the highest mountain east of the Himalayas (until you get to West Irian), and of course it is holy to all those Sabans who are accustomed to seeing its tremendous bulk every day of their lives. There is even a sacrificial pool near the summit, which was littered with pieces of old chickens when we saw it.  On its sides grow some of the strangest plants in all of Borneo, including the pitcher plants, which allow insects to slide into their sweet-smelling receptacles, but make it very difficult for them to escape before being dissolved and eaten, once they have taken the plunge. Wild orchids are supposed to be all over the place, but I didn’t see any. Mosses and ferns grow in luxurious extremes, and birds are actually seen now and then (a rare treat in a jungle). On our hike down, I had a better chance to observe all I could of the mountain, and I must say, Kinabalu has a whole lot more going for it then any other peak I have climbed. An official certificate not hangs in my room, testifying to our conquest, lest there be doubts at home.

After a few more days in Ranau, I had to board the plane for Kuching, but not before Len and I planned a revisit in December, when we will conquer the upper reaches of the Baram River, and perhaps introduce the pagans of the region to the benefits of modern civilization, i.e., the frisbee. I had only one night in Kuching, just long enough for a date with a Malaysian girl I had met on the boat to Miri. There are no worries, incidentally, that I will ever marry a Malay girl: this one (Hamsiah) is probably considered modern by Malay standards, But still, she rarely leaves her home more than once or twice a month (for weddings and funerals), even for shopping (her father handles all that). In her home, her life revolves around cooking three meals, a day, cleaning, washing, and being in bed by 9 PM. At 8 o’clock a gun goes off in the Malay section of Kuching, at which signal all girls must be in their homes. At nine, all visitors must leave, and so I did. It would take one hell of an adjustment to fit into that world, and an even more difficult one for a Malay girl to fit into my world. I sometimes wonder if those volunteers who get married to Malay girls over here fully comprehend what they are getting into. Still Hamsiah is about as gorgeous and sweet-tongued a girl as I have ever met.  A little window shopping never hurt anyone.

Dave and I flew back to Singapore the following morning, and took a taxi up the East Coast to the small town of Kemaman for a terribly dull Peace Corps conference of three days duration. Thank goodness Kemaman has one beautiful beach and lots of beautiful undersea life. After Kemaman, it was back to school, where I have been ever since.

The pictures I took in Sarawak and Sabah aren’t back from Australia yet, so I’m sending some oldies but goodies instead. Keep the grades up Mom, and no dating on school nights. Big John, your article advocating dirty books is so provocative I’m going to pirate it into a publication of my own, The Supplement. Don’t tell Stanford, or I might get sued. I promise to send you a copy or two, however.

Goodbye for now, and love to all, Sam