Nescafe with Milk-Water Rafting

The rafting is what interested me but the ride on the antique train through the Borneo jungle sold me on the trip. Picked up early in the morning, I met a Swedish couple I'd be rafting with and chatted with them on the way to Beaufort, a small town south of Kota Kinabalu. There we waited for the train that was to take us down to the rafting spot on the river.

It was no surprise that the train was late. Ask a local and they'll claim that the trains regularly run on time but, come on, who do they think they're fooling? In all fairness, the train did arrive on time, but it departed late. The reason was that the single engine that was used to drive the train also had to run around all of the seperate tracks, organizing the different cars. It shifted between each of the three tracks taking one car of cargo one way, the coming back with a passenger cabin going the other.

A single driver in the engine and one man shifting the tracks, they only took 15 minutes to organize the cars and get ready to pull away, heading for the Padas River. By this time everyone ready to board was waiting, bags in hand, ready to rush on and grab a seat. The passenger cars came to a halt next to the platform and before the passengers on the train had a chance to get off, the rush to get on began with no holds barred.

Forgetting all the manners my mother taught me, I squeezed my way on trying not to shove the old ladies too hard and I found my way to an open seat. Savvy locals skipped the fight by going through the windows to set their boxes and bags on open seats to reserve them. Thus I sat next to an elderly woman of little more than wrinkles and bones, who would have never fought her way to a seat but instead used all her strength to lift her bag up through the window to claim the window seat I wanted.

My romantic ideas of a museum train still running on old tracks through a rugged jungle came true, but not without the realities of, well, an old train running on old tracks. Each of the three passenger cabins was overfilled with people squating and standing with all their belongings. Each was a sweat box. The heat made most people sit quietly and, other than the constantly clickity-clack and loud clang-ing of the train against the tracks, the only sound heard was the constant flapping of newspapers and anything else that people used to fan themselves.

The train traveled through lush forest and brushed past the walls of mountains carved to make way for the tracks. Ferns and vines grew off the walls and were so close I could have easily reached out the window and grabbed them. The tracks twisted and turned through trees and eventually ran alongside a wide, chocolate-brown river. Along the way there were numerous stops at small houses that were little more than make-shift jungle housing. These bamboo and wood houses appeared to have no connection with the outside world other than the railroad tracks.
After an hour and half we arrived at the rafting camp. Here, while the train and the rest of the passengers just sat and waited, we took our things to the camp and then returned with only the things we needed on the river. After a fifteen minute stop the train then chugged back in motion and drove forward another 10 kilometers before dropping us off where the rafting trip would begin.

Before rafting we were given a humorous introduction to the dangers of class 3 and 4 rapids and were instructed on how to handle them. Paddling like on a honeymoon was, they warned, asking to get flipped into the water. Watches made in Thailand were to be taken off as they would not be waterproof as guaranteed. Watches made in Malaysia, however, would withstand any force of nature and continue to tell accurate time. Offering the handle, oars could be used to help pull someone back to the boat, the paddle end was used to beat away those you wished to keep out of the boat. And on, and on.

It wasn't so much 'white' water rafting. Even the rapids hardly turned white. According to our guides, the more accurate color of the Padas River was "Nescafe with Milk." True enough.

The rapids were no joke. We lost at least one person on every rapid and a couple times, the entire boat flipped scattering us all over the river to fend for ourselves. It was great fun. At one point, when flipped across the boat, I caught a random knee in my nose and came up with a nosebleed. I felt it but there was little to do about it then, floating down rapids in a life jacket.
To our advantage, our boat was filled with guides. Beside myself and the 2 Swedes there were 5 guides in our boat who rode the river daily. This meant we took all the rapids head on and if anyone was "honeymoon" paddling, they heard about it. On the last rapid of the hour-long trip they decided to play a "game" they called Last Man Standing.

This was not a game. The ordered everyone to the back of the boat, grabbed a rope tied to the front of it, and just before we hit the rapids, we leaned back, the guide pulled the rope and the boat was flipped on purpose. It was awesome being flung through the huge rapids. Recent heavy rainfall had meant the river was deep and there was little chance to collide with the rocks. Instead, it was a roller coaster ride in the water with the main worry being gulping too much river water.As I was sent through the rapids without anything I could do about it, I soon realized I was headed for the shore. I wasn't necessarily too alarmed at first, but then as I was washed to the edge of the river, the flow of the water reversed and I was soon flowing back up river. Helpless against the current, I could only enjoy the ride. But as the slow flow back emptied me back in the rapids I was flowing up river again, back into the same pattern. Again, I was only on the edge of the rapids and was swirled right back upriver, and along river bank again. I was caught in a cycle in the river.

Eventually a guide made his way back up the river to help. I made it to the edge of the river to meet up with him and, instead of walking along the shore down river to the ending point, we hiked up river in the rocks and mud to where we could re-enter the river, well ahead of the rapids and swim back across -to the middle of the river- and enjoy the perils of the river again. This worked and ended up being a great time. Others were jealous I had another go at the rapids, but for my extra run, I was exhausted. We ate lunch casually until we heard the train coming back down the tracks and we hustled to collect our things and meet it at the tracks. It was the same ride home, only hotter in the mid-day, but eventually I made it back to my hostel and looked in the mirror to find that on the way home my knock in the nose had turned into a rafting souvenir of two black eyes.