Pulau Gaya

So in retrospect, I probably should have read the signs properly, rather than a cursory glance. I'm not sure it would have dissuaded me from the pale blue water entirely, but it may have made me a little more cautious. 

We'd caught a rather hair-raising ride on a boat from Kota Kinabalu out to Pulau Gaya island, whose main claim to fame is being the first site of the British North Borneo Company's settlement. The boat stopped off first at the floating village I mentioned before for fuel, poured from a shed beside a house - I'm not sure I would be a particularly relaxed neighbour, knowing that this settlement has been almost completely destroyed by fire twice... Most of the residents of the stilt village are illegal Filipino immigrants and they're scapegoated by the government for pretty much everything, as far as I can tell. Although I'm not sure that it's entirely undeserved - one drug raid left two policemen and one drug dealer dead a couple of years ago. This is the place to go in Sabah if you wanted to find, say, a gun-runner. Or a companion for the night. The boats won't drop you off there, and it's considered an incredibly dangerous place by Kota Kinabalu residents. 

Round the corner, though, is another stilt village, but this one is crowned by the gold dome of a mosque: it's populated by local fishermen, and is entirely separate from the Filipino settlement, in stigma, in religious beliefs, and in aesthetics - here, the jetties lead to photogenic, brightly-painted wooden homes on sturdy stilts, and their pride and joy is the secondary school built out over the water, with the rest of the homes.

The main reason these houses are built above the water is that the island itself is national park area. Our boat continues its bumpy ride for another 15 minutes around the side of the island and delivers us to a wooden jetty that extends out from a crescent of sandy beach. We stake a claim on a shady spot beneath a massive tree, which strikes me as leaning on its elbow and gazing out to sea, although we're actually the only people on the beach, so staking a claim is probably slightly unnecessary...

My colleague and I head into the shallow sea and float about a bit, chatting about the program we're about to begin on Monday.

My ankles burst into flame and I reach down to clutch them.

My fingers burst into flame.

See, those signs that I glossed over before were for jellyfish and not an amusing alien-octopus hybrid.

I went almost weeping with pain to the ranger, who so sweetly bound my feet in ammonia-soaked bandages, and, I assume trying to be kind, told me that it was completely out-of-season for jellyfish, and I must have very bad luck, and no I certainly shouldn't go and drag those sweet little children out of the water by their hair, because they almost certainly wouldn't have as bad luck as me. 

And nor did they, nor anybody else that day - I was the only person to leave limping on swollen and welted feet...

And the jellyfish wasn't as big as my head, so I feel the sign was a bit of a letdown anyway.

Later on, we were both within about a metre of the table, reading on the beach, when some Korean women nearby started flapping their hands and calling "Ahem, ladies! Ladies! A little monkey is trying to eat you! Ladies!" Well, it wasn't a little monkey, it was a great bloody big monkey, with great bloody big teeth, which it bared at me when I shooed it away, causing great hilarity as I leapt halfway into the water. 

I wanted to take a walk deeper into the jungle, but I looked for about 20 minutes and couldn't find a pathway anywhere - the jungle was so densely packed around the clearing that I'd have needed a machete to go off-road. I could hear the wildlife though - a few birds, and definitely some wild pigs at one point - and am looking so forward to getting out on a couple of treks. Orangutans, while arguably the most famous Bornean citizens, aren't the most interesting - pygmy elephants anyone?