Many people in Borneo still cycle for fun, some in the evenings, others on weekends as a hobby of sorts, the more adventurous try short cross-country trips or mountain biking if their soft bottoms can take it. That’s about as far as they would venture out from their comfort zones.

One trio in Sarawak, on their last lap of youth, was an embarrassing exception. In fact, they hadn’t been on a bicycle for years and one of them, Colin Wei Hua Sing, 40, didn’t even have a machine to call his own.

cyclist bicycle ride 230209 04 Still, all that didn’t deter a husband-and-wife team in Kuching from setting off on their mountain bicycles with Colin on a borrowed one on Feb 2 for Kota Kinabalu. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, it is said.

It was a very late start, 9.40am, on a drizzly very Kuching morning where it can even rain non-stop for two-week long stretches at a time during the landas season, Oct to Mar, in great glassy sheets of grey although the dry spells are now getting more frequent and warmer. They had earlier vowed rain or shine to flog their personal motto: “Think green, try pedal power”.

They rolled into the Sabah capital 17 days later last Thursday, via Brunei, as the city clock tower on the thickly wooded slopes of Signal Hill, Bukit Bendera, struck noon in the searing heat of one of those week-long dry spells which are punctuated rudely by sudden downpours and flash floods. That’s Sabah caught up in the extremes of weather brought on by global warming.

Meet Marina Foo, 43, and Donald Tan, 40, lawyer and guest house/art gallery owner respectively, and their friend Colin, a sound engineer, who kept the pair company after the lady’s brother and an English friend pulled out at the last minute. The gutsy trio went that extra mile – 1,355km to be exact - just to prove that they could “do anything if they put their minds to it”.

The simple things in life

“The tiredness was just completely gone,” said Marina in KK, while husband Donald chipped in: “It was worth it and fantastic...it was a trip of a lifetime.”

“It (the trip) was more than a statement,” added Donald. “It was to prove to ourselves and others that people can travel without any motorised vehicles.”

“It shows that when you drive to almost everywhere nowadays, and live well, you forget the simple things of life.”

Donald disclosed that he and his wife were not exactly strangers to Sabah, where he has a paternal grandmother, 87, and they have other relatives. They fly to Kota Kinabalu quite often, “thanks to Air Asia”.

“Since a cousin in KK was getting married on Sat (Feb 21), we thought it was a good idea to time our cycling visit accordingly,” explained Donald.

cyclist bicycle ride 230209 03 “But the idea of cycling from Kuching to Kota Kinabalu shocked many people in Kuching and along the way. They kept asking us why? Even friends back home texted us during the entire trip asking us whether we had quit or were about to quit.”

It had been a trip three years in the talking but no doing until they decided one day to just simply get off the couch, where they usually park themselves, and go, go, go.

They had no training or any other preparations whatsoever. Not even a simple medical check-up to certify them physically and mentally fit for the challenge of the wilderness away from their soft, urban lifestyles.

There were more than a few moments of doubts and hesitation in the days before the trip, even on the night before they set out. “I thought to myself. I have never cycled even 100km in my life, let alone over 1,000 km. We haven’t been on a bicycle for years and even Colin had to borrow his machine from a friend,” said Donald.

Nothing better to do?

“We started with just some simple rations and a few clothes in a backpack each. An hour later, we were still within the confines of Kuching and Colin was at the point of regret.”

Apparently, the first three days were the most arduous of their trip. They couldn’t almost cope with spending five to 10 hours everyday on the road. They took a day’s rest in Sibu and another day in Miri.

penan forest sarawak 100708 01 During their 15 days on the road, they made 14 stops, going through Balai Ringin, Sri Aman, Betong, Sebangkoi, Sibu, Selangau, Tatau, Bintulu, Batu Niah and Miri, all in Sarawak; Seria in Brunei; Limbang and Lawas in Sarawak again; and Beaufort in Sabah before rolling into Kota Kinabalu, the waterfront capital city of the state, hugging a narrow strip along a blue-green stretch of the South China Sea in North Borneo.

Colin confided that many people they met along the way were convinced they were “crazy cycling through the jungles of Borneo”. Donald pointed out that one elderly man in a coffee shop in Lawas asked them whether they had “nothing better to do”.

“But people everywhere were kind and generous with us,” said Colin, Donald’s schoolmate, who kept in touch with him all these years.

“Every day we were up by 5am and made for the nearest coffee shop by 6am. By 6.40am, we were on the road,” said Marina. “This is the best time of the day, cycling through the early morning mist. There were big centipedes and crabs crawling across the road, hornbills flying past us and eagles circling above.”

'An experience to treasure'

Marina, like the others, marveled at the beauty of the flora and fauna in their jungle setting along the way, Donald described the journey from Limbang to Lawas as particularly the most memorable and the jungle in Merapok still virgin and untouched by human hands.

“Crossing the suspension bridge over the Lawas River was an experience to treasure,” said Donald, selling his trip passionately.

It was mission accomplished. The idea was to blaze a trail and put Borneo on the world cycling map. It could not have been for nothing that Confucius, honourable ancestor in far away China, said that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”.

sarawak dam project 050708 tutoh dam Now, they have clearly earned the audacity to presume that many others in Borneo, Malaysia and from around the world will follow in their footsteps or rather cycle tire tracks. Le’ Tour de Borneo? Their Kuching-Kota Kinabalu cycling trip may not be the first and last.

Next challenge for the Kuching trio: a cycling tour taking in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, “the world’s best kept secret” despite Mount Kinabalu, according to the inhabitants of this huge island, generally third-ranked in size after Australia and Greenland, the white continent of Antarctica discounted. No date has been set for their Kalimantan cycling trip.

They leave this evening for home and a well-deserved rest, not on their cycling machines of course, but by Air Asia, “the folk hero airline of all Borneons after years of silently suffering with Malaysia Airlines”.

Like all Sarawakians and Sabahans, “who have been miserably at the receiving end of the national flag-carrier for years”, they make no apologies for this.