hot spring – sixthseal.com

annah rais hot spring

This is Annah Rais hot spring in Kuching. Please be warned that the
“Hot Spring” sign is pointing the wrong way. The correct route is not
straight through, as the sign would lead you to believe, but on the
turning to the left into Kampung Annah Rais. It’s the third bridge
after you make the turning, there’s no other signage to indicate that
there’s a hot spring here.

annah rais trail

It’s one of the best kept secrets here…not many people actually
know about this place. We had a hell of a time finding it too, we
aborted the trip last Saturday due to other commitments, but we were
dead set to find the damn hot spring this Sunday. The picture above
shows the trail that leads there…there is no parking, basically you
just park beside the road and walk down that unmarked route.

annah rais parking

You shall behold this sight when you reach the actual hot spring:

annah rais party

It’s a running river that seems cold, until the party that was just
leaving informed us that the “hot spring” is a little nook opposite the
river. There’s the obligatory Caucasian in the photo – he’s from
Amsterdam and he came with the group of tourists.

annah rais river

This is the view of the running river. It’s quite shallow and has a
moderate current which would carry you downstream if you float on the
water – very nice. Here’s a photo of the actual hot spring pool:

annah rais hot springs

It’s basically a warm nook by the river surrounded by rocks. The
water and sand is truly hot, as I unfortunately found out when my
gonads came into contact with the hot spring. There are some places
where it’s extremely hot and there are bubbles and a smell of sulfur
permeating the area.

annah rais sand

It’s fun to dig up the sand and see the contrasting colors of the
rocks. It gets hotter when you dig deeper. There are some parts which
are visibly bubbling in the hot spring:

annah rais bubbles

We thought it’ll be nice to bring some eggs and bury it into the hot
spring sand and eat it later, but we forgot to bring eggs.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to soak in the hot spring and then switch to
drifting afloat in the cold river while blissfully sedated. Highly
recommended, it’s about 70+ km from Kuching. Here are some other shots
from that day:

annah rais leg
OMG, the goo has got my leg!

annah rais me
Please do not attempt this unless you want to decrease your chances of producing offspring.

annah rais ming
Ah Ming

annah rais miriam
Miriam

annah rais lung
Ah Lung

borneo hl

Our adventure to the only (?) hot springs in Kuching began at
approximately 15:30. It was an on the spot decision to go and off we
went to Borneo Highlands (which was the original destination).
Unfortunately, we were told that we needed tickets, which can only be
bought in Kuching town, which is 29 km or so away from where we are.

hotsprings

This was on Saturday afternoon, and I remember vaguely seeing
something about hot springs some 2 km away, so we decided to go for
that instead. With a lot of guesses, intuition, outright trial and
error and 15 mg of Xanax, alcohol and hydroponics produce, we managed
to get our asses pretty fucking lost.

indon link

We took a wrong turn that cost us 1 whole hour under less than
optimal road conditions (think steep inclines, mud and gravel single
lanes). We turned back and noticed that the Hot Spring sign was
pointing right instead of left. Duh. Off we went again, and this road
was way more complex then the last.

piling bridge

There was thrown together pilings as bridges (with one piling missing in the middle).

piling bridge right

piling bridge left

piling bridge far left

There were fucking rotten wood bridges. We didn’t know where we
ended up but we knew that the fuel was running low and according to my
calculations, we used up more gas coming here, so I was thinking we
wouldn’t be going back to Kuching tonight.

pitcher plants

I was actually looking forward to going to spend the night at a
longhouse and drink some tuak and all that. 🙂 There were no cellular
lines (we all carry different mobile operator SIM cards, there just
isn’t any coverage there) so we couldn’t very well attempt to call
friends for gas rescue.

wrong sign

Thus, at one last wrong turn, as it was getting dark, we decided to
leave, on account of the low fuel. I thought it would have been a real
adventure to spend the night in a longhouse with the locals, but alas,
we had plans for that night as well (next two posts will be about the
night part of Saturday night). Thus we tried to drive back (well
everyone except me, since all the three substances together does not a
good driver make).

muddy incline

I said tried. There was this steep incline and we were in a van and
we simply could not get the better of the hill. The wheels were caked
with mud. There was no friction. It kept stopping at some point near
the top of the incline. There were many, many attempts and all three of
us (including Miriam) had to push the van to give it more traction. No
go.

muddy clothes

Look at the tire burn on the rocks.

tire burn 1

tire burn 2

I imagine a lot of tire material was lost to this hill.

tire burn 3

There was even smoke coming out while revving the engine in order to try and fucking own this hill.

tire smoke

All seemed lost until we remembered something Ah Boon had said last
time. Same situation, they used a back weight to compensate for the
traction required to overcome such gnarly situations.

backweight trick

Here’s passing along the advice: Get everyone except the driver to
sit at the back, the back most part of the vehicle. Worked like a
charm. There were at least 10 aborted attempts to get past this
obstacle, but with this backweight (us three), we went over in the
first try and it was onwards, ho!

salam van ahoy

We drove back to the place with the piling bridge, and not satisfied
at not being able to play around in hot springs, we went for this cold
running water instead.

cold spring 1