I have been restless ever since my last trip to Bau. I felt the urge to escape. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because of the haze forcing me to stay inside as if the walls are closing in on me and can’t breathe. Maybe I’m running away from something. There were too many maybes, nothing was known for sure.
I decided to go to Mukah.
On the day of departure, I arrived at Kuching International Airport early since I couldn’t check in online. I walked to the check-in counter and handed over my passport to the friendly man sitting at one of the three AirBorneo desks. “Where are you going today, sir?” he asked. “I’m flying to Mukah,” I said with excitement. He keyed in my details and then asked me to weigh my bag over there. He pointed to the scale that was next to the business class section.
I took my suitcase and lifted it onto the scale. It showed 7 kg. I looked at him, but he was looking at his screen. I walked to his desk. “It’s 7 kg,” I said with a slightly awkward smile. “You have to weigh yourself also, sir,” he said with an emotionless face. Perplexed, I walked back and stepped on it. This time he looked up, and I told him the number.
I didn’t ask him why I had to weigh myself. I was sure he knew what he was doing. As I stood back at the counter, I put my suitcase on the conveyor belt and he handed over my ticket. The ticket showed a different boarding time compared to my app. Literally 10 seconds later, I received an SMS that my flight had been delayed by 2 hours. As part of my ongoing efforts to be more patient, I decided not to think too much, and just walked to the departure hall. I showed my passport and boarding pass, sent my backpack through security, and headed towards the gate.
At the gate, a staff member handed me an RM20 voucher and I decided to walk around for a while. It gave me the opportunity to get closer to my daily 10K-steps goal. I bought some beehoon and kopi and took a seat while messaging friends and reading the news. Close to the announced boarding time, I walked back to the gate and noticed more people sitting there. The time displayed on the announcement screen had remained unchanged.
To kill time, I walked multiple times to the opposite end of the terminal. There was still no announcement for boarding. I decided to wait at the gate. After 20 minutes, people started moving and one of the AirBorneo ladies opened the glass door that led to a ground-level lounge. We sat down and waited for a sign to move outside.
The plane appeared not to be ready when we stepped outside the first time, and we had to turn back. Not long after that, the ground staff gave us permission to walk the same way towards the small plane that was waiting for us. It was a tiny Viking DHC-6-400 Twin Otter that is used for rural air transportation. It was my first time flying in a small plane like this. As we came closer to the aircraft, I climbed the four steps that led inside. I was seated at the back.
The cabin was about three quarters full. After the door was closed, the taxi to the runway started. I held my hands over my ears as the plane made a lot of noise. Anxiety rushed through my body as I looked around the cabin. I felt claustrophobic. Somehow I always felt this anxiety when I was about to fly, but this smaller plane made it worse. I started reading a Dutch ebook that I had saved on my phone. Once we reached the runway and started to take off, I closed my eyes and focused on pleasant thoughts.
The higher the altitude, the less noisy the aircraft became.
I continued reading and pretended that I was somewhere else. Most people in front of me were sleeping. I laughed every now and then when I read something funny, and after 30 minutes I dared to look outside the window to see what was happening. This plane flew at a lower altitude compared to bigger planes; however, due to the haze, I couldn’t see much. Most of the time it also felt like we were flying through the clouds.
Twenty minutes before landing, one of the pilots, visible through the net separating the cabin and cockpit, announced in Bahasa that we were going to land shortly. I felt relieved and the anxiety slowly left my body when we landed.
I was finally in Mukah, the cultural capital of the Melanau people.