A Walking Geography Lesson

  Most evenings I try to go for walk in an attempt to build up my fitness for the ascent of Mount Kinabalu. I have various routes now, one of which is going over a beautiful river by a rope bridge and the other is going through the padi fields surrounding the kampong. When I first arrived in August I thought it was just waste  land but for the last few weeks there has been lots of activity in clearing the fields. This evening I was really surprised to see that they had started to flood the padi fields and that an amazing system of irrigation channels exist that I previously thought were just ditches. I know we've all sat through Geography lessons of " Planting rice in South East Asia" but to actually see it in action is so much more interesting than any books! I could see the nursery rice plants ready for the planting when the fields are all flooded. Apparently three sorts of rice are grown in this area - two mountain types that do not require to be flooded and the other one that we always associate with rice. The name Ranau comes from the Dusun word ranahon meaning rice.

 The thing that I enjoy most about my walks is meeting various people - admittedly the conversations are very limited as my Malay and their English is not of a high standard but we do make some sort of connection and I feel as if they are not so wary now of this strange orang putih who wanders around their village. Some people even call me Fiona! This beautiful lady in the photo, I met yesterday and she was so friendly and talkative but what about I have no idea.