Borneo: for those of you that haven't heard of it, it is an island consisting of 3 parts: Eastern Malaysia, Indonesia and the tiny kingdom of Brunei. It's name conjures up images of steamy rivers, jade colored mountains dense with jungle, and headhunters! It is a land of mystery and excitement, where strange animals roam unfettered through the untouched forest. That's what I always thought anyway. It hasn't been exactly like that, as in, no headhunters anymore, and huge swathes of the forest has been turned into palm plantations but nevertheless it is certainly an interesting and rewarding place that we have been exploring.
We flew into the capital of Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, on July 26. We chose Malaysia Airlines over Air Asia this time thankfully. We got pink guava juice and a full meal of Indian food: paneer, dahl and rice! We only ended up staying one day in KK before heading to Sandakan, a town on the East coast, for an Eco Film Festival. This event was really cool, it was a bunch of awesome nature/film lovers all coming together for lectures in the afternoon and then film screenings and musical performances at night. It was all free! A guy named Roger Munns from the production company Scubazoo gave a talk on underwater filmmaking and showed some clips of humpback whales that he filmed for the BBC documentary "Life" episode "Mammals". He told us that the most important thing about filming animals is to know your subject. He said that divers make better underwater filmmakers than trained cameramen because they understand their subject better.
On Sunday, we went to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. This is a really great place where they take orangutans, who have often been orphaned by the pet trade (who wouldn't want a sweet little orangutan swinging from their chandelier?) and train them in their forest reserve to live life in the wild again. The Sepilok reserve is 5529 hectacres, so these apes are basically living in the wild, apart from their daily feedings, which for only 30 Ringitt (about 10$) anyone can come and see. There are around 60 apes living in the reserve, but only a few show up for each feeding. They swing and jump through the trees adroitly and onto the feeding platform, where they have bananas, cucumbers, and oranges waiting for them, and all the tourists (including us) are delighted and snap hundreds of photos! The website for this amazing organization is: http://www.orangutan-appeal.
The next day we headed to Uncle Tan's Nature Camp for our 3 day jungle safari. It was a bit of a splurge for us, but when in places like this sometimes you have to treat yourself to an amazing weekend of exotic wild animals. Heading up the Kinabatangan River in a motorboat, we started spotting animals before we even got to the camp. Silvered languars, brahminy kites, macaques, and white egrets were our animal appetizers. After we got settled in, we went for a nighttime boatride, where we saw frogs, saltwater crocodiles, owls, and civets. When we got back to camp, I saw another civet only 12 feet away! Beautiful stripey weasel. We began the next day with a morning nature cruise, where we saw lots of birds, like Kingfishers, egrets, crested serpent eagles, oriental pied hornbills, and the craziest monkey ever: the Proboscis Monkey! More on him later.
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| Kingfisher |
All of the guides at Uncle Tan's were very knowledgeable about the animals and were really good at spotting them. They could see a small bird or a still monkey from 100 meters away, in a tree, sometimes in the dark! It was amazing. On our afternoon nature walk our guide Leo spotted a frilled tree frog sitting on a trunk that I couldn't even see when he pointed right at it with a stick, not for a few moments anyway. That evening we went on a sunset cruise on the river, where we saw thousands of flying foxes departing their roosts for the night. The sky was thick with them for around 15 or 20 minutes, these huge bats taking flight to gobble jungle fruits all night. Quite a sight!
That night, after an amazing dinner, we had the option of taking either the "hardcore" trek or the normal one. After hearing rumors of thigh deep mud on the hardcore trek, I decided to go on the normal one, while Travis, always up for a challenge, went on the hardcore one. We set off on our hike and after spotting a few gigantic spiders, a weird elephant insect, and a few colorful sleeping birds, we hit the endangered species jackpot. The other guide (of the normal hike) called to our guide and sounded really excited. We all slogged through the mud to see what was in the tree. I got mud up to my knees but I didn't even care. Up in the tree was...A SLOW LORIS!!! I was so thrilled to see one of these in the wild, not only is it very cute, it is also very endangered. Our guide said they only see them once or twice a year! I was positively glowing as we headed back to camp.
Two hours later Travis still hadn't returned from the hardcore hike yet. I was just going to ask the cook if everything was ok when I heard the hardcore group come back. Indeed there was mud involved. From the looks of it, lots. Apparently they had gotten a little lost in the swamp. "What did you see?" I asked. "Oh, a lot of kingfishers" said Mr. Travis. "How many?" I said. "Around 5 or 6, but some of them were the same one. Also a baby tarantula." Mud up to his thighs, Travis sat with me in the dining area drinking by candlelight with some of the other people at the camp. Erin, a fellow yank, was so sad that she didn't get to see the slow loris that she went out with one of the guides after midnight to try to find it, but no luck. "The animals wait for no one" said Lon. I mean, he's called a slow loris, not a stationary loris. On my way to bed, the palm civet frightened me again in the dining room.
This wildlife camp was so much fun, surely one of the highlights of my trip. Who knew Borneo would be so good for me to see animals? I had a sneaking suspicion...Today was another epically awesome day. We were so excited about seeing the proboscis monkeys at the Kinabatangan that we decided to go to the Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary. We arrived and it was heaven. There were wild monkeys everywhere! Proboscis monkeys are one of the strangest species I have ever seen. The males have huge noses, they use them to attract mates. We got to be so close to them too! And some of the silver languars that were hanging around had cute little orange babies clinging to them. We also got to see some hornbills up really close.
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| Proboscis Monkeys: #1 Weirdest Monkeys |
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