I can now see why Jim Thompson came all the way down from Bangkok for a holiday in the Cameron Highlands, even if he did get eaten by a tiger or kidnapped by the Chinese or whatever happened to him here, this place is awesome! I was expecting similar weather conditions to what we had in Mount Kinabalu, Borneo - cool nights with hot, sweaty days, but it was actually perfect - cool nights, cool days, about 75 degrees all the time. It was actually kind of cold for us, being used to 95 degrees and humid. Anyways, we weren't just here for the refreshing weather, though that is reason enough to come here. No, we had lots of hiking, exploring, tea tasting, and farm visiting to do. The hiking we never quite got around to, as it was replaced by eating. Our Malaysian friend Lydia, who we know from Queenstown, is from the city of Ipoh, which is sort of between KL and the Cameron Highlands, and she happened to be here for the day when we first arrived. I can't tell you how nice it is to know a local - they can show you things to do, give you advice, and more importantly tell you what to eat. And this is where the hiking got sabotaged. One of the foods that we feel is under-appreciated in the States is Indian food. I don't think I had ever actually had Indian food before first going to New Zealand. All I knew is it had curry in it. Well, if you haven't figured it out already, Indian food is awesome. It's also big in Malaysia, so Lydia took us to an Indian restaurant and was able to explain what everything was. We spent the rest of our 4 days in the Cameron Highlands eating at least 1, often 2, meals per day at the Indian restaurant. You could get a huge piece of naan, along with some dhal (veggie curry) dipping sauce, which was a meal in itself, for less than a dollar. The real diamond in the rough that Lydia showed us was Roti Tisu, a huge cone-shaped crispy bread sprinkled with sugar and sweetened condensed milk. We immediately started brainstorming selling these things at festivals, carnivals, and sporting events back home right next to the funnel cakes and cotton candy. They rock.
banana leaf meal - you are supposed to eat it only with your right hand. I used a fork
All told I think we spent 3 days in Cameron Highlands, and for the life of me I have no idea what we did. All I remember is our very nice hostel, Gerard's Place, and eating. One thing I know we did was the "Countryside Tour." For a mere 35 ringgit each - about $12, we got a half-day tour in a nice air-conditioned van with about 6 different stops and an English-speaking guide. Can't beat that. First stop was a nice Chinese temple, though nothing we haven't seen before.
I'd bet Steph's favorite stop was the Rose Center - a huge garden full of roses and tons of other flowers with a sprinkling of random painted concrete statues of Disney characters.
The tea plantation was the most anticipated stop on the trip and I must say, it was better than I expected. The tea-making process is about as simple as it gets, and the plant was actually shut down for the day we went because of a power outage, but the plants themselves are what was interesting. The neat rows of tea plants blanketing the countryside was beautiful. We were also surprised to hear that the plants keep producing for a very long time - the ones here are still the original plants from when the plantation was started over 80 years ago! If you want a taste of Malaysia, make yourself some Teh Tarik (Pulled Tea). It's basically hot tea sweetened with condensed milk and "pulled" - poured back and forth between two cups to form a froth. If you're not crazy about tea, like me, you could try Kopi Tarik, the same thing but with coffee instead.
Enjoying a nice cup of Kopi Tarik
We also visited a strawberry farm, but unfortunately because of the power outage we couldn't try one of their famous strawberry milkshakes. Luckily the ice cream was still frozen and we could have that.
My favorite stop was undoubtedly the butterfly garden. Now, before you call me a Mary, it wasn't just butterflies. They had lots of snakes, turtles, frogs, fish, spiders, and some really cool bugs.
biggest beetle in the world
the coolest praying mantis ever, imitates an orchid
yes, that is actually a bug
plus, butterflies are so pretty
The final stop on the tour was a bee farm. Steph hates bees because she associates them with yellow jackets, and she once was attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets that eventually led her to be sitting in a creek in her underwear, in front of my mom, on one of their first meetings. I find that story hilarious, so by the same association I like bees, so while she hung out in the gift shop I went to look at the bees making honey. Turns out it's not all that exciting - just a bunch of bees packed into a hive. We did get to try fresh honeycomb, which was fantastic. If you ever get the chance to try fresh honeycomb, do it. You don't eat the honeycomb - it's basically wax, but you chew on it and suck out all the delicious honey.
this gives Steph nightmares
this makes my mouth water. can you buy this anywhere?
I'm sure we did other interesting stuff in the Cameron Highlands, but since there is no photographic evidence of it to jog my memory, I don't remember it. Still, it was one of our favorite places that we visited in Malaysia. One of the things we had still not done in SE Asia was get some quality beach time, so our next destination was the Perhentian Islands, off the north-east coast of peninsular Malaysia.
After our marathon day in KL, normally we would take it easy for a day. But seeing as it was my birthday, we couldn’t just lay around all day. In the morning we made an effort to be more respectable tourists and went to see some of the sights. There was a big square with some museums and government buildings surrounding it. That kept us busy for about half an hour. After that, KL’s main draws are some rainforest (seen it), a big cave (seen it), and the Petronas Towers, which we somehow hadn’t seen the day before so we headed there. The Petronas Towers were once the tallest buildings in the world, but now eclipsed by something in Dubai. I remember them from some movie - maybe James Bond or Mission Impossible or something like that. They are pretty much as spectacular as you’d expect. We went and took our touristy photos, but I knew they really would shine, pun intended, at night, so we headed underneath for… wait for it… a big shopping mall. Hey, it’s my birthday so I can do what I want. We spent the day doing what we normally do in Asian malls - sampling lots of food, people-watching, and sometimes just a little shopping. The Avengers had just come out so we killed some time and went to watch that. We’re not into our superhero movies but thought it was good. The rest of the audience ate it up and would laugh histerically at every joke, the cheesier the better. Either they all know English or the person who did the subtitles worked wonders with the timing.
I normally don’t like to do much for my birthday, but used the excuse for us to visit a fancy rooftop bar at a nearby hotel for some amazing views of the Petronas Towers. We had our one drink and ordered up some nachos (why? I don’t know, maybe desperation? Mexican food is, no matter how much I hope it is, never good in Asia).
KL was awesome. Sort of in-between Bangkok and Singapore, though a lot closer to Bangkok. Bangkok is a bit cheaper, but the main thing it has going for it is it’s food - Malay food is pretty good but it’s nowhere as good as Thai! So we kept moving. It’s about time for another respite from the heat - this time to Cameron Highlands. Steph heard there’s tea plantations and it’s where Jim Thompson mysteriously disappeared - hey, let’s go there!
We wanted to let you know what our first full day was like in Kuala Lumpur. This isn’t a typical day in an Asian city for us by any means, but it does illustrate what kind of crazy stuff you can get up to if you’re not merely sightseeing. I’m not sure how this will turn out - it may be kind of like one long run-on sentence, but hopefully it reads a bit better than that.
Our hostel offers free breakfast on their roof, so that’s how we started the day. Toast with jam and tea or coffee. You can just see the Petronas Towers from here. There isn’t a whole lot of famous stuff to see in KL, aside from said Petronas Towers, so we just started walking and headed in their general direction. We are staying in the Chinatown area of KL and at first glance it looks like there’s lots to do, but nothing is open in the morning so we’ll save this for later. It’s hot in KL, maybe hotter than Singapore. We walk for about 20 minutes and simply can’t take it anymore, so duck into the first mall we see, just to cool off. There is a 7-11 in the mall so we grab a big slurpee and slurp away. Low and behold we’ve stumbled into probably the largest mall in KL - Berjaya Times Square. Time to look around. We spot a Papa John’s pizza, but it’s a bit expensive by SE Asia standards and it was like 9 o’clock, so first we head to Auntie Anne’s pretzels - one cinnamon sugar pretzel, please. Oh my there is a giant Krisby Kreme here. How did we miss it? The standard glazed is still the best doughnut in the business and it tastes just as delicious 5,000 miles from home. The New York Cheesecake flavor wasn’t the best. As we’re letting our morning sugar-rush settle down, we scout out the mall a bit more. There is a giant amusment park on the 5th floor. Steph is excited. In my effort to avoid that, we opt for the indoor archery range. Steph is surprisingly good, if not a bit erratic, and has me beat in our competition before she chokes in the end. Typical Steph. There’s a video arcade next to the archery place, so we stop in for some action. I pride myself in my skill in the basketball-shooting games and made sure I had the record beat (handsomely, I might add), except for the one’s that have obviously been fixed by some lousy cheaters. Plus, you gotta love watching some of these guys kill-it at Dance-Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and all the other nerdy games. I’m not sure why at this point, maybe because she was just so darn excited, but I let Steph talk me into going into the amusement park. It was actually pretty impressive - they had a full size roller coaster, complete with loop-de-loop, lots of other rides that spin you around and upside-down, and even midway games. It wasn’t too expensive and you are allowed to come and go as you please. I’m sold, let’s do it. Steph loved the roller coaster and screamed like a little kid. My favorite was like those big ships that go in big loops. My least favorite was the DNA Mixer, which was a platform that flipped forwards and backwards until you think you’re gonna barf, then does it a few more times. Steph opted out of that one, which quite frankly was a good choice, though I would have loved to see her barf, which she most certainly would have done. After the DNA Mixer I needed a break for a bit, so we took the monorail train over to a different mall, Lot 10, to eat in their food court, which we heard was “amazing.” It was pretty cool - like a clustered maze of food stalls serving mostly Asian food but also some Western as well. Steph went with her Singapore fav - Carrot Cake, the white variety this time (not as good - while I opted for the Chinese beef noodles - basically plain noodles with this slow-cooked beef mince concoction on top. Both were good. Topped it off with a shaved ice dessert with strawberries on top. You gotta be careful with the shaved ice desserts here, as they often include beans and condensed milk on top, but this variety was delicious. After lunch we scoped out Lot 10 a bit, bought a big bag of Tutti Frutti Mentos since we had never heard of this flavor before (as it turns out, for good reason), scoped out the sales at the department store, then headed back towards the amusment park. We kept seeing a coffee shop called Old Town White Coffee all over the place, and Steph said it was famous from around here, so even though we were no more than 200 feet from our last air-conditioning we stopped in for ice coffees. Half the price of Starbucks and probably the best iced coffee I can remember - may have to let Steph stop for coffee breaks more often. On the way back to Times Square we stopped at a big mall dedicated to electronics. It’s crazy there could be this big of a mall strictly for electonics, as there is really only so many cameras and computers on the market, and thus lots of copies of the same store, but the place was packed. We did some browsing but aren’t really in the need for any gadgets at the moment so headed back for more roller coasters. A few more rounds on the rollercoaster and my big flipping ride and we’d had enough of the amusment park. Turns out there are two arcades in this mall, so we went for a few more rounds of basketball as well. We were getting pretty tired at this point, so stopped off at Starbucks for the half-price Frappachino offer they had on at the moment. Steph loved the worker there that stood outside ringing a bell and saying “special discount for you! Half price!” in a very funny accent. We finally left Times Square for the day and walked back over to Chinatown. The Central Market there is pretty cool - a bit touristy but well organized with lots of different types of shops, not just the same few shops over and over again as some markets tend to be. I tried for some of my favorite deep-fried bananas from a dude outside but they were pretty cold by this point and basically not edible. He charged me a ridiculous tourist price too - that’s 66 cents down the toilet! Back in the Market we couldn’t resist the fish spa, where you dip your feet into the aquariums full of little fish, who eat all the dead skin off your toes. It’s extremely tickley (is that a word?) but Steph swears it leaves her feet feeling super smooth. We hadn’t had luck finding anywhere decent for dinner by this point, so reluctantly went for re-heated chicken satay in the Market food court. Not the best but decent. It seems Chinatown in any city has a good night market, and in KL it is no different, so after dinner we went to see what was on offer. Mostly the same stuff as the night markets in Bangkok - knock-off watches, sunglasses and purses, touristy t-shirts, plus lots and lots of food. We found lots of good munchies - I had a semi-cold beer, some of that delicious Chinese dried BBQ pork we had in Singapore, and Steph found a place that grilled up a skewer of broccoli for her, basted in a chili sauce. That was the winner. We both picked up pairs of knock-off sunglasses for the beach and we got some mangosteens (some strange fruit Steph claims is very good for you and usually very expensive at home) to go. Back to the hostel for a shower and straight to bed - that was one hell of a day! Now, as I said earlier this isn’t exactly a typical day for us - we basically went all out and just got whatever we wanted, but all of this, including our own room at the hostel, set us back just a pinch under 100 bucks. That’s a pretty good day for a hundie. Now for some sleep so we can do it all again tomorrow!
Biggest Krispy Kreme ever! This is the upstairs seating area
Adam on the DNA Mixer
Adam's Beef Noodle
Yummy shaved ice
Fish Spa - this was when we were trying out the tank with the big fish!
There aren't many places that we've been to that we can honestly say we didn't like. Sandakan was one of those places. We came here for a couple days after leaving the Kinabatangan to clean ourselves up, enjoy a nice air-conditioned room, and catch up with stuff on the world wide web (it had been 6 whole days!). Sandakan allowed us to do all that, but it wasn't exactly in comfort. The town is, in a word, a dump. It's dirty, overcrowded, with no good food and almost nothing interesting to see. The place we stayed at was a dump too. The bathroom/shower, as they do it in Asia, wasn't draining properly so the entire floor would be covered in water for days after taking a shower. We were happy to not have to bathe in the river, but this wasn't exactly a huge step up. Needless to say, our flight to Kuala Lumpur couldn't come soon enough.
Doesn't look so bad in this pic
In retrospect, staying somewhere in Sandakan's suburbs would have been better. The suburbs looked a bit nicer than the city and it would have put us closer to Sandakan's two main draws - the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center and the airport (to get outta there!). Sepilok, luckily, is world-class. They rescue injured, orphaned, and illegally-kept orangutans and slowly rehabilitate them with the ultimate goal of being released back into the wild. They run off donations (check out the Orangutan Appeal UK if you want to adopt one) and the money brought in by allowing tourists to come in and watch the feedings. We were there for just such an occasion. They have built a platform in the forest where they lay out some fruit twice a day for the orangutans to come and eat. It's not an enclosed forest, so while most of the orangutans that come to the feedings are ones the center is rehabilitating, wild ones can also show up so you never know what you're gonna see. Initially two juveniles showed up and but had to be pretty sneaky in getting some food, which was being guarded by an aggressive and greedy long-tailed macaque.
Time to eat!
Obviously the most comfortable position to eat in
Once the juveniles left we thought the show was over, and many of the tourists left. After about 10 minutes a big male and female showed up for a feed. It was while we were watching them that the resident "naughty orangutan" came walking up the boardwalk behind everybody. He seemed unimpressed by us but did enjoy watching us scatter as he casually walked through the crowd. The rangers were telling us to move out of his way, which seemed pretty obvious until one french lady stood her ground and let him walk right up next to her. It wasn't until the rangers told her that he likes to bite that she finally moved, before the orangutan had a chance to sink his teeth in her leg as I was hoping. This went on for about 5 minutes - orangutan walking around and tourists scattering - until he apparently had enough and walked back down the boardwalk. On problem was, this was also the way out for us. We gave him a few minutes then cautiously followed. We caught up with him at a junction, where a ranger tried to lure him down a different path so we could make our exit. This worked just long enough for us to slip by, but he then decided that he wasn't done playing with the tourists and started following us down the boardwalk. So that's how we found ourselves - getting chased by a naughty orangutan. It wasn't a high-speed chase - he never went faster than a slow walk - but Steph was freaked out nonetheless and wouldn't let him get any closer than about 100 feet. I thought it was pretty cool and could have sworn he only wanted to give me a high-five, but wasn't about to find out. He followed us all the way out to the parking lot and climbed onto the roof of the cafeteria building until one of the rangers walked over, handed him a banana, and they walked off hand-in-hand. So that's what he wanted!
Naughty boy
The chase is on
The next day we showed up at Sandakan airport about 3 hour early (did I mention we were ready to leave?) and off we were to Kuala Lumpur! Click HERE for all our Borneo pics.
You may have seen the Gomantong Caves on TV before. They were featured on Planet Earth or Human Planet or one of those BBC documentaries. Actually they may have been in both, because there are a couple different phenomena going on here - one animal-related and one human-related. The cool animal-related event to see here is the bats. There are something like 2 million bats living in the cave, and every evening around sunset they leave in a mass exodus to feed in the surrounding forests. At least, we thought it was every evening. Apparently, some nights the bats decide not to come out. Not sure who is making this decision amongst 2 million bats, but they chose not to come out the night we were there. The tourists were there with cameras ready. The bat hawks were there, ready for dinner (aside from the never-ending flow of bats leaving the cave, the real attraction is supposed to be watching the hawks catch and eat the bats mid-air. Again, so we hear). But the bats never came, so we left a bit disappointed. Lazy bums.
we found one bat inside
Bat Hawk - where's my dinner?
The other big draw to the Gomantong Caves are the swiftlet birds that share the enormous limestone cave with the bats. Not actually the birds themselves, but their nests. Not actually the nests themselves, either, but the people that climb rickety ladders high up the walls to collect said nests. Those crazy Chinese think that the saliva the birds use to make their nests makes you "strong," or maybe they just think it tastes good, but either way they are willing to pay top dollar for it. High quality bird's nests can go for as much as $2,000 per kilo! Bird's nest soup is the most famous delicacy, but we've also seen a lot of bird's nest drinks in Singapore and parts of Malaysia (Malaysia has a strong Chinese population too). Now, the guys who collect these bird's nests better make good money, because their office is disgusting. It smells terrible. Bat and bird poop covers the floor. Who knows how deep it is (we walked on elevated walkways). The floor and walls are crawling with cockroaches and these nasty little bugs that visit you in your nightmares.
swiftlet in it's nest
what is that thing?
This all sounds a terrible enough place to work, but the thing we still can't wrap our heads around is that some of these guys actually live IN the cave! There were a couple little shacks we saw with makeshift beds. They didn't even make an effort to keep the bugs out, seeing as the houses only had 3 walls and open windows. Osman told us he once saw a guy sleeping in the cave and actually saw a cockroach crawl into and then out of the dude's mouth. The word gross has lost all meaning.
home, sweet home
there goes the neighborhood...
It was definitely interesting to see the caves and watch the guys climbing high up to the roof to collect nests, but let's just say we didn't linger in there for long..
Wow! Where to start? We just returned from three days along the Kinabatangan river where we had an amazing time. Before we get to the really good stuff, a little background of the area. Palm oil is a massive industry in Borneo. It's made from the fruit of palm trees. An incredible amount of rainforest has been cut down to make way for row after row of palm trees - as far as you can see in any direction at times. Not only is the declining rainforest a problem for the animals that live there, but going from one of the most biodiverse areas in the world to a one-crop plantation is a major problem. It's like a ecological desert. Luckily it's not all bad news. There are still large areas of rainforest that are mostly intact and semi-preserved for the native plants and animals. Most of this is in the mountainous interior of Borneo, which unfortunately isn't where orangutans and elephants and some of the other major wildlife like to live. Some areas of lowland Borneo, luckily, still remain viable habitats for much of it's wildlife. That brings us to the Kinabatangan river (no, I do not know how to pronounce it). Most of the rainforest along the upper Kinabatangan has been logged heavily and converted to palm oil plantations, but along the lower Kinabatangan there remains a narrow strip of rainforest on either side of the river. The area is relatively small, maybe only a mile or two wide in places, others much narrower. The good thing about this, at least for us tourists, is that all the wildlife from the area has been squeezed into a relatively small space. This makes the lower Kinabatangan one of the best places to view wildlife that we have ever seen, right up there with Yellowstone. There are, of course, many different tour companies offering trips to the region - mostly packaged 3-day 2-night trips at lodges along the river, similar to what we did in the Amazon. For this trip, however, we decided to go for a homestay instead of the package thing. This will give us a more intimate experience with the wildlife and a short glimpse into the daily lives of people that live here. Osman's homestay provided all that, though to be honest we were glad it was just a short glimpse. Osman, his wife and 6 kids live very simple lives that center around the river. They bathe in the river, do their laundry in the river, and use rain water for drinking and cooking. They do have electricity but no air conditioning. It was the most basic accommodation we've ever stayed at, but Osman and his wife made us as comfortable as possible and fed us three big meals a day. After all, we didn't come here to stay in luxury.
Shower time
Days along the Kinabatangan involved boat cruises and jungle treks in the morning and evening, with breaks during the early afternoon for lunch and to play with Osman's kids. You are constantly hot and sweaty here. I just don't know how they do it. Steph and I would be worn out just from being in the heat all day and be in bed by 8pm. Anyways, our favorite activity was definitely the boat cruises. The cooling breeze as you glide across the river in the boat felt amazing, plus it's the best way to spot wildlife. Our first cruise started right upon arrival. They told us "Do you want to go on cruise now? I just saw elephants across from our house." We looked at each other and said, "Uhh, ya!" So off we were, just across the river from Osman's house was a huge herd of wild pygmy elephants. Pygmy elephants are a unique species native to Borneo; different from the Asian elephants of mainland Southeast Asia. Pygmy they may be in relation to other elephants, but they certainly aren't small. First we saw just a few lined up along the river, eating the grasses that grow on the river bank, but as we kept idling up the river, the line of elephants grew longer and longer. We counted at least 60 elephants right in front of us! It was surreal - it felt like we were at some theme park that has been cleverly designed to resemble a natural river. Could these really be wild elephants?
Elephant shower - note this is upstream of where we showered
Steph thought the babies were "soooo cute"
The elephants stayed along the river during our entire stay, and we went back to check on them before and after every river cruise. Actually we think the number grew as the days went by - we're pretty sure there were at least 80 there at one point - splashing around in the water, trumpeting at us and at each other, and of course always, always eating. We saw lots of babies with their mothers, big males and everything in between. The elephants were gathering on this river in order to cross to the other side for greener pastures. Historically they would never do this, as it is a dangerous swim for the babies, but the shrinking forest has forced them to cross back and forth for food. It's a sad circumstance, but it allowed us to see a few swim across the river! We were lucky to see a baby with it's mother on one side and another female on the other make the long swim to the other side.
There is an incredible amount of wildlife along the Kinabatangan. You basically cruise around in your boat and watch for movement in the trees along the bank. It reminded us of Yellowstone - if you see another boat stopped and it's people have their cameras pointed into the trees, stop and see what they are looking at. We saw all kinds of birds - Oriental Darters (similar to shags or cormorants), Pied Hornbills (cousin of the toucan), egrets, cranes, eagles, kingfishers, and other colorful species that I wouldn't know. We saw all kinds of monkeys - long- and short-tailed macaques, silvered and red leaf monkeys, and the proboscis monkey, our favorite of the lot. If you've never seen a proboscis, it's something to behold. The males have a huge nose that hangs down their face, sort of like a squishy gourd. They gather along the river banks every evening to sleep, so the afternoon cruises were a great chance to see them up close. On one cruise we were in a small tributary, maybe 40 feet across, with two large troops of proboscis monkeys on either side. Maybe 40 or 50 altogether, jumping from tree to tree, chasing each other, and calling across the river to each other. It was so cool. We sat there for about 15 minutes (along with about 5 other boats) and just tried to take it in all the commotion happening around us.
Oriental Darters
Pied Hornbills - the male has the bigger beak on the left
A whole troop macaques in the tree if you look close
Proboscis monkey with her baby
A male proboscis monkey - check out that sniffer!
One day Osman took us for a short trek through the jungle. It's very difficult to see any wildlife in the dense jungle, but it is cool to just walk and hear the sounds of the forest. It was during this walk that we saw one of the coolest as well as the undeniably least-cool thing of the whole trip. You can guess which is which - leopard footprints and leaches. Okay, so I think it's pretty obvious that leaches are the coolest! Ugh, not so much. Osman found one the second we got off the boat, so Steph and I were pretty paranoid about them the entire hike. We wore long pants, but Steph had the added security of gum boots while I only had my running shoes (they never have big enough gum shoes for me). The leaches hang onto leaves close to the ground and grab onto you as you walk by. Every few minutes we'd stop and check each other and flick off any leaches that had gotten onto our pants. We did one final check in the boat and though I remained leach-free, one had managed to crawl down Steph's boots and got on her leg! Ha! Luckily it hadn't started sucking blood yet so I was able to just pull it off her. Steph took it all pretty well. So the cool thing we saw on our trek was fresh leopard prints in the mud. Osman said they were made only the night before, so the leopard could still be close by. As usual, Steph was terrified, I was excited, though even Osman said his heart was beating fast. That's not so comforting from your jungle guide!
Leopard print. No leach pictures. You think Steph was gonna let me pull out the camera before pulling that thing off her?
Okay, so the elephants were great, the monkeys were hilarious, but what about that great ape that brought us here? I remember seeing an ad for Malaysia in an airport 3 or 4 years ago with a picture of an orangutan in the jungle and thinking, "How cool would it be to see a wild orangutan?" Well, we can now say that it is very, very cool. During our river cruises we were lucky to see two different orangutans hanging out in the trees. Orangutans are solitary animals - they rarely come into contact with other orangutans except to mate or if there is a big fruiting tree that they all want a piece of. They are the only primate to build nests to sleep in - similar to bird's nests, made of sticks and leaves, except they build a new one every one or two days. So the easiest way to spot them is to look for a nest and see if there is an orangutan in it. They are pretty lazy animals - mostly you see them just sitting in their nests or foraging for food, not swinging from tree to tree as I was hoping. The first one we spotted was way up in a tree and not moving around too much, but still our first wild orangutan! The second we spotted was a big male laying in his nest. He was a little closer than the first, and with the help of binoculars you could tell he was looking right at us so you could see his big wide face plate. These first two spottings were pretty special, but neither was close enough to get a really good look, so while it was good to see them, we were ranking the elephants and proboscis monkeys as cooler wildlife experiences. That was until our last day, on a trip to the Geomantong Caves (more on that in a later post), when our guide spotted a female in the trees right next to the road, and she had a baby! We sat and watched her for about 30 minutes as she ate some leaves and started building her nest for the night. They were close enough that even without binoculars you could clearly see the tiny baby peering around it's mama trying to get a look at us. Magic.
Our first orangutan spotting - pretty hard to see
That's more like it! This is the mama, see video below for her baby
Our stay along the Kinabatangan was once-in-a-lifetime. We were lucky to see what we did, and who knows how long it will be there. It's comforting that we saw lots of babies - elephants, monkeys and even an orangutan. Obviously this area is sustainable enough that the animals can continue to live here, reproduce, and maintain a healthy population. Unfortunately the future of this region isn't so clear. The forests here aren't exactly protected, and from what I can tell there isn't much to stop the palm oil plantations from further overtaking the rainforest. If you want to read more about it, I'd recommend this article from National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/borneo/white-text. This brings me to my tree-hugger plea, skip it if you want. You may want to come here one day. It's an unforgettable experience. Even if you don't want to, maybe future generations from you family will want to. If you feel really passionate about it, you can donate money, write the Malaysian goverment, or any number of things that will be sure to help. Or, more practically, you can do just a small part to help. It's not realistic to ban or eliminate the need for palm oil, in fact that would devastate the people of Borneo, but reducing the demand would help to stop, or at least delay, the need to expand the palm plantations. Supposedly 50% of the products in your house contain palm oil - mostly soap and food. So all I'm asking is, next time you are at the store about to buy something, check and see if it has palm oil in it. If it does, try to find a similar product without palm oil. It's that simple. Probably won't cost you any extra money. I know I'd love to come back here one day.
