Borneo part 1

As soon as I knew I was going to Asia, both Borneo and Hong Kong were on my must-see list.  I booked a tour for Borneo because I wanted to see some of the less populated spots and I had heard about a great tour company called GAdventures.  https://www.gadventures.co.uk/.  Visit the Embassy of Malaysia website for the most current visa information, but I didn’t need any special paperwork or visa for entry. 

 

I didn’t know anything about Borneo, besides the fact that orangutans live there, so I turned to Wikipedia.  It is the 3^rd largest island in the world and is divided into 3 countries.  Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. 

 

Malaysia has thirteen states and three federal territories.  It’s is separated by the South China Sea into Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo. Peninsular Malaysia borders Thailand in the north and Singapore in the south. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, which I visited a month before and blogged about.

 

Brunei is officially the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace. It’s on the north coast and accounts for about 1% of Borneo's land area.  It has a bit of coastline, but most of the country is surrounded by Malaysia.

 

Indonesia is located mainly in Southeast Asia, with some territories in Oceania. It sits between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and is the world's largest island country, with more than thirteen thousand islands. Java, the world's most populous island, contains more than half of the Indonesian population.

A little more than half of Borneo is in the Northern Hemisphere and including Brunei and Malaysia, while the Indonesian portion sits in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.  Borneo has one of the oldest rainforests in the world, about 140 million years old. 

I flew into the northern city of Kota Kinabalu, or KK, a day early and wandered around the city for a bit.  There was a nice harbor with lots of bars and restaurants on the short promenade.  After a late dinner, I started home but was stopped by a massage studio blocking my way.   There were 10 really nice reclining chairs and above them, a huge movie screen.  They had just started the movie Jumanji.  Being the multitasker that I am, I though, great.  I’ve been meaning to see this movie, I’ll kill two birds with one stone.  I’ve spent 3 months in the land of $10-foot massages and this was by far the best.  And I’ve said that several times, but this really was the best! 

 

The next day I met my fellow travelers, a friendly mix of American, Norwegian, Danish, Australian, German and British adventurers. Some of the group had been with our guide Ron on another tour, a trek through the jungle.  That sounded awesome, but probably too strenuous for me. I’m sure I could have done it, just not at the pace of the much younger group.  We all went to a get acquainted dinner and the adventure started the next morning.

 

After a 2-hour bus ride, we arrived at our first stop, the village of Tambatuon.  This tiny village sits next to the Kedamaian River.  We could see Mount Kinabalu in the distance and the surrounding area was lush with thick vegetation.  It was very beautiful and wild, exactly as I thought it would be. The accommodations were very rustic, we stayed in a dorm with bunk beds, but they were surprisingly comfortable.  The communal bathrooms and showers at the back of the building were a bit primitive, but I’ve stayed in far worse conditions more times then I can count, so it was all good.  After a short tour of the village, we had plenty of time to wander around.  Oddly, we didn’t see many people, but the family that ran the lodge was quite lovely.  It reminded me a lot of some of the more remote villages in Belize or even Honduras, except of course, this village had cars and electricity.  Most of the homes were modern, but there were several simple wood houses scattered about. I think it was the jungle around us and the simple life style.  We did an afternoon walkabout and learned a bit about the village, but mostly we just hung out on a large deck overlooking the river.  It was very relaxing and peaceful. 
 

We had a cooking demonstration of a local dish called bosom.  Basically, you add jack fruit, rice, and a bit of salt in a sealed jar and let it ferment for 2 to 3 weeks. It looked about like you think a jar of fermented fruit would look after 3 weeks and that alone turned almost everyone off.  Our hostess added some fresh ingredients to a pot and heated it all up. Very unappetizing looking pot of mush but surprisingly decent taste, kind of sweet and sour at the same time.  Several of us took a tiny spoonful, more out of politeness than anything.  I’m usually a very picky eater and probably would have passed, but I was right next to the chef and the one stirring, so I had to.  She also made a kind of cake with tapioca, coconut and egg called bingka.   It tasted Ok but a bit bland. Someone had the idea to dip in the cocoa mix, then jelly.  Now that was tasty.  

 

Day 2 we set off on a 6-hour van ride to Borneo Natural Sukau Bilit Resort, right on the Kinabatangan River.  The resort was really cool, the entire complex was accessible by raised wooden walkways.  The rooms were really nice, small cabins in the woods.  The reason for the raised walkways was obvious, it was raining and the ground was very muddy.  I would imagine during the rainy season it would be almost impossible to move around on the ground.  On the way to our room, we saw a few monkeys.  Turns out there's a whole troop of them that hang around the resort. As soon as they started serving dinner, the monkeys appeared.  Apparently, they were waiting for an opportunity to steal food, as one girl at our table found out.  She put her plate down and turned to speak to someone next to her.  In an instant one cheeky little thief jumped down and grabbed a pancake right off her plate.  He was so bold as to even reach for the rest of her dessert with his other hand.  During our stay, the staff spent a great deal of time chasing the monkeys away, while guests were trying to coax them in for better pictures. I could see from the staff point of view with a nuisance the monkeys were. 

We spent two nights at this resort and went on several boat rides.  Both our boat guide and Ron had the most amazing eyesight!  As we cruised up or down the river, both would be scanning the trees for wildlife.  We’d be flying along and suddenly he’d slow and head toward the shore where they would point out one lone bird hidden in the thick foliage.  We had a few bird watchers in the group and, while I’m not particularly interested in birds, I could really understand the excitement to see a spot of color and try to identify it.  As a photographer, I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures of them, but never in identifying them.  One beautiful little kingfisher was hunting right on the shore and seemed to be actually posing for us. I took a lot of pictures on these boat trips, but the combination of being in a moving boat and having to use my zoom lens made for a lot of blurry photos.  (Once you zoom out far enough, the weight of the lens makes it harder to hold the camera steady). We had several photographers in our group and I welcomed their advice.  Ron was also a photographer, but without a camera.  When it came to the kingfisher, I was pretty frustrated that even though the tiny bird was sitting still, many of my photos were still a bit blurry.  At one point I handed my camera to Ron, mostly I was curious to see if it was me or the camera.  Damn if he didn’t take one shot and it was perfect.  Guess that was a pretty definitive answer.  Although, in my defense, I was also able to get a few good pictures.  It just took 20 shots to get one good one.

 

We had spectacular luck on our boat trip and saw an amazing assortment of wildlife.  Proboscis and long-tailed macaque monkeys were everywhere, but we always stopped for photos and just to watch them.  The proboscis monkeys were so odd, they have huge bellies and a large bulbous nose.  It’s thought the nose is so big to allow for louder vocalization which is preferred by the ladies.  It was amazing to watch them leap from tree to tree, even females with babies clinging to their back would launch themselves from one branch to the next.    

We also saw several interesting birds, like the rhinoceros hornbill.  They have a huge bill, kind of like a toucan, but with an added structure on top called a casque.  I looked this up and there’s a bit of mystery as to what it’s for, but an article on Africa Geographic says, “…it has been suggested that they are connected with vocal enhancement, acting as a resonance chamber similar to the bout of a violin.”

 

 

By far the highlight of the trip, was the sighting of not one, but two wild orangutans, as well as a lone elephant.  We saw both orangutans on the same trip, close to dusk.  They were likely scouting out a location to bed down.  The male was deeper in the forest and harder to get a picture of, but the female was very accommodating.  She was foraging for dinner and looking right at us as she ate. 

 

The elephant was well known in the area, but not all visitors got a chance to see her.  It’s easy to see how she could remain undetected.  We had stopped to watch 2 groups monkeys squabbling over the right to one giant tree.   Suddenly they all stopped yelling at each other and started looking on the other side of the river.  We looked too and there she was, making her way through the jungle just inside the tree line.  Apparently, she was a juvenile elephant who somehow got separated from her herd.  She was old enough to fend for herself, but it was thought that when the main herd migrated back through this area, they would be reunited.  For such a large animal, she was silently moving through dense brush without so much as snapping a twig, at least that we could hear, and we were able to get pretty close to her. 

 

The group went on a night walk through the jungle, but I was advised to stay behind.  Due to all the rain there was a lot of deep mud.  As it turns out, Ron was right.  With my bad knee, I would have had a rough go.  Everyone came back talking about the mud being so thick it sucked the knee-high mud boots right off them and it was very hard to get your foot dislodged to take the next step.  Oddly enough, I would have loved it.  I did wander around the lodge, there were plenty of things to see on dry ground.   

Link to photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/1RWT43LW1Y0cs2cu2