Man of the forest - well, his offspring

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From Sipidan it was back to the rig to get our gear ready for the transfer back to the mainland. We had one night in the town of Semporna to wait for an early bus to Sepilok.

We took the advice of some other people from the rig and stayed at Lee's Guesthouse, very quickly and successfully negotiating the room price down from the listed RM70 to the generally paid RM50. There is no challenge in that kind of negotiating! We failed to find a laundry that could get our clothes washed and dried quickly (no mechanical drying aids!) but did manage to find ourselves a nice cafe with a balcony and breeze (mechanically aided!) So there we sat, luxuriating with hot chips and cold beers, trying to identify fish pics, and generally relaxing. Its strange, apart from diving, there was nothing really to do on the rig apart from sit back and relax, but because of the diving, we were tired out and just wanted to relax!

We caught a mini bus early the next morning to Sepilok. The bus was due to leave at 7am, but no one believed that, it would go when full as mini buses do in Asia. 7am came and went with only six backpackers waiting in the already hot and humid morning air. We were told that it was the “luxury” bus, the 10 people only air con bus. On this they were right. Although as soon as we actually had 10 people and were looking like we were leaving, all the people standing nearby who didn't want to commit to this bus before (there was also a cheaper, slower, older, open window only mini bus heading the same way) suddenly tried to get on too.

Much of the ride over was through mile after mile of palm plantation. Some peoples idea of paradise might be lots of palm trees, usually with big white sandy beaches and warm sea. This isnt that kind of palm tree, these are palm oil plantations that have taken over the land from jungle. Much of the time thats all you can see, palm trees. They are devouring the countryside in great swathes of same same green. Flying into Tawau from KK, we flew over jungle, over the Maliau Basin (impressive), you could tell that you were over real jungle with many types of trees, the colours varying, many shades of green, then suddenly that stopped and there were rows and rows of the same green colour with mud brown roads in lines between them. It was the same driving, only we were looking end on to the rows, could see them going up and over the hills for miles. Too much of the economy is tied up in these plantations. What will happen when the need for palm oil drops, as it hopefully will as people become more aware of what they are destroying? There are two types of operation (basically), the “good” sustainable plantations and the rest. Of the 1.3 million tons of sustainable palm oil produced up to November 2008, only 1% has been sold. Its hard to buy anything here without palm oil in it, most of the biscuits, crackers, lollies etc all have palm oil in. I'm not sure if food is cooked in palm oil like we'd use canola or sunflower oil, but everything is fried here.

We were dropped off at the Sepilok Jungle Resort, but all their standard rooms were full. As we werent prepared to pay for a deluxe room, we walked a couple of minutes up the road to the Labuk B&B, part of the Forest Edge Resort. Resort is a bit of a fancy name for this place really. The B&B part houses a few small dorms and doubles/twins, and the Resort has lovely timber cabins sleeping 2-6 people I think. There is an on-site “restaurant” with a minimal menu and the “jacuzzi / spa” for which they wanted an extra RM8 each time. Great value if it really was a jacuzzi or spa, but no, it is just a small round pool, all of 3-4m across and 0.8m deep. There were a few bubbles coming out in the middle of the pool, more like from the pump though rather than spa jets. Still, a good way to cool down.

We visited the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre (SORC) twice, for the morning and afternoon feeding sessions. The morning feeding was crowded. A few small orang-utans were out on the platforms when we got there, entertaining the developing crowds, play fighting and swinging on the ropes. As more people turned up, they wandered off, too noisy probably. By feeding time at 10am, there were over 150 people watching. The staff came out with a couple of buckets of food (fruit and veges by the looks of it) and a bucket of what looked like milk. They weren't exactly swarmed by hungry hordes, the orang-utans wandered over, had a look, had a nibble, and that was about it. Awesome! All these little bundles of orange fluff! We could see quite a few nests in the trees around the feeding area too.

We did about ½ of the one open walk in the surrounding jungle, but the only wildlife we saw were some leeches on Colin's legs. It was really hot and sticky and it seemed everything else was more sensible than us and had gone to ground. So we did the same, back at the hostel.

The guidebook said to make sure we also went to the afternoon feeding session as there were fewer people there. Obviously everyone else reads the same guidebook and also went to the afternoon session!! There were fewer people than in the morning, but not by many. There were heaps of long & short tailed macaques there finishing up the mornings leftovers. The bigger ones got aggressive when the orang-utans came too close, despite being smaller than them.

Of the 6 or 7 orang-utans at the feeding platforms, the only one we think we identified (based on the pics in the ticket office) was a dark haired female called Rosalinda.

All in all though, a great experience, leaving us in no doubt that we want to see some orang-utans in the wild, and that something needs to be done to help preserve their habitat. If the palm plantations keep growing and the jungle keeps shrinking, there will be no-where to rehabilitate orang-utans to

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Photos

orang-utans
these two spent ages play fighting