Malaysian Borneo

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This was an amazing vacation and I loved every minute of it – even when there were leeches involved. My week in Malaysia centered around a trip to the rainforest; I finally got to see a real tropical rainforest and all the wildlife that goes with it. I’ve always loved reading adventure and travel books, and wondered what it would be like to actually be in the rainforest, looking up into the face of a gibbon, following elephant tracks or watching an orangutan settle into her nest. All of that happened last week. I wasn’t even in a wildlife park, just out in the forest near the Kinabatangan River.

I flew into the city of Kota Kinabalu, on the northern edge of the Malaysian side of Borneo. The island is divided by the nations of Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. It’s huge, and I only saw a small part of the state of Sabah. From Kota Kinabalu, called KK by the locals, I took a bus headed east towards Lahad Datu, on the coast. I told the bus driver that I wanted to get off at the Batu Puteh villages and then sat back to watch the magic of the Malaysian countryside. We drove towards Mount Kinabalu, which I had thought about climbing, before settling on visiting a village cooperative in the rainforest. Past the mountain and the national park areas around it, the forest suddenly changed.

The scenery along the road after Mount Kinabalu was disappointing, although not entirely unexpected: mile after mile of palm oil plantations. Reading about Borneo, all I knew before going was that logging and palm oil companies are destroying one of the most biologically diverse rainforests in the world. I didn’t know anything about the people who live there, whose families have lived on that land for centuries, who work for the plantations or fight against them. I also didn’t know what alternatives people have to working for the plantations. I learned that Sabah doesn’t have a computer industry like Silicon Valley, or even a movie industry like Bollywood. They have a budding eco-tourism industry.

Getting to the village was easier than I thought it would be. From KK I had called the cooperative’s office and was told to get off just before the bridge over the Kinabatangan River, then walk down the road to the office, which is located under the bridge. Fortunately, the bus driver knew the place and stopped to let me off by the sign for Batu Puteh and the Model for Environmentally Sustainable Community Tourism, or MESCOT. A friend from Boise had recommended it as a good place to see the rainforest and I was excited to see something outside the resorts and parks.

The people I met at MESCOT were welcoming, kind and taught me so much about their home and their culture. I am very impressed by how dedicated they are to preserving and restoring the rainforest, and how proud they are of their heritage. So many projects like theirs have failed, but they have just the right mix of motivation and know how. Their website explains: “The key objectives of the MESCOT Initiative are to develop an alternative path of co-existence with the remaining rainforest resources and generate a sustainable long-term economic path for income generation for the indigenous local people of the area. The core and catalyst activity chosen by the MESCOT group was Eco-Tourism. It was hoped that this activity would be the key to raising income in this poor and remote rural community, increase the economic value of a depleted forest resource, and, in the process, raise funds to support the protection and restoration of the last remaining wetland forests and wildlife of the area.” http://www.mescot.org/about_mescot_history.htm

Their land is beautiful and increasingly home to an amazing range of wildlife. My first two nights I stayed at the Tungog Rainforest Eco-Camp, which they called TREC. (I had a hard time juggling all the different acronyms.) My guide’s name was Jai and he has been with MESCOT since it began in 1997. From the village we went upriver in a little motorboat. Almost immediately Jai started pointing out wildlife along the river: hornbills, wild boar, long-tailed macaques and bright red stork-bill kingfishers. There are egrets all along the roads, streams and rivers in Borneo, so I saw a lot of them, too.

After about 20 minutes on the boat it started raining, pouring, reminding me I had come to a rainforest. The driver didn’t stop the rest of the way to the dock and when Jai and I ran up the bank he turned the boat back towards the dry office under the bridge. Another 20 minutes trudging along a path through the forest brought us to the camp. I was drenched. The rain dripped down through the canopy, splashing from leaf to leaf, branch to branch, but not always reaching the forest floor. A lot of it is absorbed by plants on the way down, and a lot of it landed on my head.

At the camp, I was greeted by a very friendly staff of 3, who told me that there were only two other people staying in camp while I was there, but that a team of researchers and a volunteer group would be there some during the daytime. I got my own little A-frame cabin, perched on stilts above the forest floor. A quick tour showed me that I wasn’t too far from the area with showers and toilets. (There’s no hot showers, since there’s no electricity, but they have regular flush toilets powered by gravity and rainwater). The main area by the kitchens and staff building has three layers of decks that lead down to the lake.

The camp is gorgeous. After the rain had stopped falling, but hours before the forest stopped dripping, I sat out on the deck, listening to the monkeys in the trees across the lake and watching otters play in the water to the side of the deck, just below my cabin. There are a lot of things to do in the forest, trails to hike, trees to marvel at, birds to listen to and animals to watch. There is a lot to learn in a place like that.

It was relaxing to be so far from roads and cities, but I never had time to sit back with my book. One time I tried and a monitor lizard crashed through the brush to the edge of the lake and launched itself in the water. It was fast, and once it got in the water all I could really see was the head, but the guys agreed with me that it was well over six feet long. My second evening in camp I settled in a deck chair with my book, then noticed about a dozen proboscis monkeys settling themselves in the tree tops just across the lake. Jai and I paddled over in a boat and sat under them for about an hour, watching them watch us.

There were two big trees that stuck out above the canopy and each had five or six adults and a couple babies. Jai explained that this was a harem because proboscis monkeys live in either a harem or a bachelor group. The adults seemed to be trying to get the babies to stay up in the highest and smallest branches. It must have been bedtime. The little ones would sit still for a bit, then scamper back down to the bigger branches, where they could escape to another part of the tree. After a lot of chattering and scolding the adults would get them back up to the top. I must have watched the same scene five times. Finally it started to get dark, so I wished the adults luck and paddled back to camp.

Of course, part of any trip to a rainforest that has been damaged by logging involves planting trees. I don’t think the few dozen trees I planted with Jai are more than a drop in the bucket, but it does create attachment. I want to go back and see how the trees are doing in five years, ten, twenty. If every tourist plants trees, think of how many people are making a commitment to the forest. How many people, from how many different countries, have such a strong connection to the rainforest of Borneo? Hopefully more and more every year.

The rest of my story will have to be told with pictures, because so much happened in that one week that I can’t possible write all of it. Not unless I take the week off work. I think I should probably stick with working full time, and save up for my next trip to Borneo.

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Photos

Kinabatangan River
The river was peaceful, though in flood and full of branches, flotsam and mud. Most of the wildlife I saw in the rainforest was spotted while in the boat and I loved my trips up and down the river.

Paradise within paradise
TREC is a beautiful little hideaway in the rainforest: easy to get to, but wonderfully far from cities and cars.

Rainforest Treehouse
I slept on a cot on the floor, draped in a mosquito net, but it was so luxurious. My cabin had an amazing view out onto the lake, and was completely surrounded by rainforest.

Across the lake from camp
The sun is highlighting the spot where I watched the family of proboscis monkeys settle in for the night.

Rainforest Trees
TREC is in an area of secondary forest, so all of it was logged at some point. I thought it was incredible how fast the trees here grow, they look huge to me, but they're apparently not very old.

Planting Trees
Jai and I planted just over 30 saplings, of several native species. It was hot work and I was drenched with sweat after the first tree. That morning was the only time I wasn't sheltered by the rainforest canopy, and I didn't want to go leave the shade again. Tropical sun is brutal.

Trees to Plant
The trees are grown in a nursery in the village, not far from the MESCOT office. They have planting down to a science, but there's still a lot of land to rehabilitate, and a lot of trees to plant.

River Cruise
The river was our highway and Jai brought his son along for one of our trips. This was the day we spotted the orang-utan, so I'm happy he could be with us that morning.

Wild Orang-Utan
It was a ways from the boat, but we really did see an orang-utan in the wild. The name comes from the Malaysian words orang (people) and utan (forest). This one was in an area that had been logged, not too far from the edge of the forest near a palm oil plantation. The tree has two nests, and orangutans make between one and four nests a day.

Orang Utan Bridge
Just downriver from where we spotted the orang-utan, is one of the bridges that MESCOT built. It doesn't look like a bridge because it's not for humans. It's a rope to cross the river, since orang-utans can't swim. MESCOT has cameras mounted on the trees so they can track wildlife use of the bridge.

Edible Borneo
There are a lot of wild fruits vegetables in the rainforest, some of which I tried and few of which I remember the names of. These berries were like a mild cranberry, although Jai warned me not to eat the seed because it's bitter.

Hunting Ferns
One species of edible ferns is called "pakis" in Malay and it is a lot easier to gather than berries. I didn't have to jump up or try to climb trees and I got to pose for a picture with a machete. The raincoat is more to keep the leeches out than to keep me dry. It was so hot and sweaty in the rainforest that I was drenched no matter what I was wearing.

Batu Tulug Caves
For one of our little trips away from the river we climbed up to some caves that were once used as cemeteries. Although looted for decades, they still contain some of the original ironwood coffins that the native people used when animism was practiced. Women's coffins are larger, supposedly because they had more possessions to take with them to the afterlife.

The Band
My last evening the villagers got together and put on a show with traditional songs, dance and music on the gongs. It was a very fun night and I was impressed how well the boat captain and guides could play the gongs and how gracefully the office staff could dance. They are a very talented group.

Volleyball at 5
One the days I was staying with a family in the village, rather than out at the camp, I got to play volleyball as soon as the office closed. Everybody came outside to hang out and play soccer or volleyball before they went home for the evenings. It wasn't as quiet as an evening on the lake, but it was a lot of fun!

Comments

[Quorri Scharmyn]

WOW!
You make me want to go! Travel with a purpose and a heart....I love it. I can't believe the amazing things you got to experience in such a short time. Love it <3