Monkeying around in Borneo

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This blog covers our time travelling through Malaysian Borneo. We spent a great deal of our time in national parks and nature reserves seeing endangered monkeys. This means we now have hundreds of monkey photos and have posted a few videos to youtube. (For anyone who is interested the links are posted below.) It has been so good to see these animals in the wild, or at least semi-wild, and we can't begin to describe how much fun we had on our various outings...although we'll give it a try!

Our adventure began in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, in north-western Borneo. It's a picturesque city and has a small town vibe where everything moves at a relaxed pace. We were there for Malaysia Day, which is when the Sarawakians celebrate independence and all of Malaysia celebrates the forming of their nation. However, our tour guide seemed to find the notion of independence pretty amusing, as 50 years ago Sarawak left British rule only to join Malaysia (and effectively become ruled by Kuala Lumpur and the peninsular). Anyway, the king and queen of Malaysia came to Kuching for the celebrations, which lasted over a long weekend. Unfortunately, the boat show and fireworks took place in the pouring rain (although this wasn't entirely unexpected, since it rained at least once every day!). There was also a parade on the Monday with the military, cadets, local companies and school children all involved. It again appeared that we were somewhat of an attraction, as we kept spotting local people taking not-so-subtle photos of us! We had one man who blatently pointed an SLR in Mark's direction, so Mark waved to him... to which the man responded with a sheepish grin and quickly walked on. (Mark makes friends everywhere he goes!)

Our first excursion from Kuching was a trip to Bako National Park. It is Sarawak’s oldest national park and is also one of the smallest. It is best known for its wildlife, including bearded pigs, long-tailed macaques, silvered langurs and, the stars of the show, the endangered proboscis monkeys. Bako is so near to Kuching that we decided to take a day trip out there. The park is accessed via small speed boats, which zip out of the river mouth and along the coast - these can only run when the tide is in however, otherwise they get stuck on the mud flats. This meant we only had a window of 4 hours before we had to return, which wasn't long, but when Hazel saw the 'basic' standard of accommdation in the park, she was glad we weren't staying the night!

We arrived at the park on a rickety wooden jetty and followed the board-walk to the HQ. Mark was instantly bitten twice by mosquitos and resorted to "Bushman's industrial strength repellant". Almost straight away, our guide Joel said he could smell the proboscis monkeys and, only a few steps later, we saw a couple of males sitting in the mangrove trees. The great thing about these animals at Bako is that they are wild, so sightings were by no means guaranteed. We must have spent a good half an hour watching them eat flowers and swing between the trees before Joel called us over and we began our jungle trek. We had barely gone a couple of steps when we saw some cheeky long-tailed macaques running up and down the HQ building pillars, trying to sneak some food from the cafeteria, and then a bearded pig trotted past. Joel also managed to find a pit viper sleeping in a tree - as this is the only poisonous snake found in the park, we took a quick photo and moved on pretty swiftly.

Our trek though the jungle was just over a kilometre, but the terrain was steep and there were rocks, mud and tree roots to contend with, so it took us a while. With the rain pouring down, we opted to wear our cagools but, with the heat and humidity, we ended up soaked on the inside as well as the outside! We didn't look in too bad shape though, compared to the two Korean girls who made up the rest of our group - one of them was wearing a pair of wooden wedges and they only had one umbrella between them to fend off the tropical rain. The girl in wedges did an impressive job though, as she clambered over the slippery rocks with remarkable speed. When we eventually made it to the end of the trail, we walked out onto a small but pretty beach and then took a scenic boat ride back to the start via some sea stack rock formations.

Back at HQ, we had some lunch and then spent our remaining time searching for the proboscis monkeys and taking even more photos and videos! It was a shame we didn't see any silvered langurs, which are apparently more shy and so stay away when the macaques are around, but we were so pleased to have spotted the funny-looking proboscises. Again we watched them in the trees,taking no notice of us and continuing to pick off buds and flowers and tuck into a lengthy lunch. For our trip back down the river, we had to walk out onto the beach and wade to our boat, as the tide was pretty far out. We saw a couple of bearded pigs foraging for crabs in the sand and grunting at one another as they argued over the tasty crustaceans.

It was such a good day out but we were exhausted, and pretty damp, when we returned to Kuching...so we treated ourselves to chocolate brownie Magnum icecreams (for a bargainous 75p) to celebrate our successful day!

On our quest to find the ginger 'man of the forest', aka the orang-utan, we decided to visit Semenggoh Nature Reserve, which is only a short bus ride from Kuching. The rehabilitation work Semenggoh does makes it the best choice for tourists wanting to see semi-wild orang-utans in Sarawak. We say "semi-wild" because the centre helps young orang-utans (many of whom are rescued pets) to survive in the wild on their own by teaching them the skills they would have learned from their mothers, but continues to provide a couple of feeding times each day for those apes who still need some support (and to make up for the fact that their native habitat of virgin rainforest is rapidly shrinking). We felt that it was actually quite good that the reserve was only open for two hours in the morning and the same again in the afternoon, as it leaves the animals in peace for the majority of the day. This is escpecailly important when the orang-utans are being released into the wild, as they need as little human contact as possible.

We got up bright and early and took the 7am local bus for the morning feeding session. Again, there was no guarantee that we would see anything but we were crossing our fingers... There were quite a lot of tourists waiting at the entrance, but when we approached the feeding area and everyone spread out on the boardwalk, it didn't feel crowded at all. We were lucky enough to have a mother and her 2 month old baby turn up first. She approached the feeding platform and stuffed her mouth with bananas before climbing up a nearby tree. We then had another female turn up who provided us with entertainment by swinging around the trees before stealing food off the baby. Once feeding time was declared over, everyone was ushered back to the main area and people began to depart. A few of us discovered another couple of orangutans in the trees behind the toilet block, incredibly close up and not in the slightest bit bothered by her audience. It was another mother, but with an older baby this time. We watched them in the trees eating coconuts for half an hour before the reserve was closed and we had to get the bus back into Kuching.

Patricia, our guesthouse owner, had just set up a Malaysian cooking class and we were the first pupils to cook up a delicious Kari Ayam (chicken curry) and Daging Masak Hitam (Beef in Black Sauce). We also made a jungle fern stir-fry, but it contained a little too much shrimp-paste for our liking. Our temporary kitchen was set out on Patricia's balcony and we took it in turns to chop the meat and grind the curry paste in her huge pestle and mortar. Once the meal was prepared (which took a good three hours), the three of us ate our dinner together and had an interesting conversation about our cultural differences (which, for some reason, included us explaining to Patricia what sound a fox makes!). She was surprised to find out that Mark does his share of the cooking at home, that we don't have monkeys in the UK and that we do have ferns but we don't generally eat them (do we?!). We had a great time making these curries and will certainly try them at home, as long as we can work out the English translation for all of the spices that went in... What made it even more memorable was being intermittently interupted by a strange Icelandic guy who seemed to have lost his razor and deodorant, and had some sort of bee in his bonnet about the British government, but we'll leave the oddities of him for another time!

When we first arrived in Kuching, we had enquired at the National Park Office as to whether the world's largest flower (the Rafflesia) was currently in bloom. We were told we had just missed one and that we could either chance it and come back in a few days or else go out and see the one that had just finished flowering - there are generally about 40-50 rafflesias that flower each year in Sarawak, but in 2012 there were only 26 that were near enough to the paths that tourists were allowed to visit them. We decided to come back in a couple of days and cross our fingers for another flowering, but had been warned not to hold our breath. After the long holiday weekend, we went back and were delighted to discover that there now was a rafflesia that had been in bloom for 3 days - what luck! The flowers do apparently bloom for up to 7 days, but after day 5 they are generally considered too rotten to be worth visiting. We immediately signed up for the Gunung Gading National Park trip, but must have been among the most persistent of tourists - we were amazed to have a private car for the drive there and on our guided walk there were only four other people.

A couple of hours drive from Kuching, Gunung Gading National Park is best known for being home to the rafflesia, rather than being a wildlife haven but, although flowers are not especially our thing, we had a great day out. Our trek through the park was short but our very enthusiastic and informative guide, Antonia, showed us the famous flower at different points in its lifecycle before we finally reached the blooming-finale. The flower we saw had 5 petals and was 63cm across - they can apparently grow up to 1m across and sometimes have seven huge petals! The flower is actually a parasite and grows off the stem of a specific type of vine, so this one was clinging to the side of a rock and we had to clamber down a couple of massive boulders to get a good look. It had already started to rot around the edges, but we had never seen such a substantial flower and it was actually amazing. We blew into the centre of the flower (gently to avoid getting a face full of flies) in order to sample the flower's unusual aroma... and were hit in the face by the stench of rotten durians! On the way back we passed unusual looking lizards, orange millipedes, feathery white caterpillars and a range of flora used for different medicines including making laxatives and poison darts!

We're still not entirely sure why our day out at Gunung Gading was so much fun, but we both had smiles on our faces all the way back to Kuching. Once back in the city, our day was then made even better when our guide happened to stop by in the same coffee shop as us and (unbeknownst to us) picked up our tab. All in all, it was a fantastic final day in Kuching (and not just because Mark got a free, and surprisingly good, capuccino)!

While we were in Kuching, we had also popped in to visit the Sarawak museum for some background on Borneo (which I don't think we realised was made up of 3 countries until we decided to come here!) and a bit more info on the local tribal culture, which was something we didn't really get time to explore properly. There was a mock-up of a long house in the museum, which is a communal style of living that is still popular among inland tribes, as well as a few relics from the days of head hunting, a custom which fortunately isn't still popular!!

Although we had decided to limit our stay in Borneo to the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah, we chose to make the journey between the capitals of Kuching and Kota Kinabalu by land, so that we could stop off in Brunei to take a look. From Kuching to Brunei is a monster coach journey with an overnight stop in Miri (just getting to Miri alone takes 14-16 hours) so we cheated and flew to Miri (thank you Air Asia sale) and then bus-ed into Brunei the following morning. Miri is essentially an oil-town and we didn't find much charm to it. It seems like most western tourists use Miri as a gateway to the surrounding national parks, so after a walk up a massive hill to the 'petrol museum' for a look at the view we resorted to experiencing malaysian cinema (which is exactly like at home, with no national anthem - oh well, it was either that or go bowling!).

After a 3 hour ride courtesy of a 'taxi pirate', we arrived in Bandar Seri Begawan only to discover that the local lady who had shared our taxi was right and that 'BSB' was pretty boring. It only took a couple of hours to see around the small city, which was almost completely deserted - and when we did pass people in the streets no one smiled at us... it almost made us miss having our photos surruptitiously taken like local celebrities, as at least we were making the Malaysians happy! The saving grace for the capital was the beautiful mosque down by the waterfront (which we weren't allowed into - we're not sure why, as we were covered up from head to foot and had gone in 'visiting hours'😉 and the bustling weekend night market, but apart from that we found it all rather dull. It was fortunate that our budget hotel miraculously had a swimming pool to keep us entertained, especially between 12pm and 2pm, when all of the shops and restaurants had to close for prayers. Our highlight was probably eating sticks of satay at a riverside stall, and then boarding our bus onwards a day later! We'll leave you to imagine the goose-chase of finding the bus stop and actually buying tickets, but with no bus station nor tourist information we found it more difficult than it should have been (for anyone that does actually need this information, you have to go to the 'De Royale' cafe for your tickets and the bus will pick you up outside 'the tallest building in town'...good luck)!

8 hours and 8 passport stamps after we successfully found both the cafe and the tall building, we had crossed Brunei and Sarawak twice each before finally reaching Kota Kinabalu in Sabah absolutely exhausted. Mark is currently mourning the loss of his neck pillow, which burst during the journey and caused a small snow storm on our bus seats...and over most of the rest of the bus. Fortunately for us, on arrival we easily found a food court and re-charged ourselves on some bargainous nasi goreng ayam (fried rice with chicken) - although we did cause the girl behind the counter a fit of hysterics when we tried to order in Bahasa Malaysia...maybe we'll stick to English in future!

Kota Kinabalu ('KK'😉 was another "gateway" city for those interested in the surroundings or in scaling Mount Kinabalu (which we had good views of during our coach ride to Sepilok). However, after our recent sombre encounters, we were pleased to find that the city was bustling with people and that locals were again smiling. After checking into our hotel, the lift doors caught Mark by surprise and closed on his bag, causing another round of friendly giggles, this time from the receptionists. We're not sure these incidents would have been greeted with the same mirth a few days prior!

Our reason for coming to KK (and in fact our main reason for coming to Borneo) was to use it as an access point to get to Sepilok, so we could see the world-famous orang-utan sanctuary. The coach journey from the city took 5 hours and we passed through winding hills and vast expanses of palm plantation and jungle. We had booked into a stilted chalet for a night of relative luxury and enjoyed afternoon tea on our balcony in true Britsh style (well, we had cups of tea and instant coffee and ate a half price swiss roll we had picked up from the supermarket before we left the city!). Despite being in the middle of the jungle, our room was bug free and the bed was so comfy that it was worth the bus ride just for that mattress!

On our first day in the jungle we walked down the road to Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre (SORC) and arrived in time for the morning feeding session. We were lucky enough to see a mother and her baby swing through the trees and down to join the two young orang-utans on the feeding platform. A total of five orang-utans turned up for the morning feeding session and even more arrived for the afternoon feed. It was so great to see a young orang-utan being helped up the steps to the feeding platform by an older one, where they played and wrestled together for a while before a ranger arrived with their food. Then the younger one tried to mimmick the older one in stripping the bark off a twig. More excitment came when a large adult macaque also joined the party and sat with an infant orang-utan, tucking into a feast of bananas and other tropical fruits and veggies.

The following day, we couldn't resist going back again for both feeding sessions and were glad we did as a whole family of macaques arrived for the morning feed, including a mother with a tiny baby, a large adult and many playful infants. The orang-utans didn't seem bothered at all by the gatecrashing monkeys stealing their food and we all certainly enjoyed seeing them jumping between the trees. The afternoon feeding session was even better, as it saw the return of the mother and baby orang-utan who put on a show for us all. The mum hung from a rope by her feet and hands as her baby copied her somersaults and demonstrated his hanging skills. The pair were much more active on the second day and were the only ones who were not scared off by a larger grumpy female orang-utan who arrived at the platform part way through the feeding session.

What a fantastic couple of weeks! And now we are off to Hong Kong and will be meeting up with Kat and James, hurrah 😊

Sepilok: Baby Orangutan gets a hanging lesson:[

Sanctuary: Mother Orangutan and baby:[[

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Bako National Park Proboscis Monkey eating flowers:[[

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Comments

[Chris]

The proboscis monkey looks really strange, not seen one of those before!