Advertisement
Published: February 27th 2009
After spending a few days in Sandakan (at the homey Winho Lodge) trying to wait out the floods at Uncle Tan's Wildlife Camp, we finally decided that it was time to get a move on and instead booked our Kinabatagan River safari through the Bilit Safari camp. Turns out this place was flooded too (I guess the week before we arrived in Borneo they had experienced some torrential downpours, and while we were lucky enough to arrive afterwards, we still came across some of the flooding aftermath), however, they had an alternate plan in place. We were picked up by some random dude in his Toyota Corolla about 45 minutes before we had arranged-which sent us into a frantic packing frenzy-and transported two and a half hours south to the Kinabatagan River. The river is "the" place for wildlife viewing in Sabah (the region of Borneo we were in)-it's easy to get to and you see tons of stuff without having to search too far. Driving there, however, we passed through endless miles of palm plantations, and were seriously wondering how there could possibly be any wildlife left in the country with so much of the rainforest destroyed.
We arrived
at the Greenview B&B to find that the floods had worked in our favor and we were provided with some seriously upgraded accomodations for the same budget price we had booked the other tour for. It wasn't fancy by any means, but considering that the other accomodations were described as mattresses on outdoor platforms with no walls, our private room with it's own bathroom seemed luxurious. We were given a few hours to relax (which was seriously needed given that the traveller's dysentary I thought I had kicked in Mt. Kinabalu decided to return in full swing-there was something about Borneo that my stomach seriously rejected). After almost deciding to skip the first afternoon river cruise, I decided to bear through the wrenching stomach pains and joined Matt for the two hour evening boat ride on the Kinabatangan. And it was well worth it! Our guide, Rusdi, had eyes like a hawk and within minutes of setting out he had spotted a wild orangutan swinging in the branches along the shore. Seeing an orangutan at the rehabilitation center in the semi-wild setting had been thrilling enough; seeing one that has never had human contact while completely on our own (well,
on our own plus the 3 other tourists in our boat and Rusdi) was beyond amazing. It was a large male, and was completely unbothered by our presence. For ten or so minutes we snapped pictures and watched as it lazily swung from branch to branch, at time grasping huge clusters of branches in his powerful hands to support his weight as he passed between trees. We could have stayed there forever, but our guide quickly became anxious to show us the rest of what the Kinabatagan had to offer. As soon as we pulled away from the orangutan, we spotted a huge troop of long-tailed macaques (the "common" monkey of SE Asia). Over the next two hours we saw a few families of Proboscis monkeys, a large snake, a crocodile, a monitor lizard, various birds and butterflies and many more macaques.
Over the next two days we did one more evening safari, two morning cruises and a night trek. The morning cruises were great for bird watching and for producing that true jungle feeling as we watched the sun rise and burn off the morning mist that hung over the river. On our second evening cruise we spotted
a baby macaque monkey
he was very curious and climbed down the branches almost into our boata whole herd of wild pygmy Bornean elephants. They are supposedly smaller than their other Asian cousins, but standing on the banks towering over our boat, they didn't seem small at all. They had found a field of dried grass and were munching on their evening meal, and despite their size and power, did look like rather peaceful creatures. That same river outing we also saw a gibbon, which officially completed the list of animals we had wanted to see while in the Kinabatangan. Our night trek was a rather muddy affair and ended with us donating our shoes to the B&B since they were too disgusting to even attempt to pack them. It was rather cool, however, to muck through the jungle in the pitch black, even though we didn't see much more than a few frogs and sleeping birds (which I was actually pretty happy about because I don't really like the idea of coming across a clouded leopard in the pitch black).
After three days of wildlife viewing, we headed for the beach, which we had seriously missed after two weeks of inland pursuits. We made it as far as Semporna, the jumping off point to
Proboscis Monkey
as you can imagine...Matt was incredibly preoccupied by a body part other than the monkey's identifying feature: it's nose! Mabul and Sipadan islands- our final destination- on the first day. We didn't find it nearly as dirty or depressing as it had been described and really like our accommodations at the Dragon Inn. The Dragon Inn is built as a maze of longhouses on stilts out over the water in the traditional Bornean style. While it was still expensive like the rest of our Bornean accommodations, they at least provide you with some ammenities like hot water and AC to make it feel worth it.
The next morning we woke up early and began the journey out to Mabul Island. We had chosen to go with the dive operator Uncle Chang's because it is the only budget option that lets you sleep out on Mabul island-and it had come highly recommended from fellow travellers. The other dive companies (the cheap ones at least) all bring you back to Semporna every night. Sadly, we weren't quite as impressed as we had hoped to be. While Uncle Chang's is technically a "budget" option, it was still one of the most expensive endeavors we have undertaken as of yet on our trip and it didn't live up to it's price. The
rooms were crappy, the food mediocre and worst of all the dive gear was on it's last string. We headed out our first morning to dive Sipadan with wetsuits 3 times too big, cracked o-rings on our tanks and a dive master who barely acknowledged our presence on the boat.
Luckily, between the beautiful setting and the great people we met, we quickly overcame the poor service and accommodations, and despite everything it turned into a wonderful experience. Except for Matt's regulator failing about 5 minutes into our first dive (luckily his second worked!), the dives went smoothly and the sea life was mind boggling! Over our three dives, we saw a few dozen turtles, at least a dozen white tip reef sharks, a school of gigantic barracuda and the largest fish I have ever seen in my life. It was if everything had been put through that machine in the movie "Honey, I Blew Up the Kids" (or whatever it is). There were bumphead wrasse at least four feet long and jacks, snappers, puffers and groupers that were well past two feet long. Had one of the Dominican fishermen I worked with last year seen one of these
crocodile
our guide was extremely excited to point this guy out...little did he know that I had resident alligators on my college campus and am slightly desensitized to these types of reptiles. fish they probably would have had a heart attack-just one of these fish probably weighs as much as their entire day's catch, maybe even more! Matt and I literally just stared in awe as we watched fish swarm around us that were larger than we knew possible to exist. And not only was everything huge, there were soooooo many! There were schools of triggerfish everywhere and on our last dive we swam through a school of jacks a few hundred strong. It would have been a nightmare trying to do a reef fish survey and count them all! On our third dive, Matt and I concluded that Sipadan tops out as the number one dive spot on both our lists.
On our second day, we spent the morning snorkelling the reefs around Mabul, enjoying the gorgeous sandy beach of one of the luxurious hotels on the island, and hanging out with our new Dutch and Aussie friends we had met-fantastic people! At 4pm the dive boats came back in and we were transported back to Semporna for another night at the Dragon Inn. (side note: Uncle Chang's will only transport you to Mabul Island at 7am and back to
monitor lizard
another great find by our guide Semporna at 4pm). We had a fun dinner with the Dutch couple, Linda and Jean, then headed in for an early night.
The next day we wasted most of our day just milling around Semporna, using the internet, playing cribbage and making fruit salad with all the fruit we bought from the local market. At about 4pm we caught a minibus to Tawau, where we had a flight at 9:30pm back to KK-an $11 flight to be exact!. The minibus actually passed the airport on the way to Tawau, so we hopped off early and then hitched a ride the 2km down the airport road to the actual airport. Our flight left on time (Air Asia is wonderfully efficient in comparison with Cebu Pacific, our carrier of choice for the Philippines.) We had booked ourselves a room at the Tune hotel-this new Asian chain which offers 5 star rooms for 1 star prices. Well, the room was cheap, but the taxi ride was double what it would have cost us to go back to the backpacker place we had stayed at the time before. Matt, of course, made quite a fuss about this, but the price was set and
we had already paid, so we forked over the 40RM and made our way to the Tune. It was in a gigantic brand new mall (it's very odd to sleep in a mall) which made for some interesting exploring the next day as we wasted another day waiting for our late 9pm flight. The mall actually had a cinema, and for the first time since we left last September, we went to see a movie. The theater was practically empty and it was a rather pleasant experience. We saw Benjamin Buttons, which was a little slow to start, but turned out to be a pretty good movie, or at least we thought so. About 5pm we made our way back to the airport-by bus this time-and got there in time for some great airport KFC and a little cribbage (this game is essentially how we pass all our spare time). Our adventures in Borneo were over.
See ya in Indo!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.025s; cc: 11; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0419s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
