WILD TIMES IN WILD BORNEO

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FINALLY AFTER 32yrs I ARRIVE IN BORNEO

Since I first saw my hero Sir David Attenborough in the groundbreaking ‘Life On Earth’ TV series I’ve promised myself one day I’d visit the jungles of Borneo. I’ve read just about every publication that I’ve been able to lay my hand on about this island (the 3rd largest in the World). I’ve familiarised myself with as many of its endemic species as my brain can handle and I’ve just purchased some more book to fill in the gaps. Now is my time and I do not intend to waste a second of the three and a bit weeks I have here. Pili and I intend to see and experience the deepest, darkest jungles. Get up close and personal with the wild man of the forest, the Orang-Utan. Snorkel with the Green Turtles over some of the finest coral on the Planet. To spend a day and night on a boat going up Borneo’s largest river, deep into the wilderness and to hopefully photograph many of the indigenous species of flora and fauna. And finally if we have any strength left to climb the tallest mountain in Asia outside of the Himalayas, mount Kinabalu at 4,095 metres.

If I don’t make it through these challenges there is one thing I’m sure of, I will have seen my final day in a place of my dreams doing what I love doing the most.

Here we go!!!!

13th March 2009

After a two and a half hour flight from Singapore aboard Silk Air we arrive at Kota Kinabalu airport, the capital of Borneo.

Flying over the coastline I look down into the hills and forest below, with its many rivers meandering like massive serpents through the green wilderness. The mountain range on the horizon is covered in forest that has probably had a handful of people through them; this makes my heart skip a beat. In all our travels over the last half a year this is the place I’ve dreamed of; the rest was just the journey to get here.

Surprisingly the weather when we get outside of the airport is quite mild and slightly overcast. This is a massive relief from the sweltering humidity of Singapore. We catch a fifteen minute taxi ride to the heart of Kota Kinabalu to Lucy’s Home Stay, our home for the next couple of days. This was the very first backpackers lodge established in Kota Kinabalu in the early eighties.

Lucy greets us warmly and shows us to our room, it’s pretty basic but we expected nothing less. We dump our bags and venture out. The sea shore is a five minute walk and can be seen from the guest house. A huge model Blue Marlin stands on the roundabout at the bottom of the street so we head for that.

At the sea front we see several islands off shore, many fishing boats are spread across the water, we can also just make out village on stilts, skirting one of the islands. There is a smell of fish and a little sewage which is a little disconcerting.

We sit on a bench by the shore, the sun by now has become quite intense and as we go through a pile of information leaflets that we collected at the airport we can feel it burning our skin, we decide to find shade at a ferry dock and continue our reading.

By 3:00pm I’m ready for a siesta as the previous night I’d slept only about two hours. Before heading back we take a quick walk around the local market and pick up a few supplies, mostly fruit and some local sweet bread. This seems to be the source of the smell encountered earlier, fish in this humidity needs refrigeration!

At dead on 4:00pm it starts to rain, and then it starts to really pour. We get back home just in time but only after a quick mooch around the local supermarket. At this time of the year the rain is very punctual and almost every day.

Back at the home stay I crashed out cold for a good couple of hours. Fully refreshed I wake up ravenous. Pili and I clean up and head out to forage for food and beer. We’d been advised to head for Beach Street which is just a couple of minutes away, perfect. We find a pleasant little eatery and order Fried Me Maw (sea food & noodles) for Pili and I have a local chicken curry, all washed down with a couple of cold, bottled Stella’s. All was very satisfactory and we even have a live band across us in another bar to entertain us with some middle of the road classics.

By 10:00pm we decide to call it a night, after a little reading we both crash out and have a some what restless night. We put it down to the new bed. We’ve been used to luxury in Singapore and our poor bodies are missing our comforts already.

14th March 2009

This morning we wake up at just gone 6:00am hoping to see the sunrise on top of the hill at the back of the Home Stay. We dress only to find that we’re looked in, damn!!! Pili climbs straight back into bed and I read for a while listening to the birds through the open window and surprisingly identify a few before finally drifting back off to sleep myself.

We wake at 9:00am and find that everything is now opened up. On returning from the bathroom I enter our room and find that Pili had two visitors sat on the bed, the two house cats. They leap about chasing each other for a few minutes before pestering me to let them out. We have some coffee and toast and meet a couple of Slovakian girls who are also staying here. It seems they are also planning the same stuff as us so we decide to investigate timetables together. We decide to head for Sepilok Orang-Utan Sanctuary on the North east of the island. The girls have already made enquiries about the bus route so we agree to catch the 8:00am bus for the 6hr journey. We then head our separate ways for an hour to do some shopping and make some enquiries about the climb up Mount Kinabalu, which seems to be fully booked and we have to phone daily for a cancellation. We’ve been told that the bloody travel agent block book the mountain lodges forcing the tourists to book through them, same old same old I guess. We’ve been told that if we are persistent we should get a place towards the end of the month. I’ll be bloody pissed off if we can’t manage this part of our trip. The mountain habitat hold many species that exist no where else on the planet and this could be my only chance to see and photograph them!

I bought two books, one on Borneo’s birds and the other on the islands mammals. We also bought some postcards, I’m going to send one to Sir David Attenborough and my pal Sir Patrick Moore as well as family. We all meet back up at 11:00am, back at Lucy’s Home Stay

On returning we all decide to catch a ferry over to Mamutik Island which takes us about 10 minutes. The island is only small and has a trekking path across its length which takes Pili and I no more than 15 minutes to complete. The forest is alive with bird songs but Pili hardly notices because within a couple of minutes on the trail we encounter three very large Monitor Lizards skulking around in the undergrowth.

When we get back to the beach to the find girls are already back, I think the lizards quickened their trek. Pili and I immediately strip down to our swimming costume and don out flippers, snorkels and masks that we’d hired on arrival and enter the shallow South China Sea for the first time. In the clear water we see many Brain Corals, Sea Cucumbers and a myriad of multi coloured fish including Threadfin Butterfly Fish, Clown Anemonefish (Disney’s Nemo) the Many Spotted Sweetlips, Highfin Coral Trout, Pufferfish, dozens of Sergeant Majors, Titan Triggerfish and many more. After about an hour exploring we head out the water and take some lunch and a can of Tiger. After lunch I’m eager to get back in with the fishes. We packed some fig rolls with us that we’d bought at the supermarket yesterday, but they tasted strange, they tasted like bubble gum, I decided to see if the fishes would like them. I put them in a plastic bag, tie a knot in it and wade in. As soon as I offered the fig rolls to a few of the Sergeant Majors I was mobbed by a least a hundred fish, all competing to peck the food from my fingertips. I immediately surfaced and called to Pili who was still on the beach, I told her to get her ass back in the water and to bring all the remaining fig rolls. We spent the next hour handing out light deserts to our new tropical friends. It was an amazing experience which both Pili and I relished and can’t wait to do again. I’ve got to get an underwater camera!

Our ferry was due to collect us at 4:00pm and again dead on time it starts to rain. While pulling away from the docks we all saw the unmistakable fin of a shark in the shallow waters. The general reaction of the other passengers was “why were we allowed to swim if there were sharks about”, I assured them that it was a harmless Reef Shark, probably a Blacktip. I resisted telling them that Giant Moray Eels live around here and they can take a real chunk out of any unwary swimmer who ventures accidentally to close to the lair.

By the time we had returned to the mainland via another pick up at a neighbouring island it was pouring. Thankfully Pili had packed our stylish ponchos we purchased in Singapore. Uncool but dry we decide to cash another travellers cheque and then purchase some more ponchos as they are very flimsy and won’t last long. Then we go back to the restaurant from last night and have a meal of cheese burgers and milk shakes, I think we’ll easily burn the calories in the next couple of days. After our late lunch we head for the local internet café to check our emails. Pili and I phone our mothers and I also talked to my oldest buddy Paul. We then head back to our room to pack and have an early night, it’s going to be a looooooong bus trip tomorrow, JOY!!!!!

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Photos

I step into my first Borneo Island Jungle
Moments later a very large Monitor Lizard ran across my path, we would meet again!