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As we sit in the departure lounge of Penang airport waiting for our early morning flight to Kota Kinabalu the capital of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, it starts to become real that soon we will be in a place we have both dreamed of going for some time. It’s a destination that conjures up images of thick jungle, tribal villages and abundant wildlife where you can step back in time and leave everything else behind. The reality comes as a surprise as you leave the airport and pass large building developments, modern shopping malls, advertising hoardings showing condo’s for sale and 5 star resorts nestled around harbours packed with million pound yachts; in short, Borneo’s capital is developed, very well developed and showing no signs of slowing down soon, we hoped we could find at least a bit of our dream here over the next few days.
Our first few days in Kota Kinabalu are spent relaxing in and around Lavender Lodge where, after intense searching on the internet, we had decided to base ourselves. Lavender Lodge is one of the friendliest and cleanest places that we’ve stayed during our trip. The owner Daniel, who lived in Bristol for 20 years,
Bit of nostalgia
Phone boxes in Kota Kinabalu, they also have British Post Boxes in townand his wife Jenny, along with their team of staff who all come from the nearby Philippines, run a very happy house, and for £18 per night including breakfast it turned out to be a good choice. Kota Kinabalu being the capital city has more or less everything that you’d expect from a capital and we were happy to spend time in its shopping malls and enjoying the restaurants along its esplanade. After catching up with our sleep and spending a lovely day on a beach at one of the nearby islands situated in the National Park just off KK’s coast, we decided that we needed to get out a bit further to see what Borneo had to offer. We set off with a coach load of other eager tourists to a place 2hrs drive west of the capital called Beaufort in the Klias Wetlands. The point of the trip was to spot the extremely shy Probiscus monkey (or *Dutchman monkey, as they are known locally, because of their pot bellies and big noses, which is apparently how the locals saw the early traders from Europe who used Sabah as a base). To spot Probiscus you obviously have to catch
them in their natural environment which involved a boat ride down river at dusk, this is when they come close to the waters edge to chill out or mate, at other times they are hidden deep in the forest. We were very lucky to spot a large number of Probiscus; they are the weirdest looking things we’ve ever seen……a bit like Dutchmen only without the clogs and tulips!!!! They have enormous pot bellies, massive noses and really gangly limbs, they swing and jump through the branches with ease and agility which makes photographing them quite difficult (as you can see from the fact that we’ve only included one picture).
More of our primate cousins were on the agenda, this time Borneo’s famous “Wild Man” - THE ORANGUTAN, which translates literally as “Man of the Forest”. These auburn haired creatures with almost human features are endangered in the wild, and with more and more of their natural habitat being destroyed by man it’s no wonder. SORC, or the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, is one of only four places in the world where orphaned or captive Orangutans are rehabilitated and released back into the wild. To get to Sepilok we had
to endure a six hour bus ride to a place called Sandakan on Sabah’s east coast. The bus ride took us through mountainous terrain which left me feeling queasy; just as well I had some vomitstop pills with me otherwise the onboard toilet on our brand new bus might have got a christening!! Sandakan is a 40 minute drive from SORC so we chose to stay there for a couple of nights and catch the local bus to Sepilok for our encounter with the Orangutans. Sandakan used to have the biggest concentration of millionaires in the world but to look at it now you’d never know. It’s a run down port city with a few hotels and restaurants that cater to tourists who stop off on their way to other more exciting places. We found the people of Sandakan to be very friendly and the minute you got the camera out they ambushed you and wanted a photo taken. We stayed at Hotel London in the heart of the city, the local mosque was located behind the hotel which was not a grand mosque by any stretch of the imagination, however it did have the best set of loudspeakers so
the Muezzin’s call to prayer at 5am every morning was an ear piercing occasion.
SORC is open to the public from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm then from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm, they have feeding times at 10:00 am and 3:00 pm both lasting for half an hour. As SORC is not a zoo, the Orangutans are not caged but are free to roam the acres of land freely, if they want to turn up at feeding time they will, if they don’t they wont, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get to spot them, despite this fact tourist turn up by the bus loads in the hope of catching a peek of these illusive creatures. We caught the local bus from Sandakan at 9:00 am and arrived in time for the first feeding of the day. The feeding takes place on a wooden platform and is accessed by a stilted walkway that meanders gently through the jungle, the viewing area has very little shade and few seats, if you’re smart you’ll remember to bring a hat, otherwise be prepared to go for the burn, the sun is intense and the place is alive with mossies and bugs and
Looking for Probiscus
In search of the pot bellied, big nosed Dutchman....surely he can't be that difficult to spot the dreaded leeches!!!! The morning feeding session stirred one lone Orangutan from it’s home in the jungle, he was a young male who didn’t really care too much for the crowd of onlookers, he dipped his head into the buckets of food a few times, sat with his back to the tourists while he munched on the fruit, had a bit a swing on the ropes, pee’d and left, all within a matter of ten minutes. A lot of the tourists left feeling robbed of their experience of seeing Orangutans in the wild, they boarded their tour buses looking peeved that they hadn’t got to take a decent photo or get a bit of video footage, we felt the same but as we didn’t have to jump back on to a tour bus we decided that we’d stay around for the afternoon feeding in the hope that we’d get to see more. The afternoon session turned out to be much better than the one we’d seen that morning. Again only one Orangutan turned out for us, (which apparently is normal as they lead solitary lives), this time a teenage female who hung around much longer, in fact she was there
before the rangers arrived with the food, she plonked herself on the platform and stared into the crowd as people jostled for position. When the food did arrive she entertained us by gorging on bananas and swatting away the Macaques who invaded the platform. She was happy to climb the trees and swing on the ropes while a hundred or so cameras snapped away. After twenty five minutes she’d had enough and made her way back to where she’d come from, hidden from view of the prying cameras. The Macaques stayed on to entertain us and before long a scrap erupted amongst them over who was having the leftovers.
We flew back to KK happy with our Orangutan encounter, we’d been lucky enough to get some decent photo’s and both agreed that seeing those beautiful creatures semi-wild was one of the best things we’d witnessed on any of our travels to date. So, back to Lavender Lodge for a further two nights, we’d arranged to hire a car to drive ourselves up to Mount Kinabalu and the National Park where there are quite a lot of interesting activities and views to take in. We set off on the two
Dutchman
Probiscus Monkey in the wild and a half hour drive with the useless single roadmap that we’d been given and hoped for the best, it was quite easy to navigate around Sabah’s roads which were virtually pot hole free and relatively well signposted. Our chosen destination was a place called Poring which is famous for it’s hot sulphuric springs, it also has a brilliant canopy walkway that isn’t for the faint hearted……you don’t half wobble around on those things, Indiana Jones always seems to do it in style but believe me it’s not easy, especially when you’ve got a big heffer on the thing at the same time. The walkway is constructed with a few knotted ropes and a plank, very basic but it does give a great view of the jungle canopy, you just have to grip on for dear life, grit your teeth and take it nice and steady. Barry once again caused a scene with his height phobia…..obviously the cable car hadn’t cured his fear!!!! The ranger had to stop all human traffic crossing the walkway whilst Barry was on it so that it didn’t rock or roll around….what a wuss!!! I was behind trying my best not to laugh…erm, I mean
trying my best not to rock the thing, while taking photo’s as Barry’s knees got closer and closer to the plank with each uncertain step…….check out the photo’s!!!! After a well deserved soak in the hot baths we drove back towards KK through the mountain range, the scenery is absolutely stunning, Mount Kinabalu is very impressive, it’s shrouded by clouds and mist most of the time but we did manage to get a view of its peak when there was a break, it’s an amazing sight.
We’re happy that we spent time discovering a little bit of Borneo and are not disappointed with what we found, it lived up to most of what we had expected, I personally would like to get much fitter and return to take the two day climb to the summit of Mount Kinabalu and watch the sunrise, what you have to ask yourself is, which one of us is typing this paragraph???
Next we return to KL on Peninsular Malaysia before flying up north to chill at Pulau Perhentian for a while to let our aching legs have a well earned break….. more to follow soon!!!
*DISCLAIMER We do not wish to
Boatman at sunset
Klias Wetlands,Borneo offend any 'Dutchmen' with the contents of this blog, the resemblance between the people of Holland and the Probiscus Monkeys of Sabah was noted by the local people of Malaysia and not by us.............thats that cleared up.........no hate mail please!!!!
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