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Published: August 6th 2007
It's bananas!
One of the impatient ones. We left Kota Kinabalu a little later than we had planned as we were not quite ready, so after a visit to the bakery we finally left. We arrived at Sepilok Jungle resort, which is a five minute walk from the Orang Utan Sanctuary, around 3pm. The resort was covers quite a lot of land and has several lakes and the are currently building a swimming pool. It is beautiful here but unfortunately other than visit the orangutans there is not a great deal to do here other than relax, so we spent the rest of the day chilling. We even had an alcohol free early night!
On Monday we were up early to see the orangutans at feeding time. There must have been at least ten of them all together, of various ages, they are truly amazing creatures. The Malaysian word "Orang Utan" translates to "Man of the Forest". They are so human like it was no surprise to learne that they share over 96% of the same DNA as humans, they even have 32 teeth like us. Each orangutan has a different personality, some patiently waiting for bananas and others doing any thing to
entertain themselves whilst they eagerly wait. One even throwing bananas over its head, before starting to destroy the wooden stairs up to the feeding platform.
We watched a DVD on the sanctuary which is supported by a UK organisation. This told the story of two different age orangutans, one was an infant who was found on a farm being illegally kept as a pet. The other orangutan was a dominant male who was finally ready to be released back into the jungle. The film told how new members are examined for diseases and how they make the transition from being dependent on humans to hopefully one day too returning to the jungle.
Next we went to the visitors centre where we read about orangutans and also about different the different individuals who are presently in the sanctuary. There must be about sixteen of them at present, but orangutans often return back to the sanctuary at feeding times, especially mothers-to-be. Mothers are also often found here showing off their child to the staff and public.
After lunch we decided to do one of the treks in the sanctuary to the water hole, which despite sounding
promising the only wildlife we saw was a lizard, not what i was expecting!
We then returned in time for their afternoon feed, when we got there their was a couple waiting and once the bananas came a few more arrived, but the orangutan presence was short lived as a large family of macaques gate crashed, causing a commotion in the public viewing area, as no one really wanted to get to close, apart from one lady and she nearly ended up loosing her camera. The macaques then stole some of the banana, much to the staffs annoyance, not long after that the orangutans left the macaques to it. I am sure that wild orangutans wouldn't have given up so easily, but most of them had only just started to be rehabilitated.
On Tuesday we decided to to spend the in Sandakan, but we were rather disappointed, as there was not a lot happening there. First we used the internet as there is only one in our resort and it rarely works. The only place i wanted to visit was St Michael's Church, the only stone building in Sabah, which took 20 years to
build. Unfortunately we were unable to find it so headed back to the centre where we had a bite to eat before returning back to Sepilok.
The bus journey back was an experience, we have been used to people staring at us on and off for the past five months, but the man sat next to Erica had was obviously not completely there which made us feel a bit nervous. After several minutes of him continuing to stare i leaned forward and made eye contact with him, but he didn't turn away he continued to stare at me. I then waved and with a half smile said hello, to which he looked at me for several more seconds before eventually looking away. It is almost as if people have not seen white women before, we appear to be a novelty, something that we are getting fed up with. Luckily after a couple more stops he got off the bus.
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