The parrots of Tanjung Aru beach

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I arrived back in Kota Kinabalu in the early afternoon and immediately after checking back into Lucy's Homestay I headed off to look for parrots. The particular parrot I wanted to see is called the blue-naped parrot. It is in a genus called Tanygnathus which basically means “big beak”. One of the other members of the genus is called the great-billed parrot because it has such a big beak. The blue-naped parrot's full scientific name is Tanygnathus lucionensis – “lucionensis” means “from Luzon”. Luzon is an island in the Philippines. What is a Filipino parrot doing living in Kota Kinabalu you may ask. Well, the answer is all to do with an English bird-watcher. If you know anything about birding in Borneo you may know of the bird-watcher in question because his name is Quentin Phillipps and he wrote the 2009 Field Guide To The Birds Of Borneo. He used to live in Kota Kinabalu in the 1960s and he had an aviary with twelve blue-naped parrots which he had bought off a Filipino fisherman. When he left Borneo in 1971 to go to university back in the UK he just released all the parrots at Tanjung Aru because he was a dick. Now there are about forty or so of the parrots living there.

Tanjung Aru beach is just off to the side of the main town of Kota Kinabalu. It isn't far away, less than twenty minutes by bus – in fact you could walk to it quite easily if it wasn't so jolly hot. According to the Sabah Tourism websites I could get there by taking bus number 16 from either outside City Hall or outside Wawasan Plaza. I tried City Hall first because it was closest. I found only taxi drivers who told me there was no bus. I went round the other side of City Hall where the out-of-town mini-van depot was (for Mt. Kinabalu etc) and asked the person at the Airport bus stand. He said to catch it outside Centrepoint. I went to Centrepoint (which is a big mall) but that didn't seem right, so I just kept walking round towards Wawasan Plaza until I found the city bus depot. Apparently there have been some changes fairly recently in where the buses congregate – suffice to say that if you head along the main road which runs parallel to the waterfront you'll find the buses and mini-vans strung for a couple of hundred metres along the roadside outside the Marina Courts Resort Apartments. You can't miss it. Bus number 16C is the one which you need to get to Tanjung Aru beach. It costs just two Ringgitts, and passes through the airport en route. The beach is just up the road from the airport, and you get off when you see the big sign which says “First Beach Tanjung Aru”. There are all sorts of restaurants, cafes and food stalls here, and directly on your left is Prince Philip Park, a grassy expanse with groves of Casuarina trees, looking like wispy pine trees.

I heard parrots screeching within thirty seconds of arrival. I looked around the trees and saw a big bird inside one. That had to be a parrot I thought, but a check with the binoculars showed it to in fact be an Oriental pied hornbill, an unexpected sight at the beach! Another scan around and I saw a blue-naped parrot perched on the exposed top of another tree. A quicker find than I had expected before starting out, to be honest. Through the binoculars I could see it really well, bright green with yellow on the wings, blue on the back of the head, and a flame-red beak, but in photos it was just a black silhouette. I walked through the park, seeing a few more parrots in silhouette or flying past overhead, and eventually (well, ten minutes … as “eventually” as it gets with something so easy to find!) came across a tree full of the parrots feeding, where I managed to get some good photos because they were against the branches and leaves rather than the sky. There were quite a lot of long-tailed parakeets in the park as well, but they insisted on sitting on bare branches against the sky so all the photos were silhouettes. The long-tailed parakeets are native to Borneo, as were all the other birds I saw here, including pied triller and lots of green imperial pigeons.

The next day I visited the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park. I had been there in 2009 and while I could applaud the concept – specialising in Bornean wildlife for education and conservation – the execution left a lot to be desired. Unfortunately the zoo has not improved at all in the past five years. If anything it has gone backwards. Very unfortunate. For this visit I had discovered that to get to the zoo I could, apparently, catch mini-bus number 17B or 17C from the KK bus terminal, and this would drop me off at a point from which one can get a “private car” (i.e. an unregistered taxi) for the last 5km for 20 Ringgitts. I had already found the bus terminal the day before (when I went to Tanjung Aru beach) but when I asked about the zoo the driver of the number 17 bus said I had to hire the whole bus to get there. I said no, I just wanted to go to the closest point and then get a car. He said the car would cost twice as much as hiring the bus for the whole way, to which I replied that that was ridiculous because the zoo was much closer to Lok Kawi than to Kota Kinabalu. He said “no it isn't”, I said “yes it is”, he said “no it isn't”, and I walked off. I found mini-bus number 20B which went to a township called Kinarut (and cost 3 Ringgitts), and from there I got a private car for 20 Ringgitts. The zoo is 5km from here. There are no buses or taxis at the zoo so one needs to either arrange a time for the taxi to pick you up again, or get the driver's phone number so you can call when ready.

On the plus sides, there were Malayan pangolins at the zoo! The one I could see was sleeping by hanging over a branch like an old coat thrown over the back of a chair. Awesome. I recently joined the cool guys in the “those who have seen a pangolin in a zoo” club when I saw one at the Singapore Night Safari, but now I am in a much more select club – “those who have seen pangolins in two different zoos!”; actually, to break it down even further, I am now in the veeeery select club of “those who have seen pangolins in two different zoos within three weeks of one another!” Ah yeah, that's the good stuff right there.

Generally, speaking though, the zoo was pretty depressing with its worsening cages and insane elephants.

I flew from Kota Kinabalu early morning back to Kuala Lumpur. The Air Asia girl at the check-in counter was named Monaliza. The plane landed in KL at the brand new KLIA2 terminal. The old Air Asia terminal (LCCT) was easy to navigate around – the new one is enormous! It is quite confusing for someone as easily distracted as myself. I would recommend not getting a bite to eat at Burger King though, even though it is the cheapest place to eat in the airport. I was waiting over twenty minutes after placing my order, just for a burger!! And the joint was no busier than any other Burger King on a regular day's trading.

There are still buses running between the new terminal and Melaka but now they only take two hours instead of three. I guess that means it takes an extra hour between the terminal and Kuala Lumpur though. I am back at Travellers Planet in Melaka. I have a usual policy of returning to accommodations I like if they are cheap, clean and friendly.

In very very sad news:

The trip now is over. I mean it's been over for the last two months, it just took a while to actually reach the over. Now it is well and truly over. The morning after tomorrow I am flying out of Asia to Melbourne! No more trip!! This is not a misleading fabrication!! No more adventures. Back to the real world, whatever that is.

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