Borneo - orangutans, tiger beer and crazy bond villains...!

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Using up great slabs of my precious holiday days is something I do with aplomb. My desire to keep visiting the swathes of SE Asia that I didn't manage to get to on my travels meant that Autumn 2009 saw the best part of 3 weeks being spent in Borneo. I'd roped in Steve and Chris to recreate the travelling trio from our first trip to SE Asia in 2005, and Sky was teaching English just a short hop away in Taiwan and was able to join us for a week too.

I'd treated the trip very much as a backpacking adventure, but with a budget that meant we could stay in nicer places, take extra taxis and not skimp on the food or more importantly the tiger beer. In keeping with the backpacker feel I hadn't done much (any) planning. To me the word "Borneo" conjured up visions of rugged rainforest and an untamed land of adventure. I didn't know much else about it, and my only aims before the trip were to climb Mount Kinabalu, see an orangutan in the wild and chill out on a beach with a cold tiger beer in my hand! We achieved all of these aims pretty successfully, but Borneo itself (the small part we visited) was quite different to how I expected....!

First up was our layover in KL. We had all been to KL before and found it pretty sterile, and to be honest our latest visit did nothing to change that view, although part of that may have been our own fault as we again failed to get up early enough to snare any of the limited number of tickets to climb to the skybridge of the iconic Petronas Towers. Another issue with KL was that one of the things we had been looking forward to was re-visiting the Moghul curry house, somewhere we had enjoyed one of the best curries ever, numerous side dishes and plenty of beer for very little outlay of cash back in 2005. Chris had visited it again in 2007, but it seems the business model of producing top notch food from the finest ingredients and charging very little money for it had taken its toll on the Moghul Curry house and it had gone out of business!! It was a pretty major anti-climax, as it was something we had all been looking forward to perhaps a little too much!

Our trip to the airport passed mile upon mile of palm oil plantations, and it was to be a similar story when we landed on Borneo. Palm oil is a bio-fuel that is easy to produce seeing as the trees are apparently very easy to maintain. All that has to then be done is to chop off the clumps of conker sized fruit and squeeze the oil out of them. You then have have of the world's most versatile products used in things as diverse as crisps, bread and lipstick. Apparently, palm oil is already in one in 10 items on supermarket shelves in the UK. In theory, palm oil has impeccably green credentials, but it seems that the ideal growing conditions are those found in places such as Borneo where primary rainforest once thrived. In fact 90% of the world's exported palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia - with the majority being grown on Borneo and also on Sumatra. This meant that as we moved through Sabah, the northernmost part of Malaysian Borneo, we were greeted by acres and acres of palm oil plantations, rather than the vast areas of rainforest that I had somewhat naively been expecting.

After touching down in Sabah's capital, Kota Kinabalu we explored the town for a couple of days and discovered that unlike a lot of our previous travelling experiences, things in Borneo needed to be booked in advance rather than rocked up to on the day. In some ways this seemed a positive aspect, eco-tourism does seem to be one of the watch-words in Borneo and so the number of people that can go daily to see or do any of the big draws that the island has to offer is limited. Also, in each case there seemed to be a single tour company that had managed to get the exclusive ability to provide the trips (usually through owning the only accommodation that was available, and no more accommodation being allowed to be constructed). This meant that standards seemed to be kept high, as operators weren't competing on price and therefore looking to cut corners to maintain their margins - however it also seemed to be a license to print money for the tour operators and the prices were correspondingly higher than you might expect....

Mount Kinabalu is Malaysia's highest peak at 4,092m and located in the Kinabalu national park. It is a giant slab of unyielding granite that erupts out of the surrounding forest. However, you don't require any mountaineering equipment to reach the summit so a fit person can climb to the peak (and some pretty unfit people can give it their best shot!). Being a forest peak, rather than an alpine peak like the ones I'd climbed before, the weather was going to make much more of an impact, with mist, fog and rain likely to feature heavily! The aim, as with all these climbs, was to be at the peak to see a magical sunrise. This involved climbing from about 1,850metres at the start of the trail to the accommodation at Laban Rata at 3,250 metres. A 3 a.m. start would then see us make the summit for sunrise.

The actual trail is only 8.7km long from start to finish, but climbing 2,200 metres in altitude during this distance means the trail has a pretty punishing uphill gradient throughout. The weather wasn't all that kind to us through the hike and as we climbed through the rainforest we were enveloped in cloud and mist which - although it kept us relatively cool - meant that there wasn't any sort of view on offer. Each group has to have a guide, and in terms of flora, Kinabalu national park is meant to be one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, however as we plodded up to Laban Rata, our guide seemed more interested in catching up on war stories with his mates than explaining the intricacies of the local flora to us!! However, he said that we had made very good time on the climb so we would be able to have a "lie-in" and leave about 3.15a.m. the next morning so that we didn't spend too much time hanging around at the summit.

We had been a fraction too late in getting into our 6 man dorm, and so only the top 3 bunks were left - and these were some of the wobbliest, ricketiest bunks I'd ever experienced. To add to the general difficulty in sleeping the three German hikers under us all had massive stomach problems and so were constantly jumping up and rushing to the bathroom, turning on lights and generally doing things that meant that we weren't in high spirits come the start of the trip to the summit.

The hike had been my idea, and I'd kind of railroaded the boys into joining me. After a hike up in the rain with no views, and a night without sleep I thought things would only get better. Unfortunately our late start meant that we were at the back of a single file line of the 120 guests plus guides that were snaking their way up to the summit....and it was raining too! We trudged onwards, and eventually the trail widened and came out of the forest onto the granite outcropping. Here we were clear of the mass of hikers and able to go at our own pace, but large sections were very steep and required full use of the ropes that had been anchored into the rock. The wet granite was pretty treacherous, but we had no real problems advancing towards the summit and we had made good time in getting to the bottom of the final push to the summit in good time ahead of sunrise. The walk so far hadn't been overly challenging and although the final ascent involved a bit of rock hopping the main issue we had at the summit was the number of people that were there! Although we had overtaken the main pack by some distance, there were still 10-15 people at the summit and many more streaming up behind us. This was quite a different experience for me compared to the other big peaks that I had climbed in South America and Nepal, where it had always been just my group at the summit able to drink in the views by ourselves. Being part of such a "tourist trek" had taken a fair bit of the gloss off the achievement. We took our summit snaps and surveyed the murky, misty view that we were sharing with so many others and concluded that there was to be no spectacular sunrise for us to enjoy! We headed back downwards, hoping that the weather would improve and we could enjoy some spectacular early morning views. However, despite me being the established "mountaineer" of the group, on the descent from the summit I started to struggle to walk, with dizzy spells attacking me and my wet gloves causing my hands to be in agonising pain from the cold. I had to give my bag to Chris and take 5 leaning on him to pull myself together!! Luckily the boys were there to support me, Steve providing spare pairs of socks to put on my hands as makeshift gloves! I knew the support would last about as long as the descent and then the piss-taking would start...as it rightly did!!

The climb hadn't been as much fun as any of the other big peaks that I had done - mainly because it was so accessible to so many people and the whole triumphant feeling of striding up a mountain in isolation had been lost. Nevertheless, I'm really glad we did it as summiting these peaks is something I always enjoy - I'm just not sure the boys would say the same thing!

The descent to the trailhead was brutal on the knees and we splurged on a luxury 4x4 to take us back to KK. The splurging continued as we each got our own king sized room as reward for our endeavours. This continued for the next couple of days as we chilled out on the beaches of the Abdul Rahman National Park - a series of islands just off the coast which we took boats out to and around with the entertaining local drivers. Our favourite got chatting to us about football and it turned out he had hedged his bets by supporting Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea!!

Back in KK we ate at a fish market/restaurant where your dinner was swimming around in front of you in glass tanks ready for you to select and have put on your plate. Chris and I shared a crab that seemed to be the size of a frisbee with claws that looked like they would get through bike locks! Cooked in chilli the crab was absolutely delicious and it was great to get such fresh seafood.

We hopped on an internal flight to Sandakan in the eastern part of Malaysian Borneo, and Sky had made the hop across from Taiwan where she is teaching English so we were up to a party of four. Sky had done more research than any of us and found the Sepilok Jungle Resort online, with balconied rooms, a top little restaurant and a great swimming pool. The swimming pool had a bar attached to it and it was run by an amazing comedy bond villain, who greeted us each time with a manic laugh and squinted look which always gave the impression that he was plotting to takeover the world!

Using the jungle resort as our base, we did a number of trips, the best of which, and probably the highlight of the holiday was to Uncle Tan's Jungle Camp. Unfortunately, Uncle Tan is no longer with us, but seemingly his entire extended family continue to run a basic but brilliant jungle safari on the lower Kinabatang river. The accommodation was in raised huts with simple mattresses and mosquito nets, and the activities involved a number of safaris into the rainforest both on foot and by boat at different times of the day to try and see as much wildlife as possible.

This is one of the best areas in Borneo for seeing wildlife, but paradoxically one of the reasons for this is the spread of the palm oil plantations and the destruction of the rainforest. The guides were very open with us and said that so much rainforest had been cleared there were now only 10 disconnected pockets along the lower Kinabatang that were still secondary rainforest (all the primary forest was cleared in the earlier part of the 20th century). This meant that from the bank of the river in places the forest only extended 10-20metres (sometimes less) before giving way to the palm oil. Having such a narrow band of habitat to live in meant that the wildlife was concentrated next to the river, rather than buried deep in an unaccessible area of the forest, and this made sightings much more frequent for us tourists. Perhaps every 10-15 minutes we were able to sight a creature of interest, ranging from probiscus monkeys to long-tailed macaques, a rhinoceros hornbill (apparently very rare and we were very lucky to see this), kingfishers, a baby crocodile, a scorpion and various other bird and frog species. Most importantly for me we were able to see, or more accurately startle, orangutans in the wild! We watched them from the boat as they swung gracefully through the trees and then tramped our way through the forest catching glimpses of them until they sought sanctuary in their nests.

After a great three days at Uncle Tan's we headed back to Sepilok and also visited an Orangutan Rehabilitation centre where orangutans that have been orphaned or kept as pets are nurtured with the ultimate aim of releasing them back into the wild. We'd deliberately visited the sanctuary after our trip to Uncle Tan's hoping that our first experience of seeing orangutans would be in the wild, and the sanctuary did seem a little twee (and crowded) in comparison. However, Sky and I returned during the afternoon for the second feeding session which was much less busy and here it was really pleasant to get a chance to see the myriad of facial expressions and human-like actions of our closest cousins.

The next few days we spent chilling out at the pool in the glorious sunshine, enjoying beers and bond villains in equal measure, only rousing ourselves at one point to wander to a rainforest reserve with canopy walk which was enjoyable, if not stiflingly hot! In the mean time Chris and Steve had been incredibly keen and arranged a round of golf at the local course. I think they enjoyed themselves, but one of the few things higher than the temperature was the score on Steve's card. Now I know what you're thinking, "How does a great ball-striker like Steve, a legend in fact, manage to put up 117? Well he missed a four foot putt on the 18th for 116"!!

It had been a relaxing climax to our time in Borneo, but we decided to do a final trip before heading home and this would be out to the Turtle Islands National Park. Here huge female green turtles and hawkbill turtles return to the islands that they were born in order to lay their eggs. They drag themselves up the beach, excavate a hole with their flippers and then deposit 50-100 eggs before returning to the sea exhausted. Survival rates for the eggs are very low, so in an effort to boost the turtle's numbers the park rangers remove the eggs (without the mother realising) and take them to the turtle hatchery to be reburied in a safe environment.

After spending the day on the island relaxing, we got the call that it was "turtle time" (yes, really!!), and were able to go out and view the eggs being laid, the the eggs being transferred into the hatchery, and best of all watching the hatchlings that had been born that day being released into the ocean. In theory it sounds like a wonderful experience, but in reality it somehow turned out to be a little underwhelming. Part of me thought this was a good thing, as the drive for eco-tourism meant that we got to spend very little time with the female turtle in order to minimise the disturbance to her. But a little more time, and less of a feeling of being rushed through, would have gone a long way towards making this experience the incredible experience that on paper it sounded like it would be.

Reflecting on our time in Borneo, it was a hugely enjoyable experience but part of me left slightly disappointed. Perhaps my lack of research was the reason, but prior to leaving Borneo had invoked expectations of a wild and off the beaten track adventure that would compare with Laos, Cambodia and the rural parts of Thailand that I had loved so much in the past. The experiences that we enjoyed were fantastic in their own right, but all the while felt slightly sanitised and hadn't quite lived up to places visited before or my (admittedly probably unrealistic) expectations. I'm sure there are parts of the island that have escaped the relentless drive for palm oil and remain the Borneo that I had imagined I would encounter. I shouldn't be surprised that a complete lack of preparation and research led my expectations of Sabah to be beyond what could be achieved in reality. Perhaps the answer is a return trip with some actual planning beforehand, taking in Sarawak and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo). Now there's a thought.....!

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Photos

Orangutan in the wild
A snap of one of the slightly startled orangutans we saw on our trip on the Lower Kinabatang

Petronas Towers
Iconic towers lit up at night

Sunset from Laban Rata
The halfway point on the trek and we were able to enjoy this sunset

Mount Kinabalu
After waiting our turn we were able to get the obligatory summit shot!

View from Mount Kinabalu
After pulling myself together I was able to pose long enough to grab this photo!

Abdul Rahman National Park
A well earned chillout after our mountain exertions

Long tailed macaque
On the first afternoon of our trip we saw this beautiful silhouette.

Kinabatung river
The landscape we were moving through

Kingfisher
On one of the night hikes we came across this sleeping kingfishr.

Rhinocerous hornbill
Apparently we were very lucky to glimpse one of these rare creatures. Even I could figure where the name came from!

Uncle Tan's!!
The four of us just before leaving Uncle Tan's

Orangutan at the sanctuary
A comical orangutan at feeding time.

Orangutan mother and baby
Another shot from the orangutan sanctuary

Rainforest reserve
One of the only pieces of primary rainforest to survive. It was over 60 metres tall.

Group shot at the rainforest reserve
The canopy walkway that allowed us to get up in the trees.

Comments

[Adventures of a Travel Addict]

I'm currently planning my trip to Borneo and am planning to go to all the places you just mentioned (minus climing Mt. KK). I plan to check out Sarawak as well. Did you do day trips to Taman Rahman park or did you do an overnight stay?? I hear it's expensive to visit those islands.