The Wilds of Borneo - part 2

When I was a kid, I used to really hate it when I was watching a TV show and it ended with “To be continued...” (Get Smart and Happy Days were two shows that I recall did this occasionally, much to my annoyance). So, to those of you who have been desperately waiting for the second part of my Borneo story, fret no longer. I only hope that contrary to so many sequels, this will be as almost as good as the original.

So, when we left our story last time, Jayne and I had just left Gomantong Cave. From there we were subject to a very uncomfortable ride in a mini bus to Lahan Datu, where we had a quick bit of lunch (sadly at the Sabah equivalent of KFC – if you were to ask why we ate there, I’m think we would have mumbled something about it being the only place we could find close to the bus station that had air-conditioning). We then had to wait for an hour for a second (even less comfortable) mini-bus further south to Semporna. All up, it was about a 6 hour trip. Fortunately, we were rewarded by staying in a very nice (and very cheap) hotel in Semporna that was built over the water. We met up with Marianne again that night for dinner. The next day Jayne and I took things fairly easy (Marianne was diving) after what had actually been a fairly hectic week or so that had involved a lot of activity and moving around.

The next day was our first day diving around the island of Mabul - about a 45 minute boat ride from Semporna. It was interesting diving, part of which was on man-made reefs, which were partly made out of rubbish (like old scaffolding, car parts and glass bottles). While it wasn’t nearly as attractive as the natural reef we also dived on, there was some great marine life, particularly things like frogfish and nudibranchs. I took all the photos here with my new camera and underwater casing. I was very pleased with the results.

A frogfish - they are freaky looking creatures.

Another frogfish - I call this one Sexy.

A nudibranch, kind of like a colourful sea slug.

Another nudibranch - they are only a few centimetres long.

And yet another nudibranch - they are quite beautiful.

That night we stayed in a long-house on Mabul Island. It was basic accommodation, but very relaxed and chilled, over the water with the back deck looking out over the ocean. Very pleasant.

Part of the view from our accommodation on Mabul.

The next day we dived at Sipidan Island, which is the main reason people come to Borneo to dive. Sipidan Island is consistently rated as one of the best dive sites in the world, and it was indeed very impressive. The island itself is the tip of a very high underwater mountain that drops straight down for up to 2000 metres to the ocean floor. Due to some unusually environmentally-friendly restrictions on the number of divers allowed to dive at the island each day, the coral is in remarkably good condition, meaning the marine life is amazingly abundant, especially big stuff like turtles, sharks and rays. We saw so many turtles and reef sharks, but only saw one big eagle ray and we missed out on seeing hammerhead sharks. It was rather special diving.

Sipidan Island.

One of the many turtles we saw.

And another turtle.

I also took a couple of video clips, one of a white-tipped reef shark and the other of a turtle swimming. The turtle video should give some idea of the abundance of fish life around.

Our final day diving was on at Kapalai (very close to Mabul) and again we saw some great stuff on these dives.

A very large potato cod.

A white-eyed moray eel.

A large cuttlefish.

A nudibranch.

A yellow-edged moray eel.

A crocodile fish.

A spot-fin lionfish.

A spotted ray.

An anenome fish hiding in its anenome.

A ribbon eel.

A frogfish on its side - its mouth is on the right side.

Another nudibranch.

We had to have a day of rest after our diving, which we spent exploring the tiny island of Mabul – it is a curious mix of a couple of very simple villages and a few very expensive resorts, all squeezed onto an island about 1 km long and maybe 500 metres wide.

The village we stayed in on Mabul Island.

A local villager posing for the camera.

Not sure what they were looking at, but it must have been interesting.

That afternoon we got a boat back to Semporna and arrived in the middle of the town’s biggest annual festival. So the town was buzzing with excitement (a far cry from its normal state) and the harbour was packed with very brightly-coloured boats in preparation for the boat races which were due to start the next day. Of course, finding accommodation there that night was impossible, so we jumped in a mini-bus to Tawau, about one and a half hours away. We spent a fairly unremarkable evening in Tawau then the next day Jayne and I flew back to KK, where we spent our final night in Borneo. The next day we were back at the airport and flying to Kuala Lumpur, where Jayne and I parted ways – I got my flight back to Bangkok while Jayne had to wait another 7 hours for her flight back to Sydney (not the best way to finish a holiday, but sometimes unavoidable).

And so ended my adventures in Borneo. One thing I found interesting was how nice it was for me to get back to Bangkok. While I enjoyed my time in Borneo, it certainly didn’t have the easy-going feel and friendly atmosphere that Thailand has. I realised just how accustomed I have become to having people smile and greet you everywhere, and therefore how much I notice it when it’s not there, as was largely the case in Borneo. It’s not that people were unfriendly there, but they didn’t come across as warmly as the Thais do, generally speaking.

And so I'm now back at work and back to my relatively normal life here in Bangkok. Well, that's about it for the Wilds of Borneo. I hope you enjoyed it. Cheers.

The Wilds of Borneo - part 1

I have returned from the deep, dark jungles of Borneo in one piece and now feel the need to let you all know about my experiences there. My friend Jayne came over to Bangkok for a few days before the two of us departed for Malaysian Borneo together.

Now, I like to think that part of my role is to educate as well as rant, so in the interest of knowledge expansion, here is some information on Borneo for those who may be (until now at least) a little ignorant about it. Borneo is the third largest island on the planet (fourth largest if you count Australia, which doesn’t seem to make it on the official lists for islands, presumably because it’s also a continent) and is partly owned by the Indonesia (the larger southern part) and Malaysia (the smaller northern part). The Malaysian part is further split into two semi-autonomous regions: Sarawak (the western part) and Sabah (the eastern part). We only visited Sabah during this holiday.

We flew into Kota Kinabalu (KK), the capital of Sabah, on our very cheap Air Asia flights (about A$200 return) and were struck by how modern the city looked. We were expecting something a bit more basic.

The sunset on our first night in Kota Kinabalu

We only spent a day in KK (where we met up with Amy, one of the other teachers from school) before we headed up to Mt Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in South-East Asia at over 4000 metres. Jayne and I had toyed with the idea of climbing it (it’s a very popular climb), but decided we couldn’t be bothered. It was nice to see it and do a bit of walking around the area. Unfortunately, I was feeling rather unwell on this day so I didn’t get to do much walking. We spent the next day at a place called Poring, where there are some hot springs in the National Park. Why so many people felt that the 35 degree air temperature was too mild and what they really wanted was to soak in some 50 degree water was a bit lost on me, I confess. Instead, I enjoyed a refreshing dip in a nearby waterfall and also had a swim in the cold pool, rather than sit in one of the hot spring baths.

Mt Kinabalu at sunrise

From Poring, we got a bus to Sandakan, luckily managing to avoid getting rorted by a very sneaky local woman who tried to tell the bus driver she was our tour guide and then overcharge us for our bus tickets. There we met up with Marianne, another teacher from school (we bumped into several teachers from school during the 2 weeks, but Amy and Marianne we actually planned to meet up with). It’s fair to say that Sandakan (and indeed every town we subsequently visited in Sabah) was rather uninspiring: small, dull, basic places that transformed into deserted streets lined with closed metal shutters at night.

Not far from Sandakan is a place called Sepilok, which has an orang-utan sanctuary. One of the big issues in Borneo at the moment is that a lot of the natural rainforests are being decimated in order to make space for palm plantations. Palm oil is one of the most profitable industries in that part of the world, so in true human style, companies are tearing down the rainforests and planting thousands of palm trees instead. Of course, this means that a lot of the local wildlife is losing its natural habitat, including the orang-utan. Hence, this sanctuary was set up to care for and rehabilitate orphaned or sick orang-utans. I quite enjoyed seeing the orang-utans. By the way, orang-utan is a Malay word which means “jungle person”, which is kind of appropriate because they are almost human-like (I think our second-closest relatives species-wise after the chimpanzee) and they do live in the jungle. They are very cute and quite fun. Here are a few photos out of the many that I took.

There is a special feeding platform where they come for a mid-morning snack

And there are special ropes to provide easy access to the feeding platform

Apparently this is quite comfortable if you're an orang-utan

After the orang-utans had finished feeding, as soon as the last one had left the platform, about a dozen macaque monkeys immediately raced onto the platform to scavenge the left-overs. They were also very playful and rather amusing. The baby one was particularly cute.

From Sepilok, we headed into the jungle proper and stayed at a jungle camp for a couple of nights. We did several excursions out and about to look for wildlife, mostly by boat along the river. We saw quite a lot of stuff, mainly monkeys and birds. We did see a mother and baby orang-utan in the wild, which was very nice. We also saw many proboscis monkeys, named because of their big and rather hideous noses (by the way, the Malay name for proboscis monkey actually translates as “dutch man”). Here are some more photos.

A white heron

A kingfisher

A hornbill

A proboscis monkey with baby

A typical house in the jungle

Marianne, Amy, myself and Jayne

After leaving the jungle camp we went to Gomantong Cave, which was very interesting. It’s a place where they collect the bird nests used in bird-nest soup. While the bird nest harvesting season had just finished, it was amazing to see the rudimentary equipment and extreme conditions that the people work in to collect these little nests – dangerous in the extreme. The cave itself was massive and therefore very impressive, but also incredibly smelly, as the entire ground was covered in inches of bat and bird droppings, which of course attracted thousands of cockroaches. It was far more pleasant looking up rather than down (so long as you remember to keep your mouth shut when doing so).

We then headed further down the coast to a place called Semporna, but I think this would be a good place to end part one. To be continued...