Danum Valley

The next day we fly east across Borneo to Lahud Datu, on the Celebes Sea for our trip to the Danum Valley Field Station. On the way we see the dreaded Oil Palm plantations that are decimating the forest and orphaning orang-utans. Our three hour road trip to the Field Centre is pretty ghastly but we finally arrive to hear all the strange sounds of the jungle at night.

Next day, despite buying some leech socks I soon attract such a number of leeches from our first walk in the jungle that my enthusiasm for wild places and lots of slippery mud soon evaporates! It is small comfort to see the brilliant blue and black Asian Fairy Bluebird even though Hugh missed it. This does not just mean I have seen a species he has not, but indeed an entire bird family! Hugh claims this is inconsistent with our prenuptial contract.

Day two and we are lucky enough to see an orang-utan and her small baby from the verandah at breakfast, which inspires me to leave the leach-less place of safety and face my fears in the jungle. I not only see the orang-utan again but also a Bornean gibbon, a pig-tailed macaque and a troop of red leaf monkeys. I remove the resultant leeches with only one or two screams of horror and feeling a lot like Angelina Jolie I bravely cross the scary swing bridge across the river in the rain. And who said I was an urban princess?

By day three we were set to leave. Hugh had seen neither a Pitta nor a Pheasant, so he faced ridicule at the hands of serious twitchers around the world. Fortunately the last morning walk before breakfast yielded both, and the muddy bumpy drive back to Lahad Datu unearthed the mythical Bornean Bearded Pig. Our last night in Sabah is spent in the luxurious Tanjung Aru Resort where we appreciate hot water and alcohol after suffering without either in the Danum Valley. A great end to a South-east Asian adventure!

Mt Kinabalu

We take our lives in our hands and head off in a shared mini-van early Thursday morning for the two hour drive to Mt Kinabalu. The traffic is awful and the road steep and windy with many trucks but the views, even through the mist and low-lying clouds, are still sensational. This huge mountain, with its jagged teeth of granite is a big draw card for most tourists who long to climb to the top of its 4095m peak. I think they are all mad and convince Hugh that we would be much happier walking around the many trails at the Park Headquarters and more to the point see many more birds.

So we have a lovely morning and luckily do see many of the Bornean endemics that our bird book describes including a pretty pale blue Flycatcher and a bright scarlet sunbird, called Temminck’s1 Sunbird. We also see the famous black and green Rajah Brooke’s2 birdwing butterfly and this lovely lavender and blue butterfly pictured which remains unidentified (by us at any rate) as yet. It unusually stood still long enough to be photographed.

It is very cool up here on the mountain and feels strange but pleasant to be walking through rainforest without any humidity. We walk trails that go along some mountain streams and marvel at all the ferns, mosses and lichens that cover the trees. It is only after lunch that the cloud clears a little and we are able to see the mountain up close and I am extremely glad we decided not to climb it!

1Who was this Temminck? – a man, like “Whitehead” and “Horsefield”, who named so many birds in the region. He was Dutch aristocrat and zoologist with an inadequate Wikipedia entry even smaller than my husband’s– see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coenraad_Jacob_Temminck.

2While stuck in various airport lounges I took the time to read “White Rajah”. This is a relatively amusing book about Sir James Brooke, a man of wealth and position, who took it upon himself to build the empire in the region by attacking pirates (some of whom may have been innocent bystanders) and taking a fancy to young native boys. Hugh thinks that homosexuality is surely the reason why the British Empire was great – it was the driving force behind men being away from their wives on boats in the ocean, with other men, and very little to do.

Stupendous Sabah

This trip is about spending 10 days in Sabah, a Malaysian province of Borneo, as Hugh is running a conservation planning workshop for WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) in Kota Kinabalu and the aim is to then travel around and see lots of birds for Hugh and Orangutans for me. Our first day was extremely successful for my agenda as we visited the nature reserve run by the Rasa Ria resort outside of Kota Kinabalu. After a short walk into the reserve, the rangers called up the two orphaned orangutans who swung in through the tree-tops with effortless ease. I have never seen something so amazing in my life. We were all entranced as they fed from their feeding stations and then put on a show for our benefit. It was hilarious to see them swinging their trees and pretending not to be able to reach the next treetop. Apparently they enjoy the oohs and ahhs of the tourists and like it if you clap.

The two orphans are about four years of age and are being rehabilitated before being released back into the wild. Young orphaned orangutans often need to be taught how to swing on branches and have to be encouraged to look for their own food. The highlight of the visit was seeing the six month old baby orangutan who is still kept in the nursery and was the most adorable creature who had to wear a baby suit as she felt the cold! It brought tears to my eyes. The ranger said it was very hard for them too when they had to hand the orangutans over to the Sepilok Wild life park in East Sabah for release as they become so attached to them. I'm not surprised.

Kota Kinabalu, although on a nice harbour on the South China Sea, is not that attractive mainly as it was bombed twice by the allies in the war and only three pre-war structures remain. But it does have an interesting Museum which displays the different indigenous tribes,their costumes and culture which I find fascinating. There are about 9 different tribes with quite distinctive dress and wonderful beads, coin belts and weavings. The largest tribe are the Kadazan tribe who mainly wear black and have a very elaborate rice harvest ritual in May which sounds fascinating to a pagan like myself as it has priestesses with sacred implements and elaborate head-dresses made of rice stalks, colourful threads and silver ornaments. At dinner that night we went to a fabulous steam-boat restaurant where the different tribes were represented in a dance show. By far the most impressive are the Kadazan-Dusun tribe whose costume is not unlike Native American Indians with large feather headdresses and bark shirts. They used to be headhunters and still seem pretty good with a blow pipe. They have a dangerous looking dance which involves jumping quickly over moving poles.

We visited a wonderful bookshop called Borneo Books which had lots of history, anthropology and plant/bird books and where I learnt via a fascinating bead book that many of the tribal bead necklaces are heirlooms and that some of them are made of beads from Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Venice. It is still a mystery how the beads got to Sabah. We also visited a groovy Fillipino bar where I had the best Margarita outside of California that I have ever tasted. The food is delicious here too as there is a mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Filipino cuisines with lots of noodles, rice and yummy (to me at any rate) tofu. Tomorrow we are going to visit Mt Kinabalu which means 'place of the spirits of the dead' - if the weather is clear you can see the mountain from our hotel room but usually the mountain is wreathed in clouds. Very spooky!