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!