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!

Life is a beach in Bali

Alex and I get into a rhythm of swimming and sun bathing by the beach (I read in the shade!) and then doing laps in the jungle-themed pool. (At least I do, Alex does more sun bathing.) Then we saunter over to the beach for lunch and rest a little after-wards as it is all a bit tiring - this resort life. On Monday we are a bit more energetic and visit a nearby temple, which has an ancient stone pillar with Sanskrit inscriptions. That’s what the guide-book said any way – I could see no Sanskrit anything. After discussions with some of Hugh’s more adventurous students, Alex decides she wants to go and learn how to scuba dive so we find a really nice Danish dive instructor who now lives in Bali who signs us up and I’m even thinking about it myself until I see the DVD which puts me off for life.

But Alex is full of enthusiasm and after an introductory dive in the pool, we are picked up early on Wednesday morning and drive off for an hour past rice paddies overlooked by big mountains to Pandangbai where we set off on our adventure. Unfortunately although it is only a small boat trip to Blue lagoon, it is way too rough for me to snorkel so I just watch anxiously as my baby disappears into the water and I become increasingly seasick as the boat bobs around for hours in the waves. Talk about mother love! Alex is having a great time however and gets up close to a nemo fish which makes me jealous but I recover once back on dry land and we enjoy a wonderful lunch full of eggplant with spicy peanut sauce.

We have a hard week full of swimming up to the pool bar and drinking cocktails on the beach. We also go shopping and buy many t-shirts, scarves and a nice silk dress for Alex. Hugh is working hard at his conference but takes a morning off and we visit the beautiful cliff top temple of Uluwatu and dodge the cheeky monkeys to do a bit of bird watching. This temple is one of nine on Bali, which are known as directional temples and face the sea, the sunset and the mountains. There are also temples of the lake and the forest. There are empty shrine thrones everywhere, which get filled with small offerings of rice, incense and flowers. Religion here is an interesting mixture of Hinduism and the older animist religion.

After a final conference dinner of crazy karaoke, we leave Sanur and drive in bumper to bumper traffic to Ubud, stopping to visit the temple of Goa Gaja, which has a spectacular location near a river and has a spooky cave with a statue of Ganesh, my favourite God. We are staying nearby for 2 nights in a gorgeous villa, which overlooks the river Wos and is tranquil and atmospheric with a sweet outdoor bathroom. Alex and I bravely venture into the chaos of central Ubud and are rewarded with a lovely lunch overlooking the lotus filled pools of the temple of Saraswati. We do more shopping and return home exhausted to find that Hugh has watched a traditional cremation ceremony on the river from our balcony. On our last day we walk to the nearby sacred monkey forest, trying to avoid the scary monkeys and home again in the tropical rain past water-filled rice paddies. Very picture postcard – just how I imagined Bali.

Jostling Yogyakarta

We return to the lovely Hotel Phoenix by minivan and do a bit more lolling by the pool before girding our loins to fight our way past becak drivers, batik salespeople and furious motorbikes and check out Yogyakarta. Despite our best efforts, we are nevertheless kidnapped by a helpful man and dutifully admire some rather nice Batik pictures and return to the hotel a few hours later, exhausted and in need of a soothing cocktail.

The next day we decide to visit the nearby temple complex of Prambanan, a curious mixture of Hindu and Buddhist temples which is quite spectacular despite being damaged in the 2006 earthquake. Hugh is happy and finds some birds at last although he gets a nasty wasp bite on his lip and starts to resemble elephant man. Somewhat alarmed and in need of anti-histamines we try to get back to the hotel but there are no taxis so we have to literally jump onto a moving bus which is quite exciting. We finally get back to the hotel after jumping off the still moving bus and Hugh recovers.

Alex and I decide to continue our self-appointed mission to try all of Indonesia’s transport options and hire a becak to see some more of Yogyakarta. We visit the imposing kraton, as the sultan’s palace is known, where we are again kidnapped by a nice man who shows us around the complex and takes us along alleys to a nearby puppet maker’s shop. It is fascinating to watch how the shadow puppets are made and coloured and we fall in love with Rama and a sea-monster that we have to buy. Then we visit another batik gallery and buy a nice bird batik for Hugh as we don’t want him to feel left out. After roaming the streets we meet up with Hugh and find an excellent restaurant and some cheapish wine.

Today we get an early flight and make our way to Bali. Our resort at Sanur is full of pavilions and pools and fountains and our rooms are gorgeous. We decide that this lifestyle will probably suit us all except Hugh who is fretting about internet access for his obsessive computer game addiction. But Alex and I are pleased to see that there are many lounges to lay on at the beach and a sweet pavilion you can swim out to and we enjoy a late lunch watching the sea. It’s a hard life!

Jaunting around Java

We are spending 2 weeks in Indonesia for partly for a conference and partly for a holiday and we fly first to Bali and have a horrible moment trying to push through crowds of people to buy our visas and then join an enormous crowd to be processed. The lines do not seem to move at all but people keep disappearing strangely behind us. We find out later that someone from the conference waited for 2 hours but we are worried about our connecting flight. After some fruitless fretting we are approached by an official, who spoke of an “express” lane, and then with our first ever bribe we are whisked through immigration. Very dodgy. Rather flustered, we catch a connecting flight to Yogyakarta in Java, a short 1 hour flight and check into the beautiful Hotel Phoenix, which was built in 1918 and has a very Dutch colonial feel. It is a lovely hotel with delightful friendly staff and we begin to relax.

In the morning we catch a taxi to the town of Borobudur, which is home to the UNESCO world heritage listed 8th century Buddhist temple that from the air resembles a huge mandala. After checking in to another beautiful hotel, the Saraswati, where we lolled by the lush pool for a while, we walked to the temple. Luckily it was overcast and not so hot by then as the temple has three terraces which you walk around clockwise in order to leave the world of passion and earthly pleasures behind to reach the summit and experience Nirvana with many stupas containing seated buddhas. I stalked a monk who was doing the real thing as the photograph shows. The views of the surrounding Javanese countryside from the top are breath-taking and we are able to see the huge volcano Mt Merapi in the distance. The funniest thing that happened as you can see is that Hugh became very popular as many people wanted to have their photos taken with him. We couldn’t really understand why! So we joined in the fun and took pictures of his fan club too.

The next day we had a wonderful buffet breakfast with the most delicious coconut pancakes and other yummy Indonesian treats which the manager assured me were vegetarian. Actually the food has been surprisingly good for me with lots of spicy tofu curries, fried tempeh and gado-gado. Hugh and I got up early and walked a few kilometres to the temple of Mendut which was quite tricky as there was not much in the way of footpaths and much in the way of traffic. The temple is small but quite atmospheric and is one of the few temples in Java with its original statue still inside. The monks from the nearby monastery walk from this temple to another even smaller temple we visited, called Candi Pawon and then onto Borobudur. The monastery is very tranquil and peaceful compared to the chaotic traffic outside.

Later, Alex and I decide to hire a horse and cart and explore the surrounding countryside. We left the motorcycle filled bustle of Borobudur and soon it was lovely and quiet and we passed rice paddies and fertile fields and quaint villages. The little kids are so cute and always smile and wave to us. We stoped to see how tofu was made in one village and how clay-pots were made in another. Quite fascinating. We love watching a whole family on a motorbike with one kid at the front, a dad, then another small child either standing or on his father’s shoulders and then a mum. Often with no helmets! Luckily people are very good drivers.

A tale of two (Norwegian) cities

Tondheim was Norway's first capital but the capital was moved to Oslo or Christiana as it was then called in 1308. Norway's history is a bit confusing as for some 200 years it was part of Denmark and then it became part of Sweden and then after a long war it achieved independence in 1720. So yesterday we caught the train east across the mountains to Oslo. It was a very scenic 7 hour train trip, passing many snow-covered lakes, frozen waterfalls and big mountains. Oslo was covered in fog and it was a bit cold and gloomy wandering the streets. We had just enough time to visit the National Gallery where the famous "Scream" painting by Norwegian Edward Munch is located. Whether it was just the effect of the grey light but most of the pictures in the gallery seemed a bit depressing, many picturing young children either dying of consumption or being buried. Even the room of French Impressionists seemed without colour. Very odd.

We walked past the impressive Castle or Slott as it is called here and past the place where the Nobel Peace prize is awarded (the other prizes are awarded in Sweden). After many years of playing the board game Diplomacy it was fun to see Skagerrak, the sea between Norway, Sweden and Denmark, as we were always moving our navies around this spot. But it was too cold to linger outside as you can see from the photos, so we hurried to a cheerful Mexican restaurant to consume spicy food and sadly expensive red wine. But it was medicinal you understand.

Today I fly back home and Hugh continues on to England for another week. While not looking forward to the plane trip I will be glad to be going somewhere warmer. I don't think I am cut out for this cold weather and to make matters worse I have not seen an Aurora borealis as it has been too cloudy and/or we have not been far enough north or far enough away from light pollution. It is all Joanna Lummley's fault as she made it look easy on her documentary. I think you really have to wander around in the arctic circle for weeks in order to see one which is rather a trial by snow and frostbite when you think about it. Next travel blog will be from Indonesia in July where I daresay I will not be seeing snow!