Today we were picked up from the sheraton Hotel. Before we were picked up. We tried to find some healthy food to take on the bus, no joy, the only thing we found were noodles again for me and cornflakes with milk for David.
We met an older couple, vicky and Brian outside the sheraton who were from Plymouth, they were also going on our tour. They were just travelling Malaysian borneo for 17days. They were sat eating macdonalds ice cream, we were sold, dinosaur mcflurrys it was.
The bus turned up and on we got, for a very bumpy 3hour journey via the airport and sepilok. It was so bumpy that at one point David shot off his seat, his Ipad going the other direction, luckily he made a great save and caught it! I thought this jungle trip was along the more untouched jungle but looking at the palm plantations the entire journey we aren’t going to get it!
When we arrived at the resort we had a quick bite to eat and then straight onto A boat for the afternoon cruise down the river. We WERE PRAYING for the borneo Big 5. We all donned a life jacket and about 12 of us on the boat off we went. It wasn’t long before we spotted proboscis monkeys, short and long tailed macaques, loads of different birds and hornbills, and then we saw them, 2 orangutans in the trees, a little distance but clearly visible without binoculars. I. Spotted them and vicky thought she had. But wasn’t sure, they took some pointing out to David but he saw them once they started to swing. DELIGHTED.
We then went to a smaller river off the kinabantagan where the Malaysian orangutan charity have put ropes and hoses from trees across the river to allow monkeys, particularly orangutans to cross because they can only swim if human teaches them, apparently orangutans can be taught anything that a human can be taught. At this area of the river there were gibbons and macaques again, and one with a tumour on its cheek! We checked in when we got back, a decent log cabin in the jungle resort, we are the furthest cabin which isn’t a bad thing because it should be quieter.
Dinner was decent in my eyes, different veg, tofu, amongst various meats and fish, but David had a face on him again about the food-he should just eat the meat but he is being stubborn that the only meat he will eat is on a pizza or in macdonalds!
The night walk in the evening was OK, not quite as good as the one at sepilok. We opted to borrow wellies, which was interesting because the sizes weren’t consistent and not very available so some people had one of one size and one of another. During the night walk we saw frogs, spiders stick insects, the odd bird and some very large geckos. Didi the tour guide was telling us that these geckos are also endangered, once again because of the Chinese medicine trade where eating one of these is claimed to cure hiv 🙄. She also went on to say that she used to state that the Chinese will eat anything except humans however there has been a recent article suggesting that this may also be going on…..how disturbing.
South East Asia 2019 