Images of Borneo

Here's some pictures of some of the amazing wildlife we saw in Borneo. The best sightings were enjoyed without a camera stuck to my face, so you'll have to take my word for it that watching orangutans build a nest for the night (swinging around, breaking huge branches, etc.) was incredible and best experienced in the moment. And all the great birds were fast flying blurs of iridescence. The gigantic reptiles, however, posed and sometimes smiled while we pulled up slowly in our boat. The insects were usually accommodating as well.

Forest Apes!

We have just emerged from three days in the "jungle" (World Wildlife Fund hates this word and I agree that we should call it "rain forest"...but still). We stayed at Uncle Tan's Wildlife Camp on the Kinabatangas River and on various safaris by foot and boat we managed to see huge crocodiles, 2-meter monitor lizards, hornbills and many brilliantly colored tropical songbirds, and best of all, the ultra-bizarro proboscis monkey (do a google image search for this one) and two wild orangutans. We went on a night safari in a tropical downpour and found several tree frogs, a centipede, and a scorpion the size of my forearm. Anyway, we are still reeling from our wildlife encounters. This is why we came to Borneo...to Asia in fact, and just seeing those huge apes in what's left of their natural habitat made all the bad air and food and language problems totally worthwhile. More later, because tonight we are splurging on our first hot shower in three weeks and an air-conditioned hotel room (with Malaysian cable TV!).

Where are the headhunters?

I don't know what we were thinking. Even though we knew better, I think Peter and I were both expecting to land on a mud runway in the jungle when we arrived in Borneo. We were startled and impressed with Kota Kinabalu, a shiny organized city with new cars and sensible traffic (though they do drive on the wrong side of the road). And even though we felt like trailblazers, it turns out we are not the only white faces with backpacks tromping around Malaysia. There is a good hostel scene here and our ten dollar a night room comes with breakfast and full use of an extensive library. We had an exceptional dinner at an Indian café as soon as we got into town and with a belly full of dhal and okra we decided that so far Borneo is fantastic. We did get off to a rather rough start the morning we left when our discount airline lost our reservation to Manila. We were able to buy another ticket for later in the day, but that caused for some panic when we got to Manila because our discount airline to Malaysia left from Clark airfield, approximately 1.5 to 4 hours away from the city. A very expensive cab ride assured that we made our flight and we left the Philippines under the watchful smoky eye of a clearly decapitated Mt. Pinatubo.

Sabah has a fascinating mix of cultures and we are still trying to figure out how things can be so different while we are still so close to the Philippines (closest points between the two are only 20 miles apart). But while the Philippines has the guilty reign of Catholicism and the simple laid back lives of the poor, Muslim Malaysia is surprisingly rich, somewhat decadent, and decidedly more subdued. Spices, rubber, oil, and hardwood timber have assured Borneo a solid place in trading society for something close to a thousand years and the money still seems to be flowing into this island where somehow there still are rather large chunks of untouched land. Add Muslim Indians, Filipino pirates, and savvy Chinese merchants to the fascinating cultural mix of the native populations and you can see why Malaysian Borneo is a truly unique destination. We are enjoying the ride so far, but soon we will leave Kota Kinabalu with its comforting familiars (Rolls Royce, Idaho potatoes, etc.) and surprising treats and commence our explorations of wilder places.

Borneo Bound

The very first pre-departure notebook I put together for Zegrahm Expeditions was for Borneo. I wasn't exactly sure where Borneo was, but I knew it was one of the most remote and exotic places anyone would ever want to travel to. I soon learned everything there was to know about Borneo, spending almost a full slow week researching way more than I needed to about the third largest island in the world covered in some of the most primitive forest on Earth. And so it is with great pleasure and anticipation that I announce that Peter and I will be headed to Borneo for three weeks. We leave on Saturday and I can't say I've been this excited about anything (except maybe the birth of my second nephew, Lincoln) in months and months. The Philippines has been great, but the national parks scene here leaves much to be desired. Borneo is the place to be for birds, rainforest, volcanoes, caves (remember that scene in Planet Earth with the mini-mountain of guano inside the cave? That was Borneo), and some of the best diving/snorkeling in Southeast Asia. When we found tickets for around one hundred bucks each roundtrip, we just couldn't resist. Cross your fingers for orangutan, jungle elephant, and rhino sightings, though even a hornbill or two will make our trip worthwhile.

On the Move--Padre Burgos

For those of you following along at home (I picture you with your Philippines map and your colored string and thumb tacks—it's very sweet), we left Siargao Island Monday morning on the 6:00 a.m. ferry to Surigao City, where we hopped on a jeepney to the port of Lipata and boarded another ferry for Liloan in Southern Leyte. That took all day so we spent the night in Liloan before taking a relay of three jeepneys around Sogod Bay until we arrived at Padre Burgos. For those who don't know, a jeepney is an open-air bus—a cross between a jeep and a bus. This is how the masses are transported around this country and most jeepneys look like they were featured on some sort of Catholic version of Pimp My Ride. They are shiny chrome jobs with airbrushed logos and phrases—sometimes dedicated to the driver's wife or daughter, but more likely dedicated to Jesus or La Virgen. The Filipinos take their Catholicism very seriously (this is the country where people crucify themselves every Easter) and even on the ferry they play a video of a prayer for God to protect our journey, which I pray along with usually because the ferries here are sixty-year-old hand-me-downs from China and Japan and a little prayer might be what it takes to get the rusty beast across the strait.

So, here we are in Padre Burgos, the Philippine's best-kept diving secret, home of whale sharks and hammerheads and the healthiest reef around. Peter started his open-water diving course this morning, getting up at 7:00 to start watching a parade of safety videos. This is a much better place to learn to dive than the University of Idaho swimming pool, which is where he tried to get certified before. The only thing that has been standing between him and a PADI certificate all these years is a final dive in Lake Coeur d'Alene in April, to which he said no thank you eight years ago. I think the diving around here will be well worth the wait.

As for me, I'm enjoying our bamboo upstairs room with a great balcony looking over Sogod Bay. There is a nice stretch of mountains across the bay and in the evening, when the steeply angled light of the setting sun reaches them, they look surprisingly like a green jungle version of the Owyhees and I imagine that the water is dense rows of Hell's Canyon grapes and despite being in paradise, I realize I am becoming deeply homesick.

Leaving Siargao

For the last week we have been trying to leave Siargao Island and explore the rest of the Philippines, but we can't seem to get ourselves to move on. We know we need to see as much of this country as we can in the next two months, but we have come to feel very much at home here. Our first setback to leaving was our friend Neil's birthday. He wanted to kill a goat ("My friend back in England came to the Philippines on his birthday and killed a goat and drank the blood"), so his girlfriend indulged him and bought a goat in the village and brought it to the resort on a rope. Peter helped by sharpening the knife and sure enough Neil killed a goat right here on the resort lawn. I was recovering from two days of the stomach flu but managed to witness the whole thing, though I did not feel well enough to partake of the goat curry feast that was had later that night.

A few days later it was Neil's girlfriend, Nikki's, birthday and we had to stay for that one too. There have been a lot of birthdays lately and we are getting used to the five o'clock serenades a few mornings a week. We have gotten attached to our British friends and all the characters here but have finally decided to move on for a bit. Another reason for our hesitancy is the amount of luggage we have had to bring with us because of our flight from China. We are used to being very light travelers and this country with all its motorcycle cabs and jeepney rides is hard to navigate with large duffels. We have decided to leave our big bags here for a few weeks and do some lightweight island hopping. We will return to our beloved Siargao at the end of the trip.

We have had a great six weeks here, highlighted by boat rides to tiny outlying islands, low-tide explorations of the nearby mangrove swamps, surfing and surf-watching, and buying tuna and mahi mahi from the fishermen and grilling them up with the local boys in their outdoor kitchen huts. One night after eating grilled fish we had a sing-along, which is the more laid back expression of the Filipinos propensity for karaoke. It involves a guy with a guitar and a hymnal-like book of tab and lyrics for every Phil Collins, Aerosmith, Beatles, or other love song you can imagine. We sat with the books open in our laps and everyone sang along to songs we wouldn't be caught dead knowing the lyrics to at home. It really is a great life, being on an island where singing and dancing are integrated into daily life and the party starts early so everyone can get up at sunrise and surf or fish or lay around enjoying the cool.