A very special visit – Borneo 2005
I have always had a list of animals that I really wanted to see for myself, in their own habitat. Since this trip in 2005, I am pleased to say that I have seen quite a lot of them, although there are still a few that I haven’t seen. I have always had a special place in my heart for Orang-Utans, as usual it’s down to the wonderful David Attenborough and his TV series’ stretching back almost 70 years to the days of Zoo Quest. I had never thought I would get to see them living free lives in the jungle but, after the success of my trip to New England in 2004, I decided to let my ambitions run wild and decided that my next holiday should be in Borneo.
I arrived in Malaysian Borneo a few days before the “very special visit”, via Dubai airport and Bandar Seri Begawan (the capital of Brunei) airport and in the safe hands of Saga Travel. I had had a tour of the capital, Kota Kinabalu, including the main mosque, a Chinese temple and the city museum. I had thrown some pottery, visited a batik factory and explored the lower slopes of Mount Kinabalu, where I saw a huge variety of plants, including many species of orchid. Some were similar to the orchids we see at home, some were so tiny you could hardly see them and one (and it was visible only from behind tall railings) was worth, so we were told, $10,000.
I had settled in to an enormous room, which had a large patio with a view of a small stream from which, one day, an large monitor lizard emerged and looked me straight in the eye. I had also done battle with a cockroach which refused to succumb to being sprayed by deodorant or hairspray but finally fell to my blows with a waste bin. I had been so horrified that I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the remains and left it in my bathroom while I went for dinner. Imagine my horror when I returned, to see that it had disappeared. Had something else even bigger come along to devour it? It was a while before I calmed down and realized that my bed had been turned down and that the person who had done that must have been brave enough to do what I daren’t. Looking back at my diary, I also seemed to have consumed a very wide range of coctails, with ridiculous names.
Finally, although everyone had been very friendly when we were out and about, no-one had invited me to join them for dinner at the hotel. I had learned the year before to be prepared for this and had a supply of books with me so that I would not feel uncomfortable and they came in very useful when I dined alone. This was only my second solo trip and it was, in fact, the last time that I didn’t share all my meals with fellow travellers. I think I got more confident and found it easier to ask “Do you mind if I join you?” It works! People are on holiday are kind, by and large so, if you find would prefer not to dine alone, give it a try.
Anyway, back to the visit…..
On the day of the trip I was up at 4am, ready for my flight to Sandakan.
In the Plane
What a relief! I’d been expecting a tiny plane, which worried me a bit but here I was, sitting in the middle of a half empty cabin of at least a hundred seats. I was on the 7:00am flight from Kota Kinabalu to Sandakan, hoping to fulfill one of my long-held dreams. Around me there was a rustling of paper and foil and a pleasant spicy smell started to emerge as some of the other passengers unpacked their breakfast, and I was rather envious. Of course, a forty-five-minute flight doesn’t come with a meal, just a tiny packet of nuts, so the smell reminded me that I had already eaten most of my breakfast, provided by the hotel, while I was still sitting in the airport at silly o’clock. That is, except for the hard-boiled egg! Why does every hotel, wherever it is in the world, think that a hard-boiled egg is a mandatory component of a packed breakfast or lunch? Mine had gone in the bin, so I was beginning to feel peckish!
The other passengers appeared to be people travelling for work or travelling home, perhaps after a shopping trip to the capital, judging by the bulging bags and parcels they carried with them onto the plane. And, of course, the passengers included my companions for the day, a couple who were staying at the same hotel as me and our guide.
In this half-empty plane, I had taken a window seat. We were flying over some of the densest jungle in the world and I had to see it. The trees couldn’t all have been the same height, but the canopy looked flat from the plane, like countless heads of broccoli. It undulated up and down hills, a luscious dark green. Then it happened. Of course, I had read about this, I had seen the TV programmes, but it still came as a shock when, suddenly, the trees stopped and were replaced by bare, brown earth. Bare, brown earth punctuated by rows and rows of stubby palm oil plants. And so it went on, mile after mile until we reached Sandakan. There were odd glimpses of forest here and there and I was able to see how different the trees were. Some must have been more than 100ft tall, while others nestled below them, perhaps stunted by the lack of sunlight. This awful destruction was the reason I had come on this holiday and taken the flight.
In the Classroom
Along with my companions from Kinabalu and a local guide, I had arrived at the Sepilok Visitor Centre, where we were shown past the inevitable (if small) gift shop to a room rather like a classroom.
We joined a number of people who must have been waiting for us to arrive. It was extremely hot and the noisy ceiling fans did little to cool it down. Around the walls were photographs of some of Sepilok’s residents past and present. We were not allowed to visit the little ones who lived on the premises in case we brought them our germs, and this was why we were sitting in this room waiting to hear about them instead.
We heard the terrible details of how many of the babies were found, often clinging to their dead mothers and barely alive themselves. And we heard about the work of the rescue centre, its wonderful staff who are surrogate mums, and the many satisfying outcomes when orangs were eventually released back into the forest.
Although we had all tried to avoid sitting too close to each other, I was getting pretty hot in this airless room. I’m sure everyone else was too so it came as a relief when it was announced that it was time to go out into the reserve and, hopefully, see what we had come to see – orangutans swinging through the trees.
In the jungle
It was even hotter as I stood with my video camera on the edge of Sepilok Forest Reserve. But not the dry heat of the room we had left, it was jungle hot and damp. The forest was no longer the flat canopy that I had seen from the air but trees of different species and heights, trees with enormous wide trunks stretching up as far as I could see, dark green leaves blocking out the sky; some with shorter, spindly trunks, more like the trees we are used to at home with paler leaves. Many had creepers hanging down or tying them to their neighbours. The smell was of the damp earth, as if it never quite dried up after a downpour. In front of us was a wooden platform built around the base of two trees and on it were two small orangs rolling about it in play like a large red hairy sphere that occasionally broke into two and then re-joined. They must have been aware of the men coming towards them carrying buckets of bananas and long sticks of sugar cane because they broke off from their play and were soon helping themselves to bananas before the men even had a chance to climb onto the platform.
They kept everyone entertained for a time as the two men ruffled the youngsters’ hair and handed them more bananas and sugar cane but suddenly, a movement caught someone’s eye, there was pointing and there were voices saying “Look. Look over there!” No-one shouted but everyone seemed to have heard and soon we were all looking towards the distance where we could see trees were bending and waving.
The anticipation was growing. This was something that had not been promised but we had all hoped would happen, after all the orangs are free to roam in the forest and whether they choose to visit the food bonanza is up to them. The shaking amongst the treetops got closer and closer and at last we saw a young orangutan swinging towards us until it joined the little ones on the feeding platform and helped itself to sugar cane. And they kept coming, sometimes announcing their arrival by the vibration of a rope snaking between the trees. If they noticed us, they didn’t care. The bananas and sugar cane were all that mattered. Some ate them on the ground, some ate them swinging upside down and hanging by their feet. Some stayed to play on the platform and others took their bounty and disappeared back into the forest. And finally, a fine maturing male with a long, thick red coat and a broad, flat face with those characteristic flanges on his cheeks, moved slowly towards us between the bowing trees. He paused in front of me and lazily performed some acrobatics in one of the trees before moving towards the platform. All the others, acknowledging his presence, moved out of his way and, totally ignoring them, he swung towards the food. He grabbed two long pieces of sugar cane and, holding them between his toes, he disappeared back into the forest as quickly as he had arrived.
It seemed the right time for us to disappear too. An hour had passed while we stood there and I was noticing large wet patches appearing on t-shirts everywhere, including mine and sweat was running down many faces. Our guide suggested that we should move on and, reluctantly, I turned to go. Shortly afterwards and without the slightest hint of irony, the four of us were sitting, eating fish and chips, bread and butter, with a cup of tea at the nearby “English Tea Room and Restaurant” (a relic of pre-independence days) and swapping our new memories.
One Anne and Her Dog 