Call of Nature

"First and foremost, Borneo is the result of a grand experiment. It answers the question of what would happen if you put a giant island right on the equator, sprinkled it with a vast amount of genetic material, soaked it with heaping quantities of sunlight and water, and then waited a few million years. The result is an explosion of life in exuberant abundance - Mother Nature's wildest fantasy" 

 (Lonely Planet Borneo 2008)

One couldn't make a better start when describing Borneo!

Alrighty guys!! get ready for loooooooads of pics and many videos - and if you don't like nature and all these crazy animals out there, you better don't read this story ;)  And in order to get you into the mood, one funny pic for the start:

It was mainly for the incredible nature that I left mainland Malaysia and visited this very island. And the 3 weeks I stayed on Borneo were not even close to be long enough! So I only visited the two Malaysian parts of Borneo - first South-Western Sarawak then North-Eastern  Sabah - putting aside the much larger Indonesian part Kalimantan and the small oil-rich country Brunei Darussalam.

In these 3 weeks I tried to squeeze in nearly everything that one could and should do on Borneo: jungle trekking (yes that's me taking a bath in the river in the middle of the jungle...), visiting and staying overnight in a traditional Longhouse, seeing Orang Utans, Probiscus monkeys, a river cruise, relaxing on one of their great beaches, going diving on Sipadan - one of the Worlds best diving sites,...

And still I skipped some of the must-do's like climbing South-East-Asias highest mountain Mt. Kinabalu - it would have cost me bloody €200,- to do it!! They are crazy... Same for the Gunung Mulu National Park and Danum Valley, two really interesting National Parks that I had to skip due to their exorbitantly high prices...

Yes, Borneo is not a low-budget destination. But no worries, there is so much to see in Borneo, and still enough for travellers on a budget as well - I was definitely not bored at all :)

Whereas my first week in Sarawak was more filled with jungle-life, during my remaining two weeks in Sabah I was not only, but more into beaches and sea-life...

I can't make this blog-story senseful without telling you chronologically what I did... so here we go:

Sarawak

Bako National Park
My 5 days in Sarawak were all nicely filled:

Already the first day after my arrival in Kuching, a nice but a bit sleepy little town, I headed North to Bako National Park. I stayed overnight in a Dormitory right in the next to the jungle. I can tell you, it is hot and humid there...

During the 24 hours I spent in Bako NP I made two treks by myself through the jungle and a nightwalk guided by the rangers... It's the very first time I have been in a real jungle, so I was really impressed! It is really humid, I was sweating like hell. The trees are massive and tall, and there are whole loads of noices all over the place. Apart from the chirrs of the cicadas you would always hear some noices in the leaves up in the trees... Monkeys jumping around, birds or any other animal.

Reaching the beach I was watching the crabs, which were busy making small little balls out of the sand surrounding the entry to their very homes... sweet, isn't it:

But what was even more impressive was the night walk: rangers would walk with all interested people through the jungle, looking for and pointing out the various different animals you would not see during the day... I LOVED this frog. I named him Pavarotti: singing for us (well, ok, not for us I guess...), not scared at all, even proud of all the attention driven to him - isn't he amazing?!

But also the snakes and lizards in the night were really impressive - and the spiders (like the one on the photo above) of course...

Bidayuh Longhouse
Back in Kuching and off again: together with my CS-host and another CSer we were to go to a traditional longhouse. And thanks to our CS-host who knew all the people we were not joining a group but stayed there indipendently thus much cheaper :)

Longhouses are the houses where the native people of Borneo were and are still living in. These houses differ depending on the tribe. In fact, it is not one house for one family, but a huge long house (makes sense, doesn't it?!) on stilts with many compartments for the individual families and a broad part in front of these compartment shared by the whole community.

We were going to Kampung Annah Rais, a longhouse of the Bidayuh tribe. In this longhouse they are quite used to tourists, which wasn't too bad for us, as just the three of us could participate in many activities usually provided for bigger groups. The head of the community introduced us in the tradition, showed us many different old tools of the tribe and even tought us how to shoot like a Bidayuh hunter...









you should beware of me now, as soon as I'll hit the black center regularly I'll go off head-hunting :)

In the evening a musician of the tribe introduced us into the very typical instrument:

It is all made out of one piece of bamboo. You know how artists are when they are talking about their art... He was so touched and completely taken by his very instrument, which he had even built all by himself. And if you want an idea of his music, here's a short video of him performing

The next morning we were heading out early in the morning to go trekking through the jungle.

After around two hours we arrived at a river where we three stayed swimming, sunbathing and glancing at the amazing butterflies (I never saw sooooo many so incredibly beautiful and huge butterflies in my life!), while the three locals who had guided us went in the jungle to collect wood for the bamboo rafts.

But before we were to hit the river on the bamboo rafts they cooked a dish for us in a very typical way: a soup with chicken heated in a big branch of bamboo together with rice wrapped in bananaleafs... hmmmm

And off we went on bamboo rafts back to the village...












Semenggoh Wildlife Centre

 The next day, which also was my last day in Sarawak, I went to the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre, where half-wild Orang Utans are taken care of and prepared for their final release into the jungle.

These Orang Utans are half-wild, meaning that they are still taken care of, are feeded every day and prepared to get released in the jungle. However, in case they find enough food by themselves, which at the moment is highly possible as all the trees have loads of fruits, they simply won't show up for the feeding times...

The other CSer who stayed at my CS-host went there twice and didn't see not even one monkey. I had more luck: I went there once and saw them all! It was brilliant... And I can't help but putting many photos of them here and even a video, they are too gorgeous not to be featured like this!





I would love to be even half as flexible as they are, it's amazing!!

Sabah

Tip of Borneo
After my intense week in Sarawak - every day I had been visiting something - I spent nearly one week at the Tip of Borneo to finally get the rest I so much needed after travelling for such a long time. Those of you who have read my last entry may have felt my tiredness... Well guys, great news: Silke is back to life!! Fully recovered!!

Thanks to Tampat Do Aman!

I was quite lucky to have found this eco-resort when checking the internet for budget options in Borneo - which as already mentionned above is in fact quite difficult; and even more in Sabah. It was exactly what I needed - I knew I had up to 6 days there before I had to move on to Sipadan - and I stayed till the very last second!

So, what is it all about?!
This resort is for me a perfect example of how one could invest in the local community and preserve not only the local tradition and culture, but also the nature!
And furthermore helping a local orphanage.

The heart of it is Howard Stanton, a guy from Great Britain with an amazing life experience so far (and he is only 11 years older than me... wow, I have some target here!!). I only know bits and pieces after chatting with him every now and then: he's been working in the Caribbeans as diver in a search-and-rescue team whilst running a "really crazy" (his own words!!) bar and restaurant there. He joined the Indian national-team in kabbadi for the first ever to happen World Championship in this sport after having participated in only one training, and he is now referee for this very sport. After having lived in various places all over the world and having worked on a ship, he settled near Kudat, where he started to build up Tampat do Aman about a year ago. And the whole resort is still growing and not yet completely finished - some more chalets and a museum are still to come. And the fact that it's still in the growing makes it even nicer giving it a really cosy and family-like atmosphere.

He really set importance on keeping the tradition of the Rungus people alive - the local people in this region. He speaks their language, knows about their traditions and beliefes. And in order to keep these traditions alive and in memory and show it to the locals and tourists he is building a museum within the resort. But also the restaurant at the beach serves traditional Rungus dishes and sells Rungus necklaces. The longhouse, with individual and double rooms, is of course also a typical Rungus longhouse.
This resort definitely deserves the attribut "Eco": Everything is as ecological as possible: showers - under the open sky - with water collected from the roofs, compostable toilets, and there are even some animals living on the resort as well: a few ducks, chicken, and a sweet little cat.

Oh, I didn't mention the beach yet, did I?!
well, I guess pictures say more than thousand words... And yes, you really have the impression of being all by yourself!

I watched the sunset every day at the beach, it's spendid!

No wonder I am totally relaxed again now: waking up with the cry of the cocks from the neighborhood, taking breakfast, going cycling, snorkling or just sunbathing during the day, enjoying the sunset at the beach with some nice fresh fruitshakes and watching the stars during the night...

But not only stars in the sky but also in the sea: bioluminescence! (this photo is from the web) Swimming in the night is brilliant: every movement you take the water around you is glowing and blinking...
Those whom I managed to convince to go swimming in the night with me wouldn't want to go out of the water anymore....
("Oh my god, I am here since 6 weeks and have never been in the sea at night! It's amazing, I would have gone swimming every night if I knew!!" was just one out of the many comments about this brilliant game of nature)

Diving on Mabul, Kapalai and Sipadan
This was another highlight of my trip (my trip to Borneo consists of highlights!)
The island Sipadan is considered to be one of the world top dive spots. I hope I am not too spoiled now having dived there right after making my Open Water Diver course and I hope I will enjoy other divesites with less animals or a less interesting scenery. Well, I guess I will - diving is too great fun!

In total I stayed 3 days on Mabul Island in the nice diving-resort Uncle Chang. Mabul Island is close to Sipadan, where nobody is allowed to stay anymore. And even the amount of divers per day is restricted and permits are quite scarce.

I slowly slowly built my diving trip up: on the first day I went snorkeling on Kapalai - again another island next to Mabul Island, amazing! On the second day I went diving on Mabul and Kapalai, which was already really great! I can't tell you how cool it is to swim right next to big green sea turtles! Or under them and watch them move smoothly through the water...

But of course the highlight itself was Sipadan on the third day! I was so impressed by the dive spot itself: we were going down to 25meters (oups....). In the shallow water there are loads of corals with many different sorts of fish. And then all of the sudden it just goes down: It is as if you were going down a wall, full with corals and loads of fish, eels and other sea-animals (I am really bad on recognizing different fishes and sea-animals).

Here again I saw many big green turtles, and many white tip reef sharks... It is really impressive to see these animals moving just right next to you! My dive-buddy Tim told me about other places where you can dive with even more and much bigger sharks... wohooo!!

I was quite unlucky though not to have seen the barracuda tornados Sipadan is famous for (check this video, you'll understand why I am a bit annoyed not to have seen them...). But I saw a huuuuuge covey of jackfish, which was as amazing as the barracudas would have been I guess! Everything was getting dark all around us when these fish were swimming around, above and below us...

in this video you can see - apart from my still poor diving skills - how I am swimming in front of them, amazing, hum?!

Kinabatangan River Cruise

The last thing on my to-do-list before going back to Kota Kinabalu, and flying to Singapore, was to participate in a rivercruise, or better a whole 2D2N-trip to the river of Kinabatangan. As big palmoil plantations erased major parts of the rainforest and only a quite tights strip around the river is still untouched, loads of different species are concentrated there and can be watched from the river by boat.

I was lucky that Tim, a Dutch guy (the one holding my breakfast on the pic, while I was making the photo) I met when diving was heading into the same direction as me and was interested in joining the tour. And two Bavarian guys joined in as well, so we were in total a small group of four persons heading to the small village Sukau, where our homestay was located.
It was a brilliant tour organised through the Sandakan Backpackers: it included 4 cruises on the river, by night and by day, and 2 jungle trekkings (leeches were for free!!), food, accomodation and transport - we were not dissapointed at all!

Even far from being dissapointed: we saw many different animals, the highlight of which of course were the elephants!! With our boat we were with  just a few meters away of a big horde of elephants, which were tranquilly having their lunch and not caring at all about us watching. And as elephants eat up to 150kg per day, we had loads of time to watch them in detail and make tons of photos.

Click on the video to see this little family (well the big ones are both female, but if one doesn't know, it looks like a small family,  doesn't it?!):

But also the monkeys were interested to watch in the wildlife:

I had already seen Orang Utans in Semenggoh, but this time I could spot some of them in their natural surrounding. The Kinabatangan river is also home to the quite rare Proboscis monkeys - the long-nose-monkeys. We saw many of them, as well as loads of Macaque monkeys (you can see these monkeys on the very first picture of this blog story) and others...

As I had already experienced during my trip to Bako National Park, we could see completely different animals during the nightcruises on the river: mainly beautifully colored birds, like this small Kingfisher (this blog story starts to turn into a biology-lesson...).
We were all really amazed by the captain of our little boat: he spotted so many animals somewhere between the leaves, which we only saw when he had approached really close to them.

Borneo was definitely worth the side-trip! I was really amazed seeing so many beautiful animals as well as such great landscape, jungles and beaches! There is still so much more to see - so, I'll be back :)
 

For those of you, who haven't seen enough wildlife, check out my gallery of Borneo. And I uploaded further videos of animals on youtube, which I didn't put into this story, as well as one video of the night-fish market in Kota Kinabalu.

big seaturtles in love
macaque monkeys delousing each other
elephant eating
small kingfisher at night
night fish market in Kota Kinabalu