A Night out in Miri, Lots of Bats, a Big Cave and Some More Bad Luck and Another Night Out in Miri

Hello again all,

I know it has only been minutes since I posted the last blog entry, but I have kind of got into the swing of it now and have a fair bit to catch up on! If you haven’t read the main entry for Brunei yet, and you probably haven’t seeing as how I only uploaded it 2 minutes ago then go ahead and read it…..I promise it will be the best thing you will read all day.

So I had a couple of days in Miri before leaving for Gunung Mulu National Park.  Miri isn’t a bad place to spend a few days, a pretty nice city all in all and the place I was staying in had the added advantage of being above a decent bar, good news after Brunei!  So the first part of this story involves that first night.  I was at said bar just having a drink and watching the Man U-Liverpool game when a Malay guy comes up to me and offers me a drink in return for a favor (he was pretty drunk).  The story went something like this; that he had been in KK yesterday with his cousin who had seen his ex girlfriend of one week with another bloke.  He got pretty angry and went off to get pissed before flying back to Miri, whereby he proceeded to get hit by a car and end up in hospital for a few stiches.  The guy who was speaking to me had not been able to get hold of his cousin all day and was worried about him after the night before, so he asked if I could wring the guys ex and just ask if she had heard from him.  Being slightly confused by the whole thing, and understandably a bit wary (there was a big flashing light in my head going, SCAM, SCAM, SCAM).  Anyway, I quizzed him a bit more about it and he seemed to be honest enough about it, so I thought what the hell?  I rang up the girl, who predictably had not heard from her ex, but said she would call if she did.  Easy enough little job for a beer and a whisky and coke.  I kept on chatting to the guy and one of his friends who both seemed decent enough, in fact the guy had gone to uni in Manchester to do business and accounting at the whim of his parents and was now working for Shell Oil.  Anyway, long story short is I went with him to a random karaoke bar outside of town, where we proceeded to absolutely murder Hey Jude (the version that they had was terrible, completely different timing!) and a couple of Robbie Williams songs.  We then went on to a random hotel where he bought me massive cuban cigar, I bought the drinks and he proceeded to tell me about the mess his love life was in………..shame really, it had been a good night up until that point!  Just goes to show that some of the best nights can come from some pretty strange situations!

Got the plane down to Gunung Mulu on Tuesday morning.  The weather was good, and the view from the plane was simply stunning.  Forest as far as you could see, with the famous limestone pinnicles  sticking up out of the ground and the summit of Mount Mulu itself covered in a shroud of cloud.  The hostel was better than expected, lots of beds, but in a very large and airy room.  Definately a step up from the NP accomodation at Bako a month or so ago.  So in the afternoon I jumped on a tour to the Deer and Langs caves.  Deer Cave was one of the caves filmed for Planet Earth a few years back and is pretty damn big.  Although it cannot hold a candle to the Sarawak Chamber, also located in the park.  This is the biggest enclosed space in the world, measuring a massive 700m (2,300 feet) long, 400m (1,300 feet) wide and at least 70m (230 feet) high!  You cannot get to it however without undertaking a 10 hour caving expedition, so none of that for me!  Both very impressive, deer cave especially.  Absolutely massive it was.  We then watched the nightly exodus of some 2 million bats from the cave around dusk.  That was awesome, it started off with a few ‘strands’ coming out and then there was a constant stream of our blood sucking friends (yes people I am aware that not all bats are vampires and that deer cave holds no blood sucking bats, but i’m using a bit of literary licence here ok?) for about 15 minutes, shifting their pattern almost like a wave.  I have uploaded a short video below of the beginning, it doesn’t show the immesnity of the numbers but it will give you an idea…..plus the 2 minute long video is like 100mb and would take ages to upload.

The next day, two aussie girls and myself went adventure caving in Racer Cave.  Classed as an ‘intermediate’ challenge, it involved going about 1km into the depths of a cave system with no natural light what-so-ever.  Clambering through squeezes and climbing up 6m high vertical ridges with the aid of ropes was muchos fun!  Not so much when there was a drop the other side though……!  There was a bunch of racer snakes inside the cave (hence the name), along with spiders and various insects that have adapted to the constant pitch blackness, often by losing their pigmentation.  After cleaning ourselves off in the river we headed back to HQ by boat (extortionate price but we were tired).

So Thursday the 27th I was meant to be leaving Mulu to head back to Miri with MAS WINGS (yes them again) and once again they managed to cancel my flight.  Seeing as there are only 2 flights a day that leave Mulu for anywhere and mine was the last then I clearly wasn’t going anywhere fast.  At least this time they had a decent excuse…fuel leak in the engine I guess is a good enough reason to ground a plane!  To be honest it was no big deal, Mulu is so beautiful that it really isn’t a hardship to spend extra time there.  Most people took it much better than one french guy who if I’m honest (and I usually am) was a complete and utter bastard about it.  Screaming and swearing at the malay staff, demanding that they bring another plane or if they can’t do that then they at least charter a helicoptor for his group of 7 people!  At one point he was shouting at them how much he had paid for the trip and this tour thing and asking the guy how much money he made in a month!  Firstly as if that is anywhere near comparable and second of all what a tosser!  Anyway we all got put up in the Royal Mulu Resort, a place that per night cost 10x what my accomodation in the national park itself did.  It was ok.  Honestly, that is about it.  The rooms were nice but the food was decidedly average and it was extortion, everything was at least twice the price of what it should have been.  Oh and there is the added ethical question of whether you should stay somewhere that is said to have gazetted the land from one of the local tribes without asking and without payment.  We left the next morning.

Last night (Saturday) I met a german-malay guy in the morning and hung out with him all day.  Saw the worst film I have seen in a long time, 10,000BC.  Honestly if you ever have the chance to see it then slap the person who suggested it and burn the DVD.  There is not a single redeeming feature, the acting is bad, the storyline is non-existent or extremely coincidental at best, the effects are bad it combines about 2 different periods in history along with about 4 geographical places into one ‘journey in seemingly one or 2 countries and the cring factor is high.  In short it is a bad movie, it has 4.9 on IMDB.  But it was at least entertaining as it was so bad, oh and the movie screen was so dark you could barely see it, but I guess that isn’t the movie’s fault.  We then stepped outside to find a dance competition going on, now that was good!  In a very funny, what the hell are they doing kind of way!  To some kind of dance music….bad dance music, there were groups of teenagers all doing essentially the same of crap shuffle, speeded up micheal jackson thing, very funny.  We did however get lucky with a band who were pretty good and played some decent cover versions so at least that was something!

Anyway, I’m now back in KL having kind of run out of things to do in Borneo that I have the time for.  I leave for India on Friday so that will be cool!  Think I’m going to try and hire a car and head out to one of the old hill stations, visit some more caves and just generally try and get out of the city a bit, although it is quite nice being in a large conurbation again.

That, for once is now me up to date!  I’ve been running about a week behind for the last few entries so at least I can go to India with a clean slate!  Dad, I’ll stick up another post tomorrow or the day after with the things you wanted, I guess I have been ignoring the personal side a bit.  Will see what I can think of in the next couple of days.

Namaste

Brunei > Miri

Hello all,

As the title suggests I moved on from Brunei to Miri in Sarawak, but I guess before I go into that I should speak a little bit more about Brunei.  Bandar Seri Begawan is a small city, much smaller than KK in Sabah, a pretty ‘odd’ place as well I suppose.  A small number of tall marble lined buildings housing the international banks and oil companies, lie next to rows of small shops and Kedai Kopi, some of which would not look out of place in somewhere like Semporna or Sandakan.  A large and extremely beautiful gold plated mosque stands surrounded by a lake (dry when I visited), less than 100m from a poverty ridden Philpino water village which doesn’t look as though anything has been done to it for 20 years.  A city which, after dark, turns into an empty, entertainmentless entity that seems to be subdued and mesmorised by the light eminating from the overlooking mosque.  Save for 2 coffee shops that are open into the small hours, there is no activity at all.  All that said, that is not to say that I did not enjoy my time there.  The centre was peaceful, the people were pleasent and the food was ok….if expensive.  It does seem however that the ban on alcohol has kind of the moderated the entertainment somewhat, although that could also be due to the conservative nature of the country.

Because of the reasons explained above, I realied that if I was going to have anything to do at night then I would have to venture out of the city.  On the second night I went out to a suburb called Gadong, what a difference!  Gadong was bustling, 2 huge malls, plenty of shops and restaurants open, a cinema and lots of people moving around, socialising and generally having a good time.  All the action has clearly been shifted out of the centre, for whatever reason.  Anyway, I went to go and see Horton Hears a Who? at the cinema (film of a Dr Seuss book), genius film.  Very funny.  Steve Carrel and Jim Carrey do the voices of Horton and the Mayor of Whoville, the town floating on a speck.  Go and see it.  Unlike Malaysia however, it proved next to impossible to get a cab, after asking at a hotel they dispatched one of the doorman to take me back to the city in his car.  Really nice guy, working at the hotel whilst he is waiting for his government job, a process he said that can take up to 3 years!  Astoundingly in a country of just under 400,000 people, there are only 4000 people unemployed, and this is seen as a major problem.  1% unemployment and it is almost seen as a crisis, he couldn’t belive the number of unemployed in the UK, very interesting to make the comparisons between the two countries.  On the one hand you have a small sultanate which provides free healthcare, schooling, car subsidies, cheap loans, no income tax or sales tax and a short working week (in short quite a parental ‘government’) whose people see the unemployment as a big problem but are otherwise pretty happy with their lot despite not having an elected legislative body, and on the other a country that does have income tax, provides healthcare and schooling through taxation, puts cars almost out of reach of some people due to the expense of petrol, whose citizens it has to be said are not generally happy with their lot, even though you could argue tha t they have more personal choice in their freedoms.  Anyway, the guy was interesting!

The next night, after going through the water villages by boat in the day, I went out to Jerudong Playground.  This being the ‘theme park’ that was constructed to mark the Sultan’s 48th Birthday in 1994.  I am told that it used to be packed full of people and quite a sight to behold, you can certainly believe it.  There are plenty of rides and landscaped grounds, all in a park bigger than the initial size of Disneyland Hong Kong.  The difference now being that because entry to the park is no longer free, visitor numbers have gone down the pan and hardly any of the rides work.  It really is a strange experience to walk round somewhere like that when it seems as if there are only 49 people and yourself in the entire place!  It seems as if nobody really knows what to do with it.  Anyway, it started to cane down with rain, so I hitched a lift with an employee (again, no taxis) and went back to BSB to have it large with a double espresso and a muffin in one of the coffeeshops. 

 Getting to Miri was a 4 hour journey that involved 5 buses and a boat trip across a river.  Easy enough, but a right carry on if you ask me.  Anyway I got to Miri in the afternoon, found a place to stay and went for a pint.

Brunei, Brunei, Where Art Thou Brunei?

Hello all,

I left KK yesterday morning and traveled by boat to Brunei.  Fairly standard journey really, although the boats did not have a deck, which was slightly irritating seeing as the air conditioning was crap and it was seriously overcrowded!  About a 4 hour journey all in all, with a transfer at Palau Labuan (Malysian federal territory).

So first impressions of Brunei then?  Well, the hotel I’m staying in is bare but comfortable, the only budget place anywhere near the centre of town and has an affable if slightly grumpy Chinese owner!  I went out for a walk about 5 clock and the first thing I thought was where the hell is everybody?!  Seriously, I was right in the centre of Bandar Seri Begawan and there was barely a soul to be seen.  No cars on the roads, people coming out of offices, the mall was pretty much empty, a few people around the bus station but that was it!  It was all very strange.  I found a bookshop and grabbed copies of Time, Newsweek and The Economist (yes I am a news whore, but it makes a nice change from the Lonely Planet or the book I’m reading!).  Found a Coffee Bean (bit like Starbucks) and caught up on the world a bit.

The heavens opened shortly after I left, lots of thunder and lightening and I ended up sitting in a stand that overlooked some form of parade ground/sports field. Not really sure what it was, Directly in front of the main mosque, but not linked to it in any way.  Either way I was there for about half an hour before the worst of the rain moved on…..I went to go and buy an umbrella.  Didn’t have any luck trying to find the cinema that I thought was around, I think it has shut down, so I dropped into an Indian for dinner.  At about 9.30 I walked back to the hotel and didn’t see another soul!  It really is quite eerie walking around in quite a ‘large’, actually it isn’t large at all by our standards, with nobody around.

Slept in this morning for some much needed rest and stepped outside……people! There were people walking around, and cars!  I’m heading over to the Royal Regalia Museum in a bit, basically an exhibition of gifts that the Sultan has been presented with over the years from foreign dignitaries and the like.  Later on I’ll head out to Gadong, a districk about 3 miles away, that from what I gather might have a few more people around it and a few more things to do in the evening!  Will probably catch a film before trying to get a taxi back.

From looking at the paper this morning it seems a couple of hours before I arrived yesterday there was a big procession through the town, led by the Sultan and other members of the royal family.  From memory I think it was for the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday.  Shame I wasn’t here for that as it would have been interesting and given some good photos I think.

Anyway, the museum opens again in 20 min, so I’m going to start walking.

Ta ra

x

Yet another post……and another stroke of bad luck

Selamat Pagi,

So I never made it to Sungai Kintabatangan. The people that were supposed to pick me up on Monday to take me never turned up. A couple of quick phone calls to their office didn’t do much help, it was either engaged or there was no answer. After waiting about an hour and a half for them to come I decided to pack it all in and sort something else out (I hadn’t paid for anything).

I jumped into a taxi and went to the airport (I didn’t really know where I was going) and thought I would pick up a ticket there to somewhere else. As it happened Malaysian (grwwwww) had a flight leaving for Kota Kinabalu fairly soon, so I bought that. So I have been in KK for a couple of days, not doing an awful lot! Got into KK and booked into a random hostel for the night and went out for dinner. Came back about 12 and started chatting to a random bloke, who, has we soon figured out was the brother of one of the girls that I had been volunteering with in Matang, low and behold she was upstairs asleep! All very strange! So spent a day with her and a couple of other people before sitting down and thinking what it was I was going to do whilst I am here.

Decided I wanted to climb Mt Kinabalu (4092m). Went around the travel agents and got all sorts of stupid prices, all the while I was being stung for a single supplement, slightly unfair I thought seeing as I just wanted a dorm room and a ride to the park! In some cases it was as much as 50% of the total price! I resolved there and then to try and sort it out independently. A couple of phone calls to the people that own the lodge where you stay halfway up for the night and my mountaineering dream was over. They had no room for the rest of the month…..a fact that I find quite hard to believe. My guess is that the travel companies make block bookings and hope to fill their allocation, that way they can charge the stupid prices that they were asking me for. You can, apparently just turn up and try your luck on the day, seeing if there are any cancellations etc. However seeing as the park is about 90km away and a 3 hour journey, that didn’t really interest me!

Not had much luck with travel plans in the last week or so really, but there you go it was bound to happen to me at some point I guess. I spent most of today in a bit of a rut not really knowing what to do with myself. So, as is usually the best option with these things, I walked off and sat in a bar for a bit trying to figure it out. So now I have a new plan! And one that is all booked up and ready to be put into action tomorrow morning (or so I hope!).

Tomorrow: Get the boat to Palau Lubuan and then on to Brunei

Brunei for a couple of days, there isn’t much to do and everything shuts around 9pm but it will be interesting and it isn’t very far away. I want to do a fair bit of sightseeing around there though.

Brunei-Miri: Take a 3 bus combination journey to Miri in Sarawak and spend one or two days there before flying to Gunung Mulu National Park, home of some of the biggest caves in SE Asia and a site of filming for the cave episode of that wonderful program, “Planet Earth”.

Mulu: Spend 3 day at mulu doing a bit of trekking and going around the caves. Watch 2 million bats come out of the caves at night in a swirling black mass of guano.

Mulu-Miri: Head back to Miri and maybe take a couple of day trips around the local area.

Miri-Sibu: Not sure about this part yet but I will probably head to Sibu for a day or two, maybe taking a boat ride up the river for one night to Kapit.

Get back to Kuala Lumpur for about the 2nd of April before flying to Delhi on the 4th! Oh and I just booked a flight straight out of Delhi down to Kolkata to start off with!

So all in all I am beginning to feel a bit better about myself! I have decided after last week that I want to do a bit more diving as well, so have just sent off an email to a dive resort on the Andaman Islands (1000km east of Kolkata) to find out more about it. It is quite cheap as well, which is always a plus!

I think that is about all I have to say at the moment! I haven’t got anymore photos to put up as the places I have been have not really inspired any good ones! That should change tomorrow though.

I think I spotted some dodgy Irish pub earlier on that was selling draft guinness, so in order to celebrate my new found organisation and focus I’m going to go and have a pint!

Ta ra for now.  Oh before I go, congratulations to Claire who got the quote right.  No jenny it is not scuby steve, that would make no sense now would it?!

xx

Scuba Steve says……….

Hello again all!

So I moved on from Matang and the confines of the rainforest to a disused oil rig just off of Mabul Island in Sabah, this would be my starting point to explore Sipadan, one of the top dive sites in the world. The rig was pretty cool, plenty of space and the rooms (shipping containers with plywood on the walls) were ok. A couple of gold stars to the chef who whipped up some tasty food, although he did get a bit lazy towards the end of my stay! I must say it was nice to get some clean fresh air away from the humidity and ‘heaviness’ of the rainforest and the sun was blazing away.

I am obviously not going to go through each and every dive, that would be too time consuming for you and I, indeed it would also be pretty boring! But I’ll talk generally for a bit and point out a few highlights and the like.

So the general way of things was 2 dives at Sipadan (they have about 13 sites) and then another in the afternoon off of Kapali or Mabul. Sipadan is pretty damn cool, lots of white tip sharks, turtles, bumphead parrotfish and a fair few barracuda. I didn’t think that the coral was in general as nice as the red sea but that could be my memory playing up, it was definitely much better at some sites rather than others. Saw some really cool macro stuff as well, mandarin fish, pygmy seahorses, great nudibranches and the like. One giant moray eel on the first day that was about 4m long and had a head about the size of my body, massive!

Sipadan is definitely one of those places that I will be back to, the diving was grea, but I think next time I would come in the summer, water is a bit clearer etc. Semporna however (the mainland town where I got the boat to the rig and has a load of hostels for divers) is an absolute pile of shit. Horrible place, nothing to do and had a serious funky smell to it! So the lesson is stay on the rig or splurge a bit and stay in one of the resorts on Mabul!

I didn’t have much luck trying to leave Tawau (nearest airport) to get up to Sandakan where I am now. Got to the airport and my plane had been cancelled, waited four hours for the next one that I was told I would be on, go to check in and the flight is full! After a fair bit of wrangling and me getting annoyed they flight is still full…Anyway they put me up in a chinese business hotel for the night, at least I got to catch the wales-france game. You would have thought that that would be it, but the next day when I ge to the airport there is another 3 hour delay on the flight………..MAS Wings make ryanair look like virgin!

Anyway I’m going off into Sungai Kintabatangan for a couple of days, a large river delta on the edge of the rainforest so will probably be out of touch for a few days.

Ciao xx

P.S Anyone get the film quote that I stole the title from?

Scuba Photos!

So i’m still writing up the scuba post, don’t worry it won’t be as long as the first one I published today!  But to keep you happy there is now an album on flickr of photos i took whilst underwater.  Some of the colors are washed out and there is a bit of blur in some of them but they were only taken with quite an old handheld digi that I rented from the place.  Enjoy and the prose will follow shortly!

xx

All Good Things…. (update one)

Apologies for not getting anything up over the weekend, save the photos. I didn’t have that much time and this post (i’m guessing now is going to take a couple of days to get right!). Just as a point of reference, I am now on a disused oil rig just outside Sipadan, Sabah. The internet here is even slower than in Sarawak, then again at least it has access. Today is Monday, hopefully this will be up by Tuesday, but who knows?

So, the month at Matang came to an end on Friday the 7th, very emotional really. Although a month seems like a long time it really does fly by and within that time, whether you overestimate it in your own head or not, you really do feel as though you have built a relationship with the animals, some much more so than others of course. Whether it be a look from Amans deep set eyes expressing his thanks or curiosity in something you are doing, Doris insisting that you peel her banana just right, Ghanti managing to trick you on the last day and nearly grabbing your arm, the porcupines interest as you build a new run for them or simply just walking around and observing everything that is going on, all of it quite simply just sticks in your mind. I myself know, as do most of the others in the group, if not all, that at some point they will be back. Whether that be as a volunteer, a tourist or just dropping by to see how things are going, Matang is definitely a place that gets under your skin.

I guess I should begin to recount the events of the last week before just going off onto a tangent about the entire place! Bare with me, as I will probably ramble a bit more than usual! Also having left it so long, events probably won’t be in chronological order, but then you don’t know that do you? Stuff it, of course things are in chronological order….actually that’s too hard, I’ll just go off on a tangent…..

I think I last left off when I was at the Village House in Santubong. Really nice place, not cheap by backpacking standards at all, but definitely worth splashing out on seeing as I hadn’t spent much all month whilst at the project. Steak was goooood, french onion soup was gooood, swimming pool…gooooood, starsky and hutch dvd….gooooood, best bit? Real pork bacon for breakfast! Oh how it is always the little things that you miss the most! Ha ha. Anyway if any of the future volunteers are reading this then try to get there for at least a night (i recommend towards the end), hot showers make a big difference!

So the Monday was back to work as usual after the niceities of the weekend at Santunbong. I guess it is always a bit of a change from comfortable beds and decent food back to shoveling bear shit however! If I don’t mention it (and I probably won’t) then take it for granted that in the mornings I was doing the husbandry for either than orangutan, sun-bear or the animals in quarantine! Not an awful lot happened on Monday really, the deer fence was finally completely finished and in that age old tradition we all stuck our hands in the wet cement that led up to the bridge we had built to the gate. We moved the deer into the new pen on Wednesday, all went pretty smoothly and they certainly looked happy to be in an environment much closer to their natural habitat. A couple of them managed to squeeze under a gap in the fence (not one of the ones that we built!) but were soon herded back in by the always able John, they soon disappeared into the thicket of trees and plants. Great for the deer but not so much for the visitors who want to see them! We then moved the baby deer (remember her?) into Doris’ outdoor enclosure. Watching Doris slowly move closer to her new mate was hilarious, very curious but extremely wary at the same time, there is a picture further down the page. The deer soon retreated into the over grown area at the back and should be much happier there amongst the grass. Hopefully in time she can be moved in with the others.

Tuesday was a pretty cool day. Ellen, Hannah and myself went with John and Hilary to Semmongoh to help with the transfer of 3 binturong (bear cats) from there to Matang. Semmengohs only remit now is to look after orangutan so these were the first of a fair few animals that will be transferred to Matang over the coming months. Before darting the binturong we moved one of the sun-bears into the vet clinic. It took john a couple of goes to get the dart in (they use blow pipes here, very cool the watch) but soon enough the bear was dozy enough for us to handle him. Eventually the sun bears should be transferred over to Matang, a couple of them have an unknown sickness however and as such can’t be moved for fear of infecting others, not to mention that Matang just doesn’t have the room at the moment for any more bears. The binturong were quite easy, slow moving they were an easy target for John and were placed in carriers for transport back to Matang. The 3rd binturong however wasn’t quite so simple, for a start it wasn’t a binturong! Bob a large, fully grown pig tailed Macaque was to come with us instead of the third bear cat. Bob is simply stunning, even Leo said he is by far and away the healthiest and most ‘text book’ like macaque he has seen. Nobody knew he was coming back with us though, so that caused a bit of a surprise once we got back to the centre! We loaded up the van (4 humans, 2 binturong, a macaque and probably a bunch of unseen creepy crawlies) and headed back, all very surreal! Although probably not as much for us as the locals when we parked up outside of a shop with a screaming bear cat who had just woken up! All the animals settled in once we got back and they had come round from the tranquilliser, so hopefully they all have a bright future ahead of them.

I spent the afternoon with Hilary, helping him place a couple of feeding/sleeping barrels about 40 foot up in the trees. Watching that man climb was incredible, a human monkey so he is! All would have been much simpler however if it wasn’t for Ting San who kept grabbing the ropes and falling off branches all the time! Silly orangutan…….damn cool though!

Wednesday was another good day (have you started to notice a pattern yet?!) Husbandry in the morning was fun with the orangutan as per usual, then something slightly different happened. I stepped outside and looked around, hmmmm a tree rustling, wind? No it isn’t the same….ah it must be an orangutan! My mind quickly worked out the rest and realised that it must be either Mamu or Ting San working their way back down from the feeding platform. Up I walk to the tree and low and behold there is Mamu looking down at me, she promptly scuttles down and lands in my arms…..it seems that 4-5 days and nights alone in the forest made her want for a bit of human attention! I took her back down to the night den and Hilary decided to keep her in for a week or so, the idea being that she gets bored and won’t try to come back to the centre anymore. The look that she gave me once she realised I was taking her back was indescribable, there is something about an orangutan eyes that just ‘speaks’ to you, they convey emotion so easily. The rest of the day went forward as normal, we started work on adding a few new runs for the porcupine, a small job but fairly hefty work thanks to all the river stones and top soil that needed moving up there (just as a note up until I left I still hadn’t seen the porcupines in the new runs…..they best just be a bit shy!).

On Thursday the group went to the Wind and Fairy Caves. The Wind Caves were pretty cool, although not that windy…… Loads of bats have made it there home so the boardwalks were slick with guano in many places but it was fun to pretend to be an explorer for a while! Photos were hard to come by though because it was so dock and the bats moved pretty quickly, don’t think I have put any up actually. The Fairy Caves were more of on huge massive cave than a set of them. Very steep wooden steps, well the steps that were still in place, before reaching a big open area, massive it was. All covered with a green moss that was different shades of green depending on the light that was hitting it, very cool. The open end of the cave looks out over Indonesia on a clear day…..it wasn’t a clear day. A good day and ice cream was had by all, just to put all your minds at ease.

So then we come to Friday, the last day at the project. On the actual business side of things it was fairly run of the mill, husbandry and finishing off the porcupine run in the morning. We had a group chat for a couple of hours in the afternoon with Leo about the project, our experiences, what can be improved and all that. In general there wasn’t that much the group thought needed changing. The distribution of labor and man power was something that kept cropping up, there were often times where it seemed as though there were too many people around to do one job, thus a fair bit of sitting around feeling as though you could be doing something more helpful. The quality/number of tools was also cited as a bit of an issue but I think we all realised that we were not in the UK and there isn’t a B&Q down the road!

The afternoon was obviously quite emotional. Lots of walking around and just watching the animals, especially the orangutan and the sun bears. It always amazes me how quickly time flies when all you are doing is sitting down and watching these fascinating creatures, whether it be Chiam and Ghanti playing with a hessian sack, Aman just looking a bit moody or the bears tentatively climbing the trees. Oh yes I forgot to say, the bears have started to climb! After their food was placed up as high as we could reach in the trees they were let out and gradually most are now climbing up a good few meters to retrieve it! Amazing. Definite kudos to Lyndsy and John who made the bears pretty much their focus this month!

Friday night was another bbq, predictably drunken and a little bit messy, but a great way to end the month, especially with the locals and their kids, who I think it is fair to say were great to us all month.

Saturday night at Singhassana was again a little bit messy, more so for those of us who had an early flight and decided that it was a good idea not to go to bed at all but to carry on drinking (oh the pain at the airport). Watching England’s diabolical performance against Scotland was pretty excruciating (especially as Hannah hails from the burgh), but in the company of everyone it was fairly easy to shake off!  About 4am I also allowed myself to get talked into shaving my beautiful head of hair……I nearly cried when I saw it all on the floor!  Not sure about the results but from one of the girls I did get a “I haven’t fancied you all month but now you look pretty hot” comment…..cheers for that! Anyway a couple of people who have been told requested a photo and that will be coming shortly.

Right! After 2000 words that is about everything that happened last week. There will be at least another post I think about Matang, more specifically just the personal stuff about how I feel, but that can wait for a bit I think! I have just got back to Semporna from a weeks diving at Sipadan off of a disused oil rig, much more (and photos) about that later. I’ve got an easy couple of days coming up so expect more from me in the not so distant future. Below are a couple of pictures from the last week that illustrate the story slightly!

Love to all

x

BIG Photo Update!!!

Hello all,

Well the month at Matang has come to an end.  I’ll write much more about it in the coming days (maybe even later on this evening).  But for now I have put up about 120 new photos on flickr, so go and have a browse! Use the link on the left to get to them.  Again they are not full size because the net is too slow here, but definately good enough quality to look at on screen.

Ciao

xxx

A Long but Hopefully Concise Post!

Hello all,

I hope everyone is well, sorry about the short post last weekend but I didn’t have much time.  As a result this is going to be pretty long and i’m guessing that I will probably miss out a fair bit as well!  I suppose that first I should expand on last weeks bullet points (just for you Jon).

I won’t expand too much on the bits and bobs I said about life at Matang last time, it would take too long.  But on a couple of points, I have put up some of the photos of the croc feeding time at Jongs croc farm, pretty cool actually.  Although the crocs didn’t seem that enthusiastic at first they soon got into the spirit of it, it is an amazing sight to see them slowly putting their heads out of the water and then launching their entire bodies up towards the chicken suspended on the wire above them.  There were some absolutely massive crocs there as well.  The largest croc recorded was apparently just over 10 metres long, the skeleton is meant to be in Kuching Museum but I haven’t been in to see it. 

The samba dear that we put back with the herd had to be removed again as the males had ostricised her, she had quite a nasty cut on her face as well.  After a couple of days she has began to eat a bit and take some milk, so the signs are good that she should be alright.

Bako last weekend was amazing.  You have to travel there by boat (throught the edge of the South China Sea) even though it is on the mainland, very choppy and in a small bum boat that is only a foot or so above the water, was a lot of fun!  After going through a mangrove you arrive at the park.  Borneo has 7 different ‘ecosystems’ as regards to the forests and what not and Bako is the only place where all of them are present.  We saw a fantastic sunset on the Friday night (see below) and then retreated to the extremely shitty cafeteria.  Honestly the food is awful, how you can screw up noodles so badly is beyond me. We basically lived on pringles and biscuits for the weekend, not great when you are doing a 9km trek through the rainforest!  The trails were seriously hard work in places, very steep and covered in tree roots.  The humidity of the place was swealtering, within a couple of minutes you were soaked through with sweat.  Definately worth it though, we ended up at a deserted beach surrounded by rainforest covered hills, it looked like something out of lost (although I don’t watch it so take from that what you will!).  We spotted a couple of big pitcher plants along the way and there were various crawly things.  No leeches though which was pretty good, I’ve only been had twice at Matang so far so I am doing pretty well!  The probiscus monkeys were good to see, hard to spot in the trees though, no decent photos unfortunately.  The macaques that continually raided out breakfast and lunch (not to mention trashing our room after sliding open the window) were very funny to watch, so long as it wasn’t you they were targetting anyway!  They would take anything that had food or drink in it and I know you will laugh but they had a proper army style operation going on!  Decoys, second wave troops, different lines of attack, it was crazy! Bastards. 

Suppose I better get on to this week really hadn’t I!  It has been a very cool week all in all.  The sun has been out for most of the week which makes a change from the pouring rain!  We have finished the new deer enclosure (I’ll get a picture this week) which looks fantastic, not much fun for the visitors who will hardly be able to see the deer thanks to the amount of forest inside but great for the deer themselves! I spent a couple of days chipping away at the floor of one of the orang dens to remove all the cement that the builders who have built the new cage for BJ and painting the walls.  There were a couple of funny moments, Chiam kept trying to paint the walls with me using a stick or a palm leaf to reach the walls from the outside!  Both Chiam and Ghanti then managed to get themselves covered in white paint, white faced orangutans look hilarious by the way!

On Tuesday Ellan and I went out with Doris into the rainforest for the afternoon.  I don’t think that words can describe the experiance! Doris has only ever been out 7 times and doesn’t really like to climb, so half the time I ended up carrying her along the trail, across rivers and the like (orangs don’t like water).  Trying to walk with a 55kg orangutan clinging onto your side is not an easy task!  Between being carried she would manage to walk for a for a fair while before sitting down to check herself for leaches and then eating them if she had any.  Very funny.  Arriving at the ranger station and sitting down whilst she wandered about or lay decadantly on the floor drinking all our water and generally expecting to be pampered was awesome.  Unfortunately I left my other SD card back at Matang so I don’t have any photos to stick up today, i’ll put them up next weekend. 

Mamu has decided that she loves the forest too much.  She didn’t come down from the trees for 3 days this week.  At about 4 years old it is a bit soon for her to be off by herself but she eventually came back when it started raining again with no harm done to her.  I am having to skip through a few things this week as there is only one PC where I am and a queue of people to use it!  But hopefully you get the picture.

We had a couple of nights with the locals as well.  The first being a BBQ for Lyndseys birthday which was a lot of fun, far too much tuak being passed around though.  The second was a night at the nearest long house, where we were fed and generally danced around for a few hours.  Oh and played with the kids……a lot of kids!  Carried on after we got back naturally and there were a few people not feeling great on saturday morning!

Yesterday we arrived at Singhasannas sister lodge in Santubong.  Damn this place is nice!  Expensive for backpackers but we ended up with great rooms where they turn down your bed at night and leave chocolates on the pillow!  Treated myself to a big T-Bone steak for dinner, definately worth it!

Right I better be getting off.  Oh one more thing, I managed to pour boiling hot water on my foot whilst cooking pasta.  Luckily after a couple of hours in ice it didn’t blister too badly, does look as though it may scar though.  I also booked my diving this week, 5 days on a disused oil rig just off Sipadan, can’t wait.

I’ve definately missed a bunch of stuff out but I better be going.  Will get up some more photos and update on the last week next weekend.

Ciao xx