The Jungles of Borneo

We were greeted by Leo who was running the camp site, he had a big smile on his face. He was probably more excited to show his jungle to us, that most of the people that came here as visitors, which is a shame.

The camp site, deep in the Borneo jungle, approximately halfway up the Kinabatangan river was not to be found on Agoda or Hotels.com. 

He gave us a few minutes before we were given a briefing about our program the next 3 days. He was a young guy, maybe 26 years old or so, had been working for the organization for about 8 years.

He was explaining about the different animals we could and most probably would encounter here in the jungle, anything from snakes, scorpions, rats, monkeys, crocodiles… This was the real jungle, oh yeah!

We were shown to our huts and told not to have any food of any kind in our bags as the jungle rats would smell it and chew their way into the bag to get it. And they would find it.

For the same reason they had put up buckets for us to store some of our smelly things in, the rats like everything. I had the luxury of going back to the base camp after this tour, so I had left most of my stuff at the office and had only packed a dry bag with the most necessary stuff I would need in the jungle:

Extra batteries and charger for the camera, flashlight, underwear, toothbrush and a deodorant. The other people had to bring the entire luggage and so had to take everything out and repack…

The first activity on the program was a night safari on the Kinabatangan river. We would go by boat up along the shores and look for wild animal life, and there would be plenty of it. The problem is that we were not exactly trained in spotting the animals, it does take a lot of skill, either that or they were just plain lucky all the time.
They found birds sleeping in the trees, explaining that they couldn't see anything in the dark and as long as there were no movements close to them or the branch where they were sitting was not moving, they would stay.
We could get super close to them and take pictures even with flash, quite amazing. Eventually the flashes would scare them off and they would fly out into the dark blindly until they would hit something and hopefully find another branch to sit on. All because we needed pictures, sorry birdie.
The next morning we would get up right after sun rise to see the animals waking up and sitting in the trees feeding before it got too warm.
There were monkeys in the trees to the left and right, most of them were the notorious macaques, also known as the jungle mafia. They are really good at adapting to the environment and so flourish in big colonies all along the river. They are fast at learning and was terrorizing the previous Uncle Tan camp site.
There were a few gibbons swinging through the trees only using their arms, looked really cool from a distance. And that because they seemed to be much shyer than most other monkeys.
We found a couple of the proboscis monkeys sitting high in the trees with the big nose and belly, funny looking monkeys.
But not only monkeys, there were also lizards in the trees. Not sure how the guide spotted this one, but he did and said nothing for a few seconds. He wanted to see if we could spot it too, but neither of us did, so he hinted us. Pretty good cloaking skills I have to say.
We returned to the campsite for breakfast and prepared for a small excursion in the rain forest. It was now too warm and most bigger animals would be sleeping in the trees until late afternoon when they would wake up for another fruit feast.
Leo would explain a lot about everything, not everybody too interested and it was too bad because he seemed to think that nobody cared, so I was asking a lot of questions all the time to keep him to talk.
The reason why it was relatively easy for us to spot animals like we did was that the area they had to live in, was very narrow. Farmers had gotten the land from the government to grow crops or whatever they wanted to do with it.
That meant that the rain forest had been cut down and was not only 10-50 meters wide buffer zone along the river, which in some places had gotten pretty narrow due to erosion from the river side too. That means that many areas were now not even connected anymore, causing areas to be isolated and eventually animals die because of this.
WWF and many bigger organizations had noticed this evolving over many years and had started buying up land from the owners, be it private farmers or big palm oil producing companies. The goal was to have 50-100 meters corridors of jungle connection the by government protected wild life areas. This would of course mean it would be more difficult to see any wild life from the river then, but I think tourists are going to survive?
The campsite had a couple of kids working there too when they were not in school.They had to pay to go to school and not all kids can afford that.
They then get a part time job at Uncle Tan's where they plant small trees that the WWF and the other organization are using to replant the jungle corridors. The money is then given to the boys so they can pay for their school. The money Uncle Tan gets from the tourists staying there is minimal, considering all the transport expenses and all included meals.
The boys also ran a "bar" where people could buy drinks and so on. Unfortunately I was short on cash, otherwise I would have been a big contributor to them.
When we wandered through the jungle that day the European guys were making so much noise all the time that I didn't expect to see anything. We heard some branches break in the distance and some movement in the trees. Leo said it might be elephants coming this way, which caused a scared face on some of the girls, haha.
We followed the sound and to his astonishment it was an orangutan in a tree not far from us. Everyone had to see of course, but the girls lost the balance all the time and screamed loudly because they would end up falling down in the mud. I missed the big man in the tree and could only watch the other people's pictures.Too bad. We got a lot of information about plants, animals, what not to touch and what was ok as emergency toilet paper, very useful information for certain people, at least I took note, haha
We returned afterward to the camp and most people sat down and started to sleep, play card or other games. I sat there for a few minutes, then decided that I hadn't come all this way to sit and fart in the jungle. I asked if anyone wanted to go out again and check out that Orangutan? Nah, people wanted to relax a little, it was too warm and muddy out there anyway.
Ha, I went to get a new battery for my camera, put on the rubber boots and 5 minutes later I was leading my one man jungle expedition. They had nicely made a lot of trails in the area and I think I went through every single one of them, not all on purpose, sometimes I made a 360 loop, haha
At some point I hear breaking branches again and see treetops moving in the distance. I slowly sneak that direction, kind of intercepting what ever it is with the other fruit trees where the Orangutan had been earlier.
I am sitting there squatting for about 25 minutes, hearing the sounds come closer and closer. I am sweating like a waterfall, it is freaking warm and humid there. Finally a big shadow is to be seen up in the tree and it is in fact the Orangutan who has returned. Just that moment it starts to rain a little bit and the big guy takes cover under some leaves in the tree top. It starts to rain more and I like my camera too much too much, so when it finally stops raining, he gets active again. Now he turns around and looks directly at me for 8-10 seconds. I didn't have my camera out yet because there is still a whole lot of rain coming from the leaves of the trees, so he starts making loud sounds and that's when I start to think about something: Are orangutans aggressive? Now I am alone and probably 10min from the camp site. If he jumps down and tears me apart, who will know? Hmm, where is Leo when you need him. I decide to return to the camp and consult Leo. He is one big smile when I told him my experience and says they normally don't do anything... What is normally supposed to mean, haha. At least I had my special moment with Borneo Rainforest, can't take that away from me
In the evening we venture out in the rainforest again, this time to see some nocturnal animals. Leo starts by going into a tree in the middle of our campsite and pulls out a huge scorpion from the tree. Well that was nice to know that this big fellow had been there all the time, haha.
Apparently the sting is not that bad from this scorpion according to Leo. It holds its pray down with the claws and needs to sting for around 30 seconds to deliver all the venom. Not sure about the correctness of the sting, I am pretty sure I don't want to be stung at least.
There were a couple of spiders and other insects I forgot the name of, but they were plentiful but still pretty hard to spot.
Even the bigger things like two meters long for example were hard to spot. We stop at some point and Leo asks us if we see anything. Everyone is looking around but can't see anything.
He points his spotlight towards a bush, where a yellow ringed cat snake is searching for a late evening snack. Leo, is it poisonous? Yes, oh yes. Good thing he said that after I had taken the picture, haha. He was very fascinated by the snake, it is not every day he meets one of those so he wanted to enjoy it.
Birds are again sitting in the trees just next to where we walk by, sitting so quietly and unaware of our presence just 30cm from them. A few flashes of the cameras and they were on their way somewhere else, sorry again.
The rainforest has to have frogs, and they were there. You could hear them, but spotting them was a little more difficult. Again, you just need to get close and take it easy. The little fellow had suction cups on the feet, it could hang onto leaves and other things hanging upside down, no problem.
The last morning safari didn't start out well, we had been in the boat for about 10 minutes, when it started pouring down. Luckily I had bought an emergency rain cover for 2.5RM, about 85 cents, best investment ever! My camera stayed dry and so did most of me. I just wanted to go back and have a cup of tea when the guide suddenly turns the boat around and stops, he points to the tree tops where an Orangutan is sitting. It is quite hard to see much from here, other than just a big lump of orange meat up in the tree. The boatman, accelerates the boat toward the tree and grounds the tip of the boat onto the shore and jumps off the boat and heads into the jungle. We sit there on the boat and look pretty stupid for a second. Then I remove the rain cover since it is not raining anymore, take off my flip flops and head for the jungle as well. Soon after I am standing next to the boatman, who is pointing up towards the tree where an Orangutan is sitting with an small baby orangutan. They carry around the little one for 7 years, then they split, so the female can have another baby! There are still a lot of water coming down from the tree tops even though the sun is shining a little now, so again I don't want to risk my camera, better enjoy the moment. She does not seem to notice we are there and keep eating durian, a stinky fruit that comes in a spiky shell. The more she eats the more shells drop to the ground.
She decides to move to another tree top and we try to follow her, when the other guys from the boat have fought their way up as well, which eventually scares her off. We have to climb higher and my eager I manage to step with my entire foot on top of one of the durian shells, so that I have to pull out the thing from my foot afterwards. Ouch... But I have to get a picture of that Orangutan!
Turns out that there are in fact 2 of them in the tree, the female takes off, whereas the male seem to be a little more photogenic, at least some of the guys get some pretty good pictures as they are just on top of him when he decides to move, too bad. Oh well, not everything needs to be in a picture frame, right?
There we are, standing in the wild, having no idea what plants are around us etc. Exactly what Leo had explained would happen, you get excited about getting a picture of the Orangutan and soon you find yourself in the middle of plants you don't know and then everything start to itch. Hmm, had to see and wait if that would happen
The time has come to say goodbye to Leo and his friends. This was truly an amazing experience, had it not been for all the mosquitoes, I could have stayed a little longer, but I feel like the insect repellant I bought which was the very environmental friendly kind had let me down. Badly. I didn't count the number of bites, but it must have been close to 50.
Going to the campsite is what it says on the wooden sign, wildlife camp. I had a good time, maybe I was expecting to be a little closer to the animals, but it is not a zoo, no sightings are guaranteed, you get out of it what you put into it. Then add a little luck.