Borneo Adventures

Well, I survived my trip to Borneo and didn't get kidnapped or sick!  I'm still sorting through about 1600 pictures, but I thought I'd fill you all in on some of my adventures and a few of my favorite pictures.

So first off, no post of mine would be complete without a map:

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and three countries are located on Borneo: Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.  I visited the Malaysian portion in the Sabah (the northeastern part of the island), which is the most developed and most visited portion of Borneo.  Some of you wondered why I picked Borneo and the truth is that I wanted to see orangutans, I like trekking in jungles and Borneo is where the head-hunting tribes lived (before the silly Brits outlawed the practice).  I also think I had some romantic notions about how wild and untamed Borneo would be, but I was sorely mistaken.  While Sarawak and Kalimantan might be a bit wilder, Sabah was very developed and pretty touristy.  I don't consider true jungle trekking to involve paths or concrete stairs...

While Borneo might not have met all of my expectations, I did accomplish my goals: I saw wild pygmy elephants and oodles of monkeys and orangutans and I also got to experience some culture and history.

So first off...orangutans!  Orangutans are only found in the wild in two places: Borneo and Sumatra in Indonesia.  After seeing wild mountain gorillas and chimpanzees earlier this year in Africa, I knew I had to finish out the great apes by getting to see orangutans in the wild.  Like wild gorillas, orangutans are endangered because of loss of their habitat and because orangutan babies are adorable and humans keep stealing them as pets.  Unlike other monkeys, orangutans don't jump from tree to tree but instead must slowly swing along branches.  So as humans start to chop down trees for agriculture or housing, orangutans can't swing fast enough to escape the falling tree and are often crushed on the ground. 

Because many baby orangutans are orphaned in this manner (or babies are adopted as pets and then abandoned when they get too big), there is a need for rehabilitation centers to take in these orphans and help them until they can be released back into the wild.  We visited the Sepilok Rehabilitation Center, which is perhaps the most famous in Borneo.  At Sepilok orangutans can receive medical care as well as training on how to do basic things that a mother would typically teach the babies (like how to swing and feed themselves).  Once the orangutans are healthy and trained, they are semi-wild, which means that they can come and go as they please, but the center puts out food twice a day to help supplement the orangutans' diets.  These pictures show the feeding platforms and the ropes that the orangutans use to swing about.




These two were my favorite -- between sharing food and kissing, they were beyond adorable!

 



While waiting for food, this guy entertained himself by collecting leaves and swinging around.

As we were waiting to head out to the feeding platform in the morning we were surprised when a single orangutan sauntered through the parking lot at Sepilok, hopped a fence, walked through the registration center and headed out to the jungle.  Here's a picture of the little guy heading towards the buildings:

 



But the most amazing part was that we actually got to see three completely wild orangutans - one male on the Kinabatangan River and a mother and a baby outside the Gomantong Caves.  The mom and baby happily snacked and foraged for food while we snapped photo after photo:

While the great apes are the most fascinating to watch because of the close genetics ties they have with humans, I love all monkeys and apes.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I love monkeys the way that most people love baby humans.  As many times as I've seen monkeys in the wild it never gets old and this time I was even lucky enough to touch some.  Near Sepilok is the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary where the local proboscis monkeys are also fed twice a day.  But far more exciting to me than the proboscis monkeys were the 30 or so silver leaf monkeys hanging out in the visitor area with their babies.  The place was literally swarming with monkeys, all of whom had no fear of humans and didn't mind being touched.



This was my main buddy -- I probably spent 20 minutes hanging out with him, petting him and snapping selfies with him!



While adult silver leaf monkeys are black and silver, the babies are bright orange.  This is a shot of the baby nursing.



This little guy kept trying to escape his mom to go play with the other babies - she had quite the job keeping hold of his tail before he scampered off!

This guy was a long-tailed macaque with an adorable overbite - he seemed just as interested in me as I was with him!

Ok, so maybe I got a little carried away with the monkey and ape pictures, but I just can't pick one or two favorites.  But really, the trip wasn't all about monkeys.  We also visited the Gomantong Caves, which is where the locals climb up to the very top in order to reach the valuable swiftlet nests.  The ceilings of the cave were covered in thousands of bats and the floor of the cave was covered in mounds of bird/bat shit and cockroaches.  But despite the smell and the monstrous cockroaches, the cave was pretty awesome.

So finally, I should also comment on the security situation in Borneo.  Before I left I cracked a few jokes about getting kidnapped in Borneo and I wasn't totally joking.  Eastern Sabah is a declared security zone and many of the cities are under curfew (including Sandakan, where we visited) due to a recent rise in kidnappings and terrorist acts.  In fact, during my layover on the way to Borneo I got yet another email from the US State Department warning me that Eastern Sabah was dangerous and they were predicting a rise in terrorist acts for the last few days of Ramadan.  And due to security concerns, while we were on Manukan Island off of Kota Kinabalu we had armed guards patrolling the island.

The threat to Eastern Sabah comes from militants from the Philippines.  As you can see from the below map, the Philippines are just northeast of Eastern Sabah and there's a large Philippino community in Eastern Sabah because Malaysia is much better off economically than the Philippines and many emigrate to Sabah for work.

Prior to my trip I had heard that there were militant Philippinos who were kidnapping Westerners for money and I had also heard that there were Islamic terrorists also targeting Westerners in Borneo. It almost seemed like these might be two separate militant groups operating for separate reasons, so we asked our tour guide about who was perpetrating the attacks.  His response? Terrorists.

 

"Yes, but are they Philippino terrorists? Or Muslim terrorists? And what do they want?" we asked.

 

"If I say they are Philippino, then you will think all Philippinos are engaged in these terrorist activities, which isn't true.  Many Philippinos live here without causing any problems.  Same with Muslims.  And what they want is to create terror, just that.  If we discuss more deeply what they want or are trying to accomplish then we are legitimizing their cause and their actions.  So instead we just say they are terrorists without giving them the dignity of having a cause worth fighting for."  (I really paraphrased his somewhat rough English, but this is the gist of his message).

 

I liked that message -- by describing why terrorists do certain things, or by classifying terrorists as a religious or ethnic group, we legitimize their message and cast doubt onto all the other members of their ethnic/religious group.  But apart from our questions and the presence of armed guards, nothing seemed out of the ordinary and we felt very safe the entire time we were there.

 

I'm sure I'll find more things to post about Borneo as I continue sifting through my photos, but in the meantime I'll try to get back to the regularly scheduled programming of all things Oman.