RestlessNatives.net NativeGuide to
MALAYSIA
Langkawi :: Sabah 1 :: SABAH 2
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MALAYSIA Page 3: SABAH Part 2
Sepilok
We returned to Sandakan and retrieved our jeep, bought new T-shirts to replace the soaked ones from the night before, then headed off to nearby Sepilok, one of only four orang-utan sanctuaries in the world. There they take orphaned and injured orang-utans and rehabilitate them for release into the wild. Most of the sanctuary is actually wild, but there are a couple of areas where the rangers provide bananas to orang-utans who aren't quite up to fending for themselves yet - and these feeding platforms also offer a reliable place for tourists to see the orang-utans. We had a great time watching the orang-utans, and were also amused by a foppish British film guy (who was mighty impressed with himself, but who we thought was rather lame for filming orang-utans in the touristy part of the sanctuary) and his crunchy female sidekick. The orang-utans have free rein in the place, so it's up to you to get out of their way if they happen to come walking down the path, which they do. It was very cool to be no more than an arm's length away from a (more-or-less) wild orang-utan, with no bars separating us. You may have heard the best tourist-meets-orangutan story to come out of this place - a few years ago a large male orang-utan confronted a French tourist and stripped him naked. We were secretly hoping that something like that might happen to the Great White Photographer guy.
Sukau
From Sepilok, we headed out to Sukau, which is a rainforest area along the Kinabatangan River and is great for wildlife spotting. This was another interesting driving experience. Sukau is off the main highway (i.e., 2-lane sealed road) and involves a long drive along an unsealed road. We had driven for about 5 kilometers when Deb said, "This just can't be the right road. That sign said 4.2 kilometers, and I'm sure we've gone that far, but we're still in the plantations!" (There are palm oil plantations occupying huge tracts of land in Sabah.) We turned around and went back to the highway, only to discover that the sign in fact said FORTY-TWO kilometers. Well, it says something about the allure of wildlife that we turned around - again - and headed back along the dirt road.
After much bone rattling and teeth clattering, and the fording of a small stream, we finally arrived at Sukau, where we got settled in our little room. The guide who runs things was actually kind of apologetic about the basic accomodation, but we've learned that "basic accomodation" almost always means good homemade food, and we consider that a pretty decent trade-off. Soon after our arrival, we had a tasty fried banana and honey snack and then set off in a little boat to see some wildlife, with Caesar the tour guide and Samson the boat driver. We saw lots of various kinds of monkeys - mostly long-tailed macaques - as well as the famous proboscis monkey, which is the main draw in this area. We also saw several snakes curled up in trees, a giant monitor lizard, and lots of various brightly colored tropical birds including a rhinocerous hornbill. We were not so fortunate as the Hong Kong couple who had gone out on the boat the night before - they saw elephants! Still, we were happy with the wildlife, and the guides are good at not only spotting critters, but identifying them ("Oh, that bird that just flitted through that bush a hundred yards away was a tan-crested kingfisher, not like that beige-crested kingfisher we saw earlier.") George spotted a few critters too, but his commentary was usually somewhere between "Urmgh!" and "Whoa, what's that?" But he earned some impressed comments from the guides when he pointed out a snake on the ground at the edge of the river. Apparently spotting a snake in a tree is no big deal, but spot one on the ground and they ask if you're in the army.
One conclusion we came to after this little jaunt and our other sightseeing in Borneo was that, as irritating as it is when you hear about people clearing bits of rainforest, particularly with fire, when you are actually there in the rainforest, it is easy to see why people do it. The rainforest appears to be impenetrable - like nothing but fire could clear it - and it seems to go on forever and ever. It's easy to see how a Malaysian trying to eke out a living would say, "Hey, I'm just going to clear this little bit for myself - there's tons more where this came from." Although we're still all for saving the rainforests, and there are truly admirable conservation efforts at work in Borneo, it seems that the eventual solution is going to have to take into account the perspectives of the people who actually live in the rainforest.
Guomantong Caves
The next morning, Caesar told us he was taking the Hong Kongers to see the Guomantong Caves. Although you normally need a permit to get in, the tour guides have a special arrangement, and he thought we could get in for free if we followed behind him. He drives a bit faster down that dirt road than we were really prepared to, but we got into the caves without mishap. Upon arriving at the caves, we saw a little adolescent orang-utan loping along the electrical wires aiming for a jackfruit tree. He retrieved a GIANT jackfruit, and clearly impressed with his prize, carefully made his way back across the wires to a more suitable place to enjoy the fruit. There were also a number of long-tailed macaques scampering around on the ground, in the trees, and along the wires. People around here say "there's a macaque" like we say "there's a squirrel."
After preparing ourselves with gumboots and hats or scarves for our hair, we walked the short distance to the cave. Why the scarves and boots? That requires a little explanation.
First, the caves are famous as the home to two million swiftlets, which produce the birds' nests which go into that famous Chinese delicacy, birds' nest soup. We have no idea why anyone would ever think to make food out of bird spit, but in any case, this cave is apparently the number one source of the birds' nests. The nests are harvested just after they're built - the birds then build new ones and are left alone to raise their chicks in them, after which those nests are harvested too. The people who harvest the nests climb 50-meter bamboo poles to reach the roof of the cave, and are rewarded for their efforts by earning several times the yearly salary of the average Malaysian. The guys who hire them make even more - there is some sort of hereditary right to harvest which is owned by certain families.
On top of the two million swiftlets, the caves are also home to a million bats. We needed scarves to shield us from the droppings from the swiftlets and the bats (though we came through with surprisingly little crap on us in the end), and the boots are necessary because the floor of the cave is covered with FIFTY METERS of bat guano. (Although bat guano is valuable as fertilizer, they don't remove it from the cave for fear of upsetting the ecology that provides them with the even more valuable swiftlet nests.) Where there's bat guano, there are innumerable dung beetles and cockroaches eating the guano, and 7-inch poisonous centipedes eating the cockroaches, and big snakes eating the bats and the birds. All in all, it was an absolute shop of horrors. Although they've now built a walkway around the base of the cave, we walked a bit on the springy mound of guano, which is ALIVE with wriggling bugs that thankfully didn't crawl up our legs. Sections of the cave walls are covered with solid cockroaches, and the centipedes have staked out a few areas of their own too. Even the wooden boardwalk has its share of critters. The smell of the place is truly overpowering - the ammonia is so strong that Deb had to keep her scarf wrapped around her face. And during harvests people actually SLEEP in this cave to guard the nests, which as stated above are extremely valuable. So the people who have among the highest income in Malaysia also occasionally sleep in a cockroach-infested, ammonia-filled horrific little cave in the middle of nowhere Borneo. We're sure there's a moral there, but we're not sure what it is.
Mount Kinabalu and KK - The Second Time Around
From the caves we took off back to Mount Kinabalu for fresh air and an afternoon of hiking in the forest. There are some great trails around Mount Kinabalu, so even though we didn't hike up to the top, we had a chance to see some of the fabulous scenery, and a glimpse of the trail that those runners would get to traverse in a couple of days - not a fun race!!
From Mount Kinabalu, we returned to KK. We spent the day just driving around the countryside north of KK (north of Kota Belud for the most part), bought some pottery at a local factory shop, and then visited some of the tourist shops in KK, where we bought a couple of masks, a great cat carving and some other knick-knacks. We spent the evening enjoying a gorgeous magenta sunset over the ocean.
Padas River Whitewater
The next day - our last in Borneo - was dedicated to pure, un-Malaysian fun. We went by bus to Beaufort and then took a scenic train along the river to the launching point for whitewater rafting on the Padas River. Deb spent most of the train ride trying to decipher the Chinese dialect being spoken by the locals - she's guessing it was Hokkien or Hakka, but she could only understand bits here and there.
There were only five other people, besides the four or five guides, in our (very large) raft. River guides seem to be about the same all over the world, and these guys were no exception. They seemed very comfortable on the river, and we learned afterward that each of them has been down the river without a raft some 30 times to qualify for the job. The guy who did the bulk of the steering was a bit older and was missing an eye and maybe part of his tongue, but got the utmost respect from the other guides, who challenged anyone with doubts to try to race this guy upstream.
We were, ironically, deemed the experienced ones, as no one else had been rafting before, so while each other person had a guide holding onto them (sitting in the middle as a "seatbelt" for 2 paddlers), we were left to fend for ourselves. The rapids were class 3-4, and before we got to the serious ones the guides urged everyone out of the boat to practice their "body rafting". The water in that river is very brown (the oar disappeared about 1 inch into the water), so it took a bit of cajoling to get everyone out, but eventually we were all paddling around in the river, or just relaxing as the cool current carried us downstream.
On the second big rapid, it was clear going in that we were not going to make it, as we approached the biggest rock more or less sideways. All hope was lost when the entire back row popped out. Once the boat lost all of its weight in back, out the rest of us went. Deb says it is the first time she has not completely panicked in such a situation. She found herself under the boat and just swam in the opposite direction of the current to get out from under it, then she grabbed the side and climbed back in, the third person (after one guide and the person he never let go of) to get back in the boat. The other guides were trying to rescue folks in the water. George didn't fare so well as Deb, mainly because she nearly knocked him out as she went sailing across the boat, through George and into the water. He got a couple of scary moments and one good swallow of the Padas before climbing back in. Nevertheless, we all made it safely back in the boat (although the girl who had initially caused the plunge spent the remainder of the time huddled in the bottom of the raft in abject terror) -- all just in time for the next big rapid, for which we were completely unprepared. One person was thrown back out of the raft, but we managed to hurtle through the rapid without any other mishap, despite being completely out of control. Overall, it was pretty clear that keeping everyone in the boat was not the top priority of the guides -- who, after all, are perfectly happy popping out at any point for a little body rafting. We can appreciate that, but really would have been a bit happier if they had made a little more effort.
Anyway, the later rapids were pretty tame, and we spent a lot of our time in the water body rafting through them in the refreshingly cool water. We finally made it safe and sound back to the lodge, where we had a great lunch, played with cats, and waited for the train to take us back to Beaufort, where we hopped on the bus back to KK. Along the way we were treated to another fantastic Borneo sunset.
And the next morning we headed back to Hong Kong!!
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