Stop 8; Sukau and the Kinabatangan river!

Sukau lies to the south east of Sandakan and Sepilok.  The jungle and forests have been left more of less intact due to the vast river networks and inaccessibility those rivers inherently pose.  This makes travel a bit of a bind also.  Luckily a local entrepreneur was on hand to help intrepid explorers like us... And make a pretty penny himself!  Not that we begrudge him that, he has a very simple side business.  At 6am Mr Choy drives his daughter to school in Sandakan and at 1 pm he drives her home to Sukau.  Phone him direct, book pick up from your accommodation, and you can join him in his 7 seater for the equivalent of a tenner a head.  I think he's the richest man in Sukau, he certainly dresses the best and has the only new vehicle in the village!

Sukau is a tiny village that sits along a section of riverbank on the Kinabatangan river.  Its simple and poor, but the villagers are self sufficient and a make extra money providing lodgings and guided river tours for tourists.  We chose our lodge on Mr Choy's recommendation and we were pleased we did.  We had a private bungalow each (our new travel buddies Jon and Caitlin in one, Bex and I the other), 3 hot meals a day, unlimited tea and coffee and 4 boat trips and 2 hikes (1 of each at night) with a proper ranger.

We threw down our bags and jumped straight in the boat for our first boat trip in the late afternoon leading into dusk.  Long tailed macaques and proboscis monkeys were clear for all to see in the first few minutes travel and shortly after we had our first crazy experience.

We caught sight of a splinter group of Borneo pygmy elephants, including mothers and babies, (our ranger believes the parade to be ~50 strong) feeding on the lush folliage of the rivers edge.  It was a long time before we moved off and we saw little other than more of the same monkeys and a few hornbills, but in all our opinions the entire visit was already worthwhile (and it was only dinner time on the first evening!).

[I later read that official estimates for Borneo pygmy elephants in the wild number only 1500]

After dinner we headed out on a night boat trip; "but its raining!" the ranger exclaimed when all four of us heartily agreed to carry on as it started to rain; he was clearly expecting, and hoping for, a negative response.  The rain seemed to convince the crocodiles to avoid the river but we saw some buffy-faced owls and had amazing up close experiences with stork-billed and blue earred kingfishers; with kingfishers being one of my favourite bird species this blew my mind as much as the elephants! Epic.

Next morning our already blown minds were rocked again.  It turned out a properly wild orangutan and her juvenile daughter had decided to pass threw the outskirts if the village... So basically straight over our accommodation, incredible!

Overall the trip was all we ever hoped for from Borneo wrapped up in to a few days; we went on to see 5 species of hornbill, bats, crocodiles, a pine civit, Jerdons bazas, swiftlets and probably even more that I can't recall!  We left very happy and headed back all the way to Kota Kinabalu before reluctantly leaving Malaysia and moving on to Indonesia.

Stop 7; Sepilok

The far east of Borneo has been, as previously mentioned, decimated by palm oil plantations.  Absurdly tucked away within this is Sepilok. There is an area containing rehabilitation centres and accommodation where tourists and locals can go glimpse wildlife in a tiny pocket of conserved jungle.

Had we bothered to research properly we may have not headed this far east to visit, certainly not this area (our next stop was our main priority), but we were lured by the task of finally seeing orangutans.

We arrived at our lodgings early evening an grabbed a great dinner. Turns out all meals were included for the days we would be here, result! Hot showers, comfy bed and free transit to and from the orangutan sunctuary the next morning were also included, things were looking up at last.

Next morning, well fed for free and in great weather (out of the mountains it was like being in a different country in regards to climate) we headed of to see our elusive cousins, well I say elusive... We'd prepared ourselves for the experience to be organised and non-wild and we got what we expected - feeding time arrived and so did the orangutans and monkeys of differing species. We could openly see the ranger passing the food direct to each creature from behind a tree on the feeding platform.  Still, we saw yet another new species of monkey, the short tailed macaque, and also a pit viper. Cool.

Next door there was a sun bear sanctuary too. These little blighters are rather cool, we spent an age watching them feed and climb trees.  That, however, was about it for Sepilok! We'd made some travel buddies who were interested in our next adventure so we nailed down plans for meeting up and getting there the next day, we had high hopes for some real wildlife encounters before we said goodbye to Borneo!

Mountain stop; Gunung Kinabalu...

We arrived at Kinabalu National Park in good time and order.  It was a bit drab and wet but nothing too much to be concerned about.  Our money saving plan (not in any guide book) consisting of turning up and booking direct even worked out too!  Long story short; its about £80 total direct (entry, park fees, guide and 1 night at base camp hostel), agencies in town or online will pull your trousers down for £150-£250...insane!

With that all sorted we just had to pop to our hostel just outside the park (more money saving) and get some good kip before an early start...

We arrived and met the owner.  After a very short and confusing conversation (understood not a word of English) we gathered she had no computer or internet, therefore no idea of our booking!  No loss, there wasn't a soul booked in due it being off season and the weather being "a bit unpredictable".

We dropped our bags in a nice big room with en suite (ooh la la!) and the owner checked the light.  Nothing.  She pointed at the switch and informed us "no light".  Ok, so we understood that well enough, no electricity.  Oh well, we'd just wait, we had no plans after all.  Time passed, the weather closed in.  We sat in the common room but it was open to the elements, thus we soon had mist around us and the rain and wind were picking up too.  Helpfully the owner popped in occasionally to inform us "no lights!", thanks.  We moved to the bedroom and played scrabble on my phone by candle light, ate trail rations for dinner and went to bed with storms rattling the building.



The morning brought us no respite from the rain and wind (nor arrival of electricity), so our early start was delayed and we headed to breakfast at the truck stop outside the park at 8am.  Breakfast was delicious and the weather was clearing minute by minute!

We headed into the park, grabbed our guide from HQ and hit the trails!  All was well again.  The climbing was steep and incessant (very much expected) and it was great to be on our way.  We passed at great waterfall, I made friends with a Borneo ground squirrel and we even saw some red leaf monkeys!



We were making incredible time, so our guide suggested that, with an uncertain forecast, we should blaze through base camp and summit in the same afternoon!  We were already climbing 1404m in one day, he was suggesting increasing this to 2229m with 15mins for lunch!  We told him we would decide at base camp but the decision was lost to us.  30mins from base camp the winds and rain came in hard, it was hell.  Really, the worst experience I've had on a mountain.  We were soaked from head to toe, the temperature bitingly cold, the water turned the path to a steep, rock strewn, fast running river and we had visibility of about 3m.

The hostel was clean, dry and out of the wind. Thankfully there were also large, thick duvets, an absolute savior as the room had no heating whatsoever.  We got in to all our remaining dry clothes (including all warm layers packed for the summit) and both dived under two duvets on a one bunk.  15mins later I finally stopped shivering, another 15mins and I could feel my feet again (they weren't feeling great).  That was basically it for the day.  We had reached base camp in 4 hours and now it was early afternoon with wind and rain battering the building.  We chatted to other climbers who arrived even later, ate trail food for dinner again (we had no dry clothes we could waste heading to the canteen) and then went to sleep hoping the trails would be open at 2am for the original scheduled summit attempt.



2am.  No change.  Slept till breakfast at 6:30am and then hiked down in the unchanging weather.  At the bottom we grabbed our bags from the hostel (still "no lights"), I changed in to my very last dry clothes (vest, shorts and flip-flops, not warm at all) in the truck stop toilets and got the midday bus onward to Sepilok.



Cold, disappointed, bags full of sodden and smelly clothes, neither of us could be happy at all.  To add insult to injury, where once only primary rainforest resided, all we saw on the second half a 5 hour bus journey was endless palm oil plantations.

You read about it, hear about it, but nothing prepares you for it.  We'd walked, trekked and frankly marvelled for weeks at Malaysia's wild jungles and forests, the most stunning and beautiful I've been lucky enough to see and experience.  To see it laid to waste and replaced as such is agonisingly heart breaking.  Things could only get better for us, I fear for Borneo's forest's future though.

Stop 6; Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo

It was time to head to yet another national park but this time we were in search of a summit, not Borneo's wildlife.  We wouldn't have things all our way this time...

The changing weather systems I mentioned earlier were really starting to drift down to us now, we circled around six times in an air traffic jam before landing in a sodden and flooded capital, Kota Kinabalu.

Its quite bereft of charm in fair weather, bad weather really showed off its dreary side.  We took a rare taxi to save the bother of figuring out buses and finding our way to the hostel in the downpour.





Our aim here, aside from heading on to more easterly regions, was to summit Gunung Kinabalu.  We'd marked it out early in our plans as our first challenge to be conquered.  At 4095m she's the highest peak in the Malay archipelago:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kinabalu

We'd done all our homework, made our plans... Now we spent the rest of the day pouring over weather forecasts and working when we should head over for an attempt (the national park was still another 2 hours away on unreliable transport links).

Eventually we were all set again.  We had what looked like a 3 day weather window approaching; we would leave the day after next, travel to the park and register to climb early the morning after that.  In the meantime we attempted to enjoy KK.

Its a bustling port city and that night we dined on fresh sea food in the night market (under a tarp in the rain, obviously).  There were breaks in the rain the following day though, so we got out and about, completed a few odd jobs and took in some minor sights.  Next morning the weather cleared early, we packed our bags and headed to Kinabalu National Park for the adventure to begin...



[Everyone loves to see  crow dissecting a rat at the harbour, right?]

Stop 5; Mulu National Park, Mulu

Betwixt activities in Kuching, Bex buried herself in guides, blogs and reviews.  The result was an extra major stop before heading all the way west to Kota Kinabalu.

Mulu is tiny.  Nestled south of Brunei, but still within the Sarawak region of Malaysia Borneo, its basically an airstrip (arriving by land is near impossible), a tiny village and a huge, varied and interesting national park.  The, not in anyway unpleasant, but certainly unexpected oddity here turned out to be the park itself...

When you land in a twinprop with 20 other people and then walk to a home stay for your lodgings, you hardly expect the national park to be so incredibly well developed and modern.  Immaculately uniformed staff, modern offices, shop and restaurant, even most of the self guided walks were 75% fully maintained wooden walkways!

The park offices can happily and readily arrange guided and non-guided activities for your entire stay (all in near fluent English of course!).  For our three nights we settled watching the nightly bat exodus from Deer Cave, a self guided walk, a waterfall visit, a days guided cave exploration and hike and a tree top canopy walk.  All in all the cost was quite reasonable, if we'd used the park lodging and restaurant this would have been well over budget!!!

[Not to mention the home stay had a great kitten which Bex kind of loved, so why stay anywhere else?!?]

We nipped off straight from the office to try and catch the bats (it was well into the afternoon already!). In the end we still had to wait an hour for the spectacle but it was certainly worth it!  As it was dusk the pictures I took are naf, but watching ~6 million(!!!!) bats spiral, almost endlessly, from the cave and off into the jungles as night closed in won't be something I forget in a long time!!  Afterwards we inadvertantly had a self guided night hike back to the park HQ.  From what others told us this was the same as the organised equivalent... Except we didn't see foot long stick insects or anything of note aside from frogs and fireflies!

On the next day the self guided walk turned out to be a pretty simple affair (but it was free) but I snared my first leech [as you'll see evidence of weeks ago when this actually happened!!], we saw plenty of gigantic bugs and a dip in the waterfall toward the end was actually quite glorious and welcome!

The area is rightfully renowned for its cave systems and we had eagerly anticipated our final full day getting involved in some caving!  It did not disappoint.  At the entrance we witnessed tarantula webs coating swathes of ground and boulders.  None of their creators were to be seen but, in the full dark of the deepening cave there were plenty of their relatives to be found!  I have no idea of the species but they were as large as my outspread hand:

We climbed, crawled, scrabbled, waded and swam our way through the caves, paddled/waded our way up a remote river and, eventually, hiked to and settled for lunch at an incredible waterfall (this backpacking is a right chore!).  Job done.  The final morning we quickly went about the canopy walk (great fun, the world's longest tree based walkway apparently... Though not too scary) before grabbing our bags and walking to the airport; that never sounds any less odd [oddly not the last airport walk either!]

Quick stop; Bako National Park!

After a great days rest mooching around Kuching, we headed off for a couple of days and a night away at Bako National Park.  Its only an hour away but the final approach is by boat only, so staying a night seemed not only cost effective, but would also give us time to do a fair few hiking trails.

Almost immediately, staying the night was a god send - it was only ~8am but we were able to check into our hostel room at park HQ, we put our bags down and the heavens opened. Big time.

Typhoons around Japan had finally started to affect the weather round southeast Asia and this was the first evidence we saw of it [much more to follow in that regard unfortunately].  We laid around in the spartan hostel room until the rain relented around 2pm.  A quick bite to eat in the HQ and we finally got to go and explore.  We were not disappointed!

We selected an easy route (due to the rain) to another beach 45mins away but still saw a ton of wildlife.  Walkways across the now receeding tide gave us great views of mud skippers, hermit crabs of all sizes and, unexpectedly, a whole troop of silver langurs (including ultra cute bright orange babies hanging on to mums) as they used the walkways all around us to short cut into another section of jungle! [I'd love to share the video, maybe one day I may experience broadband again!]





On the jungle path proper we saw skinks aplenty, more exploring hermit crabs and Bex managed to spot two dung bettles busily shifting monkey poo about! Great stuff!  Finally, at the destination beach, we saw plenty of proboscis monkeys and their young in the surrounding trees.  Neither of us, nor anyone we have spoken to, can quite fathom the draw of these creatures.  Personally I'd attribute it not merely to there unusual appearance, but more so to there grace and attitude.  They don't act like lesser more common monkeys (long tailed macaque, for instance, are just a nuisance), more like apes in the way they lounge about, slowly traverse the trees and sceptically (it seems to me) view us and what we do.  In a nutshell, turns out they are pretty awesome and I (and all other people who saw them I think) could be mesmerised in to watching them for any length of time.











Back at HQ bearded pigs greeted us at the beach and, regrettably, this would prove to be almost our last new wildlife spot.  The next day we set out early and completed both a longer and shorter trail before leaving on the 4pm boat.  The longer trail afforded us with great views of the varied landscape around the national park, on the shorter trail we spotted a rather long black snake which Bex was rather unfond of!!  Plenty more proboscis monkeys were watched but, rather too soon it would seem, our visit to Bako, and in fact Kuching was over.

[Almost forgot all the frogs after the rain!]