Borneo,BeforeBreakfast

Nick was waiting outside when we landed in Kuching around 10:20 AM. We loaded the bags and drove to Fort Margherita with Ali, our driver.

I wrote down quite a bit about Nick. Nine years with Borneo Ventures. A two-and-a-half-year tourism diploma. A home about twenty-five kilometers from the city center. We were starting a trip that would put us in a car with guides for hours at a time, and I was interested in the people as much as the places.

At Fort Margherita we heard about James Brooke and Charles Brooke, the White Rajahs. The first day also took in Tua Pek Kong Temple and the city’s cat statues. The wildlife would start the next morning.

After breakfast at seven, Nick collected us at eight for Bako National Park. We came in by boat at low tide. The boat could not reach the jetty, so we got off on the beach, took off our shoes, and walked toward headquarters.

There was practical advice for the macaques: avoid eye contact, and do not show your teeth. I had not expected smiling to require any thought on this trip.

Along the trail we saw silvered langurs and a bearded pig. A green pit viper sat in a tree, pointed out to us as female. The proboscis monkeys were higher up near the mangroves. We would see them again and again over the following days, but these were the first.

Nick moved between the animals and their surroundings: mangroves, beach forest, trees with winged fruit, timber strong enough for house frames. I collected more than I could use, and several details I would have to check later. Looking, listening and photographing do not leave much room for accurate transcription.

Lunch was around 12:45. By the time we left at 1:30 the tide had come up enough to use the jetty. Shoes stayed on for the way out.

Later we met Barry Song and the team to talk through our travel-agency plans. This trip was also a way to see who we might work with on future Shah Expeditions journeys. Watching a guide handle a real day told us more than any itinerary description.

That evening’s route took us on to Brunei.

At the first mosque we visited, Neeta fainted while standing for a photo I had insisted on. It was a shock. But she recovered, and we thanked our stars that she had no major facial injuries. As is characteristic of her unique inner strength, she said we could continue.

Our city touring took in Jame’ Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque, where preparations were underway for Eid al-Adha. We heard a great deal about the Sultan, the palace and the royal family. I wrote down room counts and stories about aircraft. The details came fast, and I would want to check them before repeating any of them as fact.

After lunch at Sari Wangi we visited the Energy Hub at 3:15. Oil and gas ran through the whole account of the country. Outside, by four, it was raining hard.

We put on ponchos and boarded a covered boat. The roof helped. We went into the mangroves first, then turned back toward the water village, and as we went upstream on the Brunei River the rain stopped. Long-tailed macaques and proboscis monkeys were in the trees. We saw a few crocodiles as well. From a morning of mosques, a palace and an energy museum, we were back on the water watching animals.

The next morning we left at eight for Ulu Temburong. We crossed the long bridge toward Temburong and passed an Iban longhouse recorded in my notes as fifteen rooms. Our guide told us about the sultans and the tombs along the way.

There was food at Trandie: fried banana, spring rolls and tea, on top of the breakfast we had already eaten. We reached the Forestry Department base around 10:25, registered in the logbook, and started for the canopy at 10:40.

The climb was stairs and heat. My notes turn into a list of times: the bridge at 11:10, the top at 12:30. Between us we finished nearly three liters of water. We were done around two and at the airport by 4:30.

By then all we wanted was water and Wi-Fi, and first we had to find the lounge. We could not locate the elevators, so we carried the camera bag, the laptop bag and the blue roller up the stairs. I would happily have left the stair climbing in Temburong.

The flight reached Kota Kinabalu around 7:25 PM, fifteen minutes early. A 30-ringgit taxi coupon got us to Le Méridien in twenty-odd minutes. We showered, looked in on the lounge, had a cappuccino, and were asleep by 11:30. Three hours later Neeta was up again.

Omar Sheriff drove us to the airport and was talkative for the hour. In Labuan we met Selina Lim, our guide, and Francis, the driver.

At the war memorial I noted the section for Indians and a reference to November 11. This is the one part of the journey I want to go back to in the photographs. I recorded too little of what we read there.

Driving around the island we passed older wooden houses on stilts and newer ones on brick bases. Batu Manikar and Pohon Batu were among the names I wrote down.

The Labuan Chimney has its own museum and well-kept grounds. We were told it was built with imported British bricks. What we did not get was a settled explanation of what it was for. Neither the mining connection nor the lighthouse theory was established for us. It was an unusual visit: plenty to look at, with the central question left open.

We moved our return flight to 2:15 PM. The original plan had us coming back in the evening, and the earlier flight bought us an afternoon in Kota Kinabalu: Pu Toh Tze Temple, the City Mosque, Menara Tun Mustapha, Padang Merdeka. Mari Makan on Gaya Street made it into the notes.

The next morning we needed to be at the airport again, this time for Sandakan.

Neeta was answering patient messages before we left. Omar took us to the airport and we reached Sandakan around 7:15 AM. Jay met us, with Lee driving, and by eight we were at Sepilok.

We saw the sun bears and watched the orangutan feeding. At the bear center we heard about rehabilitation and release for animals able to fend for themselves. I noted forty-four bears at the time of our visit.

Lunch finished by noon and we left around 12:15 for Sukau. By 4:30 we were on the Kinabatangan River with ponchos and bug spray.

The wildlife notes filled fast. A blue-eared kingfisher. Long-tailed macaques at a junction. We turned left onto the Menanggol River and found several families of proboscis monkeys and a stork-billed kingfisher. Flying foxes crossed high above.

Some of it was less certain. I wrote “short-tailed macaques” for one group, probably pig-tailed; that one waits on the photographs. The proboscis monkeys needed no deliberation, especially when a male gave us a clear view of his nose.

We were back by six and saw an oriental pied hornbill on the lodge grounds. Dinner was at seven, announced by three gongs. Chef Teddy was friendly, the vegetarian food was good, and he gave us his rule: “no diet.”

At 8:15 we went out again with another guide. On the night cruise there were kingfishers and two baby crocodiles, recorded as seven or eight inches. A civet was there too, though we never got a proper look.

A drizzle gave us enough warning to get the ponchos on and cover the camera. What followed reminded me of an Indian monsoon. The camera and binoculars stayed dry. We did not.

Back at the lodge we changed, and I copied the camera card to the laptop before bed.

At 6:05 the next morning we were out again. Proboscis monkeys first, then an oriental pied hornbill, then a female wrinkled hornbill and later a pair. That morning’s entry is only a few lines. Getting into a boat in the dark and looking up into the trees had already become the ordinary start to a day.

On the morning outing we saw a rope crossing strung up for orangutans, put there because the tall trees and connecting branches that once carried them through the canopy are gone. My notes are vague on how it was built. The rope itself was easier to grasp than any wildlife list: the animals had lost their road, so someone gave them one.

We also saw oriental pied and rhinoceros hornbills. Assizi is the name I have from this outing. There was more on proboscis monkeys, their movements along the river and the part the males’ noses play in their calls.

Back at the lodge we worked in the lounge and had lunch around one. At three we left for Gomantong.

We wore helmets, gloves and masks in the caves. There was guano, there were cockroaches, and there was the smell. Those are the details that fill my notes.

We heard about swiftlets and the harvesting of their nests, and about enormous bat populations. I wrote the numbers down, but I was watching my feet the whole time, and my feet won.

Around 6:20 we started back. The next entry is a 6:45 bus, then dinner.

Luggage was outside the room at 5:30 AM. Quick breakfast at six, a boat to Sukau village, then the bus for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to Lahad Datu.

After an ATM stop we checked in with our passports at the Borneo Nature Tours office. There was cappuccino, a banana, a local sweet, and something I described as samosa-like. We talked through their operation and learned their offering was Danum rather than the alternative Sukau arrangement we had been weighing.

Before heading into Danum we went to the coast to snorkel. AK was our guide. The briefing was all small things that matter: keep the mask strap above the ears, keep hair out of the seal, clear the snorkel by blowing water out at the surface. My notes call the spot Blue Ring Reef. We had gone from watching wildlife along a river to getting into the sea, with the rainforest still ahead of us.

Danum Valley was next, at Borneo Rainforest Lodge, two nights. For Neeta one aim was plain: more time looking for orangutans.

We saw gibbons near the staff quarters on the 6:30 AM outing. At eight I took the viewpoint hike. Neeta chose a shorter outing meant to focus on orangutans.

I crossed the Danum River bridge, long-tailed macaques on the bridge and the riverbed, one male walking the railing. We passed the Jacuzzi Pool and climbed, first on stairs and then on steeper ground, the trail muddy from recent rain.

There was a coffin site along the route, and our guide talked about the people connected to it. We also heard about Alfred Russel Wallace and the forest around us. I caught fragments between the more practical business of getting up and back down. On the descent we passed the Jacuzzi Pool again and saw a dark turtle across the water. I reached the room around 12:30.

Neeta was disappointed. Her shorter outing had not been the focused orangutan search she was promised. After lunch we spoke to Chong. My notes say we “summoned” him. He told us he was already watching for orangutans and would concentrate on finding them.

Around 2:15 he came to the room. A family had been right outside the rooms. We got ready and went out, but by the time we did they had moved on. We found a long-tailed macaque.

At 3:30 we set out again with the full group. We were back on a muddy trail when word came of a sighting near a spot we had already passed on the main road, and we retraced our steps.

Several people were looking up. This time there was an orangutan to see.

We had come so close outside the rooms and missed it by a matter of minutes. That one stays with me more than the sighting that followed. I adjusted my position for photographs as it moved, the afternoon’s other problem still in play: after getting to the right place at the right time, there was the separate work of finding a clear line through the trees.

Rain started. We skipped the canopy walk and were back at the lodge by five.

The day still held dinner at seven, a cultural show at 7:30, and a night walk at eight. Fire ants and an explanation of “zombie fungus” went into the notebook. I had orangutan photographs to go through as well.

We did the canopy walk the next morning, joining the group around 6:30 after a short birding outing near the property. For days we had been looking up from trails and boats. From the walkway we looked into the forest at a different height.

At lunch we benefited again from the chef’s attention to our vegetarian meals. A couple from the UK had pressed hard about theirs, and that had prepared the kitchen for us. In a lodge this remote, someone else’s insistence carries downstream.

We preferred Danum to Sukau. The wildlife had been different, though. Along the Kinabatangan we saw more animals, more readily, from the boat. At Danum we walked and searched, with plants, insects and forest detail filling the gaps.

The road out was the part I would least want to repeat: two and a half hours of rough, unpaved driving to Lahad Datu. We reached the airport around 3:30 for the late-afternoon flight.

Omar met us in Kota Kinabalu and took us to Le Méridien. We went to Suria Sabah Mall, did some shopping, and ate at Sushi Jiro. We were leaving for Mount Kinabalu at four the next morning.

The itinerary called this an easy KK day before departure, with time for the waterfront and sunset. By the time we got to it, we had added a mountain sunrise and an island.

The sunrise near Kundasang was so-so. From where we stood the ridge to the east held the sun back, and by the time it cleared it was bright and the orange had gone. We had made the early start and not got the light.

At Adenna Rafflesia Garden we saw two blooms at different stages. One had opened that day. The other was on its third day and, by my notes, about seventy centimeters across. A fresh bloom and a larger, older one on the same visit was an unexpected treat.

In the afternoon we went to the terminal hoping for Sapi Island. An agent outside the ticket window told us only Manukan was possible at that hour, so we bought tickets. The same agent insisted sea walking had to be bought there. Omar had told us to negotiate on the island. The immediate trouble was cash: I had already given Omar the agreed 500 ringgit for the mountain trip, and the agent wanted cash. We went looking for an ATM. I called Omar, who had reached the mosque for prayers, and he arranged to pay the agent through a local payment service. We could go.

MCR Holidays was the agent. Once on Manukan we saw other operators, which left us wondering how necessary that advance purchase had been.

We paid the island fees and waited at the jetty for a boat to the sea-walking platform. On the anchored boat we changed and got our instructions. The helmets were heavy hoods, glass at the front, a breathing hose behind. We were to keep our heads straight, turn slowly, clear our ears, and hold the handles at the front. I went down until my shoulders were under, and the helmet was lowered over me. We followed railings around a U on the seabed while the operators brought food to draw colorful fish and took photographs.

Back on the boat, changed, I tried to lift the helmet off the deck. I could not.

At Tanjung Aru that evening the sun was a round red ball over the sea. We watched it go down and stayed for the color afterward. People around us were making reels and taking selfies. There was room for ours too.

We had dinner at Mother India. The homeward flight left Kota Kinabalu at 11:30 the next morning. The journey home was uneventful.