07 January 2017

Christmas 2016 in Borneo

Silly sisters on the morning cruise that yielded the orangutans.

Christmas 2016 in Borneo
By
Randall D. Ball

Sticking with tradition for at least another year, we spent our Christmas holiday on an island:  Borneo.

Flying from our home in Lahore, Pakistan, to Sri Lanka, with an overnight stay in Colombo courtesy of the airline, we then flew on Christmas Eve from Colombo through Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia (city, state, island, country).  We spent Christmas Day and the next in Kota Kinabalu, relaxing at the hotel, reading, eating, and splashing in the rooftop pool.  It was a nice way to unwind before our tour of Borneo really began.

Tuesday the 27th of December, we were picked up by our tour guide and driver and transferred about ten minutes away to a different hotel—a much nicer one at that.  We were introduced to our guide David and driver Fender, both very nice and knowledgeable and helpful.  That night, we were driven a bit up into the mountains to the Mari Mari Cultural Village, where we saw replicas of various tribal houses and villages, sampled food, participated in a few fun activities, and enjoyed a traditional music and dance performance (Anastasia even joined in on stage!) followed by dinner. For Talula, the highlight was all the kittens around.  And she’d see even more throughout our tour, much to her delight.  For Anastasia, the highlight was probably the tapioca and the honey tastings.  They also had some rice wine, which was all right but nothing special.

Wednesday morning at breakfast in the hotel, Anastasia went on her own to get some chicken sausage at the buffet.  She asked a boy about her age for assistance.  For the rest of the holiday, we would poke fun at her and her new boyfriend, “Sausage Boy.”  (My favourite bit was telling her that she liked him because she never “sausage” a face as his.  Yes, “Dad Jokes” really are that awesome).

After breakfast we left the city and headed for the mountains.  On our way to Mt. Kinabalu, we stopped along a river and traversed a suspension bridge that led directly into a village market—giving us some local flavor.  At the national park surrounding Mt. Kinabalu, we explored a botanical garden and went on a little nature walk.  Anastasia enjoyed leading the way, while our tour guide David walked more with Christine and me to tell us about the flora and fauna and about the mountain itself and surrounding park.  It’s a huge place.  After lunch, we had another hike up a mountain, this one a bit more strenuous.  It was only five hundred meters, but it was five hundred meters of climbing up a mountain side.  Anastasia just about ran up the path, climbing the steps as quickly as she could, and I struggled to keep up with her while Christine had the unenviable job of encouraging Talula to keep trudging up the pathway.  In the middle was David, our guide, probably not too sure with whom to walk.  

Once we made it high up into the treetops, we then enjoyed a pretty thrilling canopy walk.  It was much higher than some of the walks we had done in New Zealand or Florida, and the view was incredible.  In the same area as the canopy walk, we also explored a butterfly garden and saw—and smelled—some sulphur hot springs.

That night we stayed at a pine resort in the mountains.  Christine and I sat out on the front porch overlooking Mt. Kinabalu and sipped some wine while the girls ate ice cream.  Win win.
 
Walking around the resort that evening with the girls, I had a little conversation with them. Talula told me that I was a strong boy.

“Why not a man?” I asked her.

“Okay, you’re a strong old man.”

I winced.  “Old?  Let’s go back to boy.”

She replied, “But you ARE old, Daddy.”

Thanks, Talula.

The next day, we had a long overland transfer, five hours, to our rainforest lodge.  However, we made a few stops along the way, including a stop for refreshments at a little roadside restaurant serving up some pork pau (a Chinese bun, essentially).  We also stopped to see a couple of very famous flowers that were in bloom:  the Rafflesia, which are humongous flowering plants found in Southeast Asia.  They’re not easy to find, which explains why we had to pay an admission fee to get in to see these impressive flowers.

From the tour van, we then transferred at a jetty onto a little narrow boat to cross the Sukau Kinabatangan River to our rainforest lodge.  From there, we would take a series of boat cruises, starting late that afternoon.  On our first boat cruise, we spotted hornbills, several hawks, egrets, a kingfisher, a blue-throated bee-eater, and numerous proboscis monkeys.  At the lodge itself, we would see wild boar, turkeys, and many monkeys, mostly long-tailed and short-tailed macaques. 

Our second day in the rainforest involved three separate boat rides of two hours each:  one early morning, one late afternoon, and one night cruise.  During our early-morning cruise, we saw more proboscis monkeys, hornbills, eagles, and, most importantly, orang-utans!  There was a group, or rather, a congress, of about eight orang-utans hanging in a tree, eating and playing.  

During the afternoon cruise, we saw another highlight:  a crocodile.  We saw two more crocs on the night cruise, which was interesting.  David used a heavy-duty flashlight to search for animals, and occasionally turned it off to give us complete darkness (the stars were amazingly bright).  We saw several sleeping critters:  two monkeys cuddled together in a tree, a very cute little kingfisher gripping a branch and sleeping soundly, and other birds.  The crocodiles were awake, of course, as was the large brown owl, a buffy fish owl who was perched on a limb over the water, hunting for fish, presumably.  We found an additional sleeping animal on our boat:  Talula.  She denied it, but we have pictures.

The following day, Saturday, was New Year’s Eve.  We left the rainforest lodge for Gomantong Caves, where we saw a mother and baby orang-utan on a walkway in the jungle before entering the bat cave.  The cave has a significant economic impact in the community, but not just due to tourism.  Besides all the bats in the caves, there are also swiftlets whose bird nests are edible, if you so desire, and are a popular delicacy in China.  Even less appetizing in the cave would be all the roaches there, crawling everywhere, including all along the walkway and the railings.  The girls in particular were creeped out by the roaches.  And as much as you may want to grab the hand rails, think twice.  The smell of bat guano is also strong in places, adding another element to assault one’s senses.

We then drove onward to Sandakan, where we had a nice lunch on a hill overlooking the water at an English tea house.  Then we visited two animal sanctuaries, conveniently located next to one another:  one for sun bears and one for orang-utans.  We could also hear pygmy elephants in the jungle, but we didn’t get to actually see them.

From there it was a quick half-hour flight back to Kota Kinabalu, a more favorable option than driving six or seven hours through the mountains again.  It was New Year’s Eve, and we celebrated by going to the mall across the street from our hotel and having sushi for dinner there.

Sunday, New Year’s Day, we were on the water.  First, we took a boat (something significantly larger—and covered—than the ones in the rainforest) out to a coral reef in the Tunku Abdul Rehman Marine Park.  The girls tried snorkelling for the first time.  Talula spent a little more time in the water than her sister, however.  Within a few seconds of being in the water, Anastasia suddenly freaked out and swam back to the boat.  She thought she had seen a huge fish, right below her.   Something big and blue.  It was one of the dive master’s fins.  Christine spent more time on the water, although in our second snorkelling location, the girls took turns on an inflatable goose tied behind the boat, which was safely anchored.  (Everyone also had floatation jackets on).  After the snorkelling sessions, we had lunch and some beach time on little Gaya Island where we encountered some wild boar and a few giant lizards.

Then we were transferred back to our hotel and our tour was over.  We had two more days in Kota Kinabalu, just to relax, walk around a bit, enjoy some seafood and local food, including a meal served entirely on banana leaves, and splash in the hotel pool.  We simply bathed in the warmth of the nearly-Equatorial sunshine before heading back to the cold and smog of wintertime Lahore.  As we flew home on Thursday, 5 January, we left Kota Kinabalu’s sunshine behind, flying through Kuala Lumpur, and then boarded our first successful flight on Pakistan Airways (a previous attempt in the spring resulted in a cancelled flight and thus a cancelled vacation), where we landed amid some pretty severe smog in Lahore.

We are ready for summer already.  Or at least spring.

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