There is an amazing number of people flying to Kota Kinabalu (KK) and we are aboard a 737 with a feast of nations. This is one of three flights a day so KK is seemingly the hub and true centre of activity for Sabah. Malaysian Air Services (MAS) are also upgrading all the flight schedules and taking over from all the regional networks to provide aa slicker and more regular service. Sabah is the Eastern portion of Malaysian Borneo and i guess we can thank our lucky's that Malaysia has a portion of Borneo which they may look after with more zest than the 'Logging loonies' of Indonesian Borneo who are whittling the once great forests of IB down faster than you can say 'Suharto'.
At KK we arrive and immediately ring the 'Jesselton Hotel' to find out why the band isn't playing on our arrival and the 'Rolls' isn't here to meet us:
http://www.jesseltonhotel.com/
worth a quick perusal of the website...smacks of colonialism.
We get a taxi and the band must have given up at the hotel as well so we have an unheralded welcome and we are alloted room 203. Later in the stay it turns out the place is cut with history. For a start KK was originally called Jesselton, further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kota_Kinabalu
The Jesselton Hotel was then founded in 1954 and was the only hotel in town...until now that is. Famous people to have graced the Hotel (although perhaps not Room 203) include; Lady Mountbatten, Prince Phillip, Muhammed Ali and Fiona Dampier (room 203 has now been renamed 'The Damp Suite'). It is a great establishment and there is a waiter by the name of 'Chai yu Sin' who has worked here since 1960 and is completely charming...along with a waitress by the name of 'Trai nee' but we call her Vera!
KK is a fantastic border town. 300k people now but growing to 500k in the next 4 years or so and the gateway to Sabah.
We check in for the flight to Sandakan in the north of Sabah and the link town to Sepilok, our destination, and the most famous of the 'Orang Utan' rehabilitation centres. The forest is being cut down so fast the O-U have no time to react and are slaughtered or taken as pets. Our destination first is the 'Gomantong Caves', the bird spit production centre of the world, the source of a fair proportion of the birds nests eaten in the east. We go with our guide Maria to the park and happen upon a wild Orang Utan at the entrance. He lolls around in the tree above us shaking it periodically in a show of defiance. He is a large male and when he hangs you can see that his arms are incredibly long, typically twice as long as the body. They are also twice as strong as humans by body weight and so dextrous for a large mammal up a tree, thinking back to the tree climbing adventures of the formative years!
We move onto the Gomantong caves and enter them through some pristine jungle. the caves are enormous and the roof is a good 75-100m above us. The men use bamboo ladders to climb to the roof to harvest and it does look ridiculously precarious. This is the cave where David Attenborough climbed on the large pile of Guano whilst urine and poo rained down on him from above...it is just like that. Maria does a remake of this famous walk and it is soft and gooey under foot. The smell of urinary ammonia is ovewhelming and the mounds of poo are continuously moving due to the attention of dung beetles and a million cockroaches...your average nightmare on poo-street.
A memory forged on my brain forever.
The caves are dramatic and the sun pours in through the many entrances in the junglescape.
We leave the cave for the Sukau River Lodge we are staying in. It is up the tributory of the river and reminds you of 'Carry on up the Jungle' We check in to our cabin, complete with mossie nets and get some jungle tucker. Full of great food we set of in the river boat with our able boatmen in Man Utd shirts and Maria, our tireless guide. This area is famous for the Plebosus monkeys and we see many along with cheeky packs of monkeys who are clearly unafraid of our precense if not a little pleased to show off in front of us. The Plebosus monkeys tolerate us but make no effort to chat. In fact on of the large males sits in the tree like Cyrano de Bergerac with his tail hanging and his 'red Chilli' afront (Plebosus cod piece) in the words of Maria. There are jungle sounds all around and we get a great feeling for the forest, snakes, monitor lizards and all manner of cicadas.
A great dinner in the evening and some great people staying at the lodge...we all venture out for a night walk - with leech sock leggings - and again get a great feeling for the vibrancy of the forest and the animals which make it their realm, we celebrate with much vodka and beer...such brave young things.
In the morning we catch the jungle sunrise and set off for Sepilok..the Orang utan sanctuary. It was set up in part by Dian Fossey's boyfriend-of 'Gorillas in the mist' - (need to check this) and houses Orang Utans from just born to 4 years and older if they have difficulty being released into the wild, the ultimate aim of the project.
After a short AV show to explain the centre, we observe the OU's from a boardwalk some ten feet from their feeding platform. They are the most loveable animals and move in such a graceful, meaningful way along the ropewalks provided. Of course it does help if you have hands on your feet and a disproportionate body weight to strength ratio!
One of the females has a baby and behaves in such a human female way towards the 'child' it is a toal tear jerking moment of total requited love. We watch the OU's eating and fending off the other monkey tribes from the feeding platform and then we have to leave. It has been a moment to really savour and it is sad that the forests of both Borneos, the O-U's home, are being swallowed up at such a rate and a situation thats only going to accelerate.
If you want to read more about this and sepilok via a UK charity:
http://www.orangutan-appeal.org.uk/
We fly back to KK and it is encouraging that a lot of the flight is over cloud drenched virgin mountain forest which looks so stunning from the plane at 22000 feet.
Back to the Jesselton Hotel and Room 203, The Dampier Suite.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment