Malaysian Borneo

Spencer and I had a 10-day fall break so we went to Malaysian Borneo. I have been excited about Borneo for a long time…I was not disappointed. We spent all of our time in the state of Sabah, started by flying into Kota Kinabalu.

Sabah is the state in orange. Borneo is also partly Indonesia and Brunei.





Part 1: The Sepilok Rehabilitation Center for Orangutans

Our first stop was Sepilok, a tiny clustering of guest houses surrounded by jungle at the edge of the Rehabilitation Center. This center takes in orphan orangutans from around Borneo and teaches them to become independent again. They teach the babies how to swing in trees and slowly give them less care and more freedom to leave. There is a series of feeding platforms within the huge expanse of jungle with ropes connecting the platforms so, as the orangutans get bolder and more adventurous, they can explore farther away from “home”. Some orangutans keep coming back to the feeding platforms for the rest of their lives, some go their own ways.


Orangutans are only found in the wild in Borneo and Sumatra (Indonesia) and there are only about 20,000 left. The center is playing a big role not only rehabilitating orangutans that would otherwise be spending their lives behind bars (or die of disease) but educating the public (a good majority of orangutan pictures in the media come from here).



playing with longtailed macaques at the feeding platform.

We came early in the morning and watched a feeding, waiting patiently on a little platform until they swung in along the ropes.

ouch!

cleaning!



We also had permission to explore further in the jungle at the center. We spotted some long tailed macaques off in the trees from a boardwalk and, as stopped to watch as we snacked on crackers. We were suddenly surrounded by macaques and they demanded our crackers. I was grabbed by little monkey hands – Spencer fought back boldly but they were not deterred. In a last ditch effort we threw the crackers and got outta there, barely escaping with our lives. We also saw a pit viper curled up in a tree and a guy from Animal Planet with his movie camera all set up, painfully waiting for it to move.




long tailed macaques cleaning on the boardwalk.