Monkeying around in East Sabah

On Thursday we took a very short flight over to Sandakan which used to be the capital of Sabah until it was destroyed in the war. We didn't actually see Sandakan because we'd gone over for our "environmental" phase. (We know it's not environmental flying but we have decided that we will not be taking any more internal flights)

First stop was Sepilok Jungle Resort. A wooden hut affair pretty much next to Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Still we had a fan and plenty of lizards for company and they did do good big plates of fried rice and fried noodles.

(Mr G - chief Orang Utan)

Just a walk around the garden lead to us seeing at pretty close quarters some hornbills (Oriental Pied Hornbills to be exact) - closer than Si had seen in the jungle. The following morning we went over to the Sanctuary. Sepilok has a mix of wild and rehabilitated orang-utans, if young abandoned orang utans are brought in they gradually give them the skills they need to survive in the wild and release them into the reserve.

Feeding time is pretty manic - suddenly Orangutan's and Macaques start appearing from all angels. Macaques are the small grey monkey type's who are the Borneo equivalent of pigeons or some other pesky creature that hangs around and hassles tourists.

Seplilok is a bit of a spectacle, it's not like seeing wild orangutans and there is a lot of people with their cameras out. However you do get to see them at incredibly close quarters - sometimes too close, one Raleigh guy managed to pick up an Orangutan bite. Probably asked for it I guess, mostly they and the macaques won't go for you unless you make some kind of agressive move. You can also take a few walks within the reserve where you stand a chance of observing orang utans in a more natural situation.

Next stop after Sepilok was Uncle Tan's Wildlife camp on the Lower Kinabatangan river. This region is an area of protected jungle alongside the lower reaches of Sabah's biggest river. It's probably the best place in Sabah for wildlife spotting. Being in somewhere like Danum is great but when you're slap in the middle of the jungle, trees tend to get in the way of you seeing much. On the river however you've got a much clearer view along the banks.

(monitor lizard)

The tours are often on two night, three day basis and involve a combination of river cruises and jungle trekking both during the day and night. It's worth doing and to be fair to the guys from Uncle Tan's they were really into their jobs which was good to see. We saw Probiscus and Silverleaf monkeys & Crocodiles on the river banks. A variety of Birdlife including storm storks, kingfishers, owls , hornbills & eagles. We also had an orangutan and several monitor lizards come right through camp. A troop of macaques hung about camp continually, they got into our hut once and we returned to find stuff strewn all over the floor outside and tooth marks through our toothpaste. In the kitchen area we only turned our backs for one minute and they'd come down from the roof, lifted a heavy wooden lid to a storage cupboard and made off with a tin of condensed milk! Cheeky little blighters...

(Probiscus monkeys in the tree's - enlarge the picture to have a look)

(Croc - don't let the picture fool you this one was massive, 4m long at least....... maybe)

The night walk was interesting as with Raleigh we generally did very little at night due to the increased risk factor... We saw various scorpions, centipides, tree frogs and one enormous tarantula which was camped happily about 10m up a tree. All in all a worthwile experience, the tourists on the trip with us found the accomodation a bit of a shock I think but after Raleigh it seemed 5* to Charl & I. They have electricity, roofs and matresses which is a step up from some of the places we've stayed.

(Black scorpion the guy fished out from under a tree - apparantly they only sting if you try and touch their back. I politely declined the opportunity to hold it as i thought it'd be sod's law I survive three months in the jungle only to get stung after making a conscious decision to have a scorpion crawl on me)

We're now in KK about to depart for Bangkok and Ko Tao where we want to spend a couple of weeks chillin and diving. We'll be sorry to see the back of Sabah, fantastic place and well worth a visit. The people here are chilled out and hospitable. To be honest I'm not looking forward to getting into Bangkok and having to bargain for every single thing I buy and having to persuade cab drivers that I actually really do just want to go to the bus station not their brothers jewellery shop etc... still needs must.

(Kingfishers asleep - until we blundered past shining our torches in their eyes that was)

(long legged centipede, nasty fella with potentially fatal bite)

The blog will probably be on hold now for a while - there's only so many pictures of people chilling out on a beach that hold any interest.

(That might be what Si thinks but I'm actually enrolling him in Buddhist meditation and I will get pictures! Charl x)

It's a long way to Long Pa'Sia

After our adventures mountaineering and diving - which Si assures me he's writing about and not just looking up football scores - we headed to Long Pa'Sia which Si's mentioned briefly before but I'll go from the beginning because it's a pretty cool place.

If you take the map of Sabah and go south from KK you come to Sipatang (this was a two hour drive in one of the as per usual racing taxis - a few evil looks in the rear view mirror seemed to help). Sipatang is a rather non-descript little town on the sea but served good roti (thin bread pancake things). The roti milo I had (milo is a chocolate drink powder over here) was particularly good - even with (or despite) the curry sauce they provided with it.

From Sipatang we jumped into 4x4s and started the four hour drive south east to Long Pa'Sia. Again on the map, you can't get much further south in Sabah and we were pretty much on the Sarawak border. We were on our way with Pip, Sam and Julia (all staff from expedition) and all had been in Danum Valley like Simon, ably accompanied by a great guy called Hanry.

Hanry lead some of the Raleigh trekking groups and is a proper jungle warrior having grown up running round with his parang in the jungle (NB Parang = big jungle knife). After our bumpy ride in (you don't get in without a 4x4) we arrived in the most magical place I'd seen in Sabah (except maybe the top of Mt K). The prettiest and most well kept village (flowers rather than litter as I was familiar with) although under the surface still all the aspects of village life I'd got used to whilst being here. Volleyball at 5pm, the cheeky kids, and the same wooden stilted houses with their verandahs outside and large spacious rooms inside where generations of the same family stay.

That first evening we had dinner at Hanry's family house - fresh locally grown greens, rice and soup before a beer on the verandah and an early night ready for the morning. Just a couple more words about how they live - most of the homes in the village have solar panels provided by the government since they are so far off ever being able to be on any form of national grid. They seemed to have a good water system (my new speciality!) with piping leading to a tap just out the back of the house where we also had the bucket shower / portaloo / fire to cook on outside etc.

Starting our Stroll
The trek was a three day trip. We trekked out at the very civilised time of 9am on the Saturday morning and did a pretty easy trek. The jungle is primary rainforest - that means that it has never been logged and is in its original state. It is gorgeous, so many shades of greens and shapes of leaves and fungi and just things to look at. Although not a lot of animals or bugs to see (Alex would be coping just fine so far). Before leaving we'd had a go at making the traditional banana leaf wrapped rice. Simon was surprisingly better at this than me and, although I don't think Hanry packed our attempts, we had this wrapped rice for lunch with some chilli sauce and curried meat.

The guides with us were amazing. There was (from left to right) Hanry, a guy called Nooh (even more of a jungle warrior than Hanry) and two porters - Harry and Johannes. The porters would go ahead before each stop we had and make benches and all sorts before we got there. You can give these guys a parang and they'll build anything. We had spoons and cups made from bamboo, a sofa by the river on the first night to sit on and generally they find a way of sorting out any luxury item you need.




So the first day we reached our camp for the evening at about 2pm. We set up hammocks and bashers - Si and I had a brilliant 'bunk bed style hammock' set up that we put together with a bit of guidance from Hanry - it was four months ago that we first learnt it! That night the guys went out hunting but unfortunately didn't get anything in time for dinner which was rice, wild garlic, fresh water shrimps, chilli. And Tiger beers. They even put candles out for us! It felt very weird being treated as guests after so long. Although not altogether unpleasant.

Our Jungle Sofa

The guides went back out hunting later on and brought back a mouse deer (a small deer) which we had curried for breakfast. The second day was a tougher trek a lot of ups and down, scrambling and climbing around a bit but it was well worth it. We saw some ancient sites of importance in the local culture. The people form an ethnic group known as the Lundayeh people and they have some interesting legends about their forefathers. They were a head hunting tribe - collecting the heads of neighbouring tribes would demonstrate their strength and prowess. Fortunately they don't do that now although there were definitely stories and secret things that they still wouldn't share despite them being very keen on the whole to share their stories and lives with us. One thing I particularly liked was a tradition of having a long crocodile of rice on a table at a wedding with many dishes around it that everyone then ate together. The head of the crocodile would be a boars head or something similar.

Bat Cave
We had the pleasure of visting the Bat Cave on Sunday, another experience ticked off the list. It required a 15m abseil down to get in - no harness or anything just a big thick rope and leaning out from the muddy and slippy wall. Unfortunately our picture of the glowing orange eyes starring down at the mad humans who had invaded their cave for 10 minutes or so doesn't want to show up properly on this page - so this is another bat picture.

Maga Falls

After the bats an all together more magical and not to be too cheesy but pretty special experience. Maga Falls is a beautiful series of waterfalls over a long flattish plateau with jungle rearing up on each side of you. It's my preferred wedding venue at the moment but Simon says it's a bit impractical :-( It won't come over in the photos here but it was tranquil yet awesome at the same time. For once using awesome in the right context.

Enough of that. We stayed the night in a camp that Nooh had built. He found the sight in 1979 as the area was next in line to be logged. Nooh threatened the loggers with his parang and got locked up for a week by the police but in some roundabout way it stopped the loggers short of the Maga Falls area and it is why it is still a primary rainforest area today. The camp was properly plush with an A frame style sleeping area for us (complete with its own resident bat), some seating areas, camp cooking area and the beautiful Sungai Sia (Red River) to bathe in. It was cold but very red from iron ore (I think) in the water.

We got acquainted with a local tipple - a sweet fruity sherry type drink that was apparently 50% but still quite drinkable. We're trying to find a bottle in the supermarket to take to Ko Tao with us at the moment. The guides also performed the local warrior dance for us which we'd seen a couple of times but is always good to see.

The third and final day was a very different walk. We had two river crossings quite early on and were walking through very different forest. Secondary rainforest. It's amazing the difference in types of trees growing and there's an obvious difference in size and height since the area was logged about 30 years ago. It does form a scar on the landscape and towards the end of the walk we were effectively walking back to the village on an old logging track that will take a long time to 'heal'.

Even so as we were trekking that morning we heard an oo oo oo sound from some nearby trees. (That sound effect should be like the oo in who - Simon is much better at all these animal noises than me..) It was a family of gibbons - we could see exactly which trees they were up in and they were clearly talking to some other gibbons in another tree - probably commenting on the strange tall bearded fella walking past. Anyway for the life of us we couldn't actually see them. Si thought he saw the black shadow of them moving and we could see the trees moving and shaking but they were incredibly elusive. Even so, just hearing the noise of these wild animals there around us put a smile on my face and it was a bit of a highlight of the trip for me.

We stopped for lunch on the last day about an hour and half before the village. It started spitting with rain as we ate our tapioca and condensed milk although Hanry assured us it was only a shower. Showing just how much these jungle types know, the heavens opened 5 minutes later and the loudest clap of thunder and lightening shattered the sky just above our heads. We headed back to the village and it didn't stop raining or thundering until we were practically home; we couldn't have got any wetter. It was very good to be back.

Leeches
I've just realised I've managed to write all that without a mention of leeches. Si had had some experience with them in Danum but my experience was limited to one guy, one day in Miruru getting a tiny leech on his boot. So this was proverbially being dropped straight in at the deep end. Every stop we would each pick 5 or so leeches out of each boot and hope they hadn't crawled through our socks. Unfortunately they quite often did. Although I didn't get any actually biting until the last afternoon when one nibbled by big toe and little toe and my ankle (although that hairy ankle isn't mine and is in fact Simons). For some reason I didn't seem to get the profuse bleeding that everyone else got with their bites so I'm a bit worried about my circulation now :o My general conclusion about leeches is 'annoying little buggers' but that's about it. I might have had more to say if - like one of the girls with us - they'd bitten my (not very expansive) cleavage or crawled somewhere else they shouldn't like some of our poor participants....

Back at Hanry's home we were treated to battered sweet potato, brown rice sticky bar things and lots of tea and coffee. His niece and nephew took great delight in trying to use our camera. As you can see by the picture alongside, the little boy (Nathanial) is showing great talent in capturing his subjects.....

Dinner was wild boar, soup, more local greens and rice. It was delicious and felt well deserved after our 3 days in the jungle. That evening this old dude who is the best and most respected warrior dancer in the village came to perform for us.

We had a great time in Long Pa'Sia. The village are trying to encourage a bit more tourism which is a good thing for them. They have a home stay programme and Hanry is going to be pushing his trek leading. Couple of useful contacts for anyone reading that might ever be in the area is to look up Long Pa'Sia homestays and Hanry is on hbaktian@hotmail.com

It's been good to be on email and stuff to people over the last week or so and good to see so many of you reading about our travels! Simon's going to put up some cute piccies of monkeys next and then we'll be off out of Sabah to continue the journey in Thailand for a while.

All the best for now,

Charlotte

A Stroll up a Hill, Staff Party and Learning to Dive

As we left it last time we had just managed to discharge the expedition participants either onto flights back home or into the poor city of KK where they went onto engage in drunken chaos for a few days.

Having breathed a big sigh of relief as a staff team the obvious way for us all to relax was to then take on Sabah's 4100m Mount Kinabalu. Mount K is one of the main tourist attractions in Sabah and they sensibly limit the amount of people on the mountain at any one time. The mountain is too much for most people to get up & down in one day so most people stop at a resthouse part of the way up.

(Classic Malaysian sign at the park entrance. Not sure what it means, maybe run away from people with guns, seems like good advice to me)

The schedule pretty much went like this. 1200 noon start our climb at the national park entrance. 1500 arrive at Resthouse / Hostel after three hours and six km of uphill walking over a combination of steps and rocks. Slump knackered in seat and have a couple ot tea, put on beanie and fleece for the first time since arriving in Sabah. 1900 go to bed. 0245 get up continue climb. 0500 reach the peak in time for sunrise.

(For those with an interest in Botany this is a pitcher pant - a carnivorous plant that only lives at a certain height above sea level and feeds on dumb insects that fly straight into it for some reason)

(Charl & I at the top ! In the predawn dark....and cold)

The view is quite spectacular and worth climbing for. The climb goes from fairly hot highland jungle to bare rockface where it's really quite cold. Unless you're particuarly fit it's a recipe for a couple of days worth of pain after but it's one of these things that are just worth doing. They have an annual race up & down the mountain and some nutter has been up and down in 1h 54m. To put that in perspective it took us just under six hours to get up and that's pausing for dinner and a kip in between! Anyway that's about all there is to say about the hill so here's some photo's

When we finally recovered from the mountain it was time for the much anticipated staff party. Held on Pulau Tiga (or Survivor Island - so called because of the TV programme filmed there, don't remember it myself - think it was one of the first reality TV stuck on an island type shows), we had a day and night at a rustic place on this pretty island. It was a party of two halves...

We had the option to visit the volcanic mud baths. About half of us decided to make the trek (apprently about 20mintues away) and half stayed behind to chill on the beach. The trek was decidedly longer than 20 mintues (about an hour) and I was decidedly grumpy about missing out on beer to be trekking to some mud pools.

The mud pools proved to be worth visiting in the end though. Following a stylish, john smith's style bomb into the pool I emerged looking like the plasticine fella who was Morph's (From Art Attack) friend whose name i can't remember. It a weird sensation being totally immersed in mud - I actually had to pick dried Mud out from the inside of my nose at the end of it.

On return from the mud pools we found the rest of the group already well into a fairly large session. The bar had already run out of beer and had to send a boat to the mainland to get some more. After chucking my toys out the pram about the lack of beer for a while I settled for a G&T and a decent night ensued. To be honest Charl & I were still so tired from expedition and mount K we couldn't be bothered to party that hard, inevitably though there where a couple of casualties. I won't embaress my deputy expedition leader by posting the picture of him passed out face first in his dinner - just this one of him walking out the sea with a beach ball covering his private's.

(Alcohol & the Sea, Raleigh people would start talking about risk assessment at this point.)

(The walkway onto Pulau Tiga - I know, it's a hard life, someone's got to visit these places though)

(The staff team - complete with hangovers)

The day after the party we were kicked out of fieldbase and the official part of Raleigh was now well and truly over. First thing on the cards was to check into a half decent hotel for a few days - the D'Borneo, highly recommend it it as a midrange if anyone ever comes this way - and then get going on our open water Diver course.

We did the course with the outfit Raleigh used - Borneo Divers - over the course of four days. During the dives we saw turtles, Rays, Moray eels and a decent variety of fish. We're pretty keen to dive a lot more now - I can see it becoming a serious danger to the travel fund.

(Sam & our instructor, Richie)

Anyway on that note Adios . Next up trekking in the Longpas'ia region I believe.

Cheers

Si

Hi's, Low's and freedom !

Freedom !!!

After 3 months going on what feels like 3 years we are now officially finished with the expedition.

Don't get me wrong, both Charl & I have had an incredible experience here with Raleigh - but we're both completely drained both physically & mentally.

You may have noticed now Charl's been back on the blog the difference between the kind of experience a community phase offers to an environmental site like the ones I've visited. Charlotte has lots of photos of grinning malayisan kid's & water pipes and I've got lots of trees. Getting quite fond of trees - you know where you stand with them and don't have to smile and nod and pretend you understand what they're saying all the time.

After being back at fieldbase my first trip out was to the village of Long Pa'sia where our group's do their jungle trekking. It's a remote village about a four hour off road drive from the closest town. We were driving down for a presentation ceremony to commemorate the introduction of Raleigh to the village as this was the first time we had used this area for trekking. A small group of us are going back out after expedition so I'll write some more on the village then.

(Long Pa'Sia)

(The inevitable flat - the road to LongPa'sia was well known for its flat tyres. One guy had four flats on his trip in and had to go off blagging tyres of any shape or size he could find from any locals. We only noticed this one after the back end swung out going round a corner and almost rolled us over.)

The ceremony included the village children doing a warrior dance where eight year old lads span around with foot long machetes in their mouths - you forget sometimes how totally different to the the UK this place is, social services would be evacuating the village back home but it's just part of growing up here. With this being such a remote community it was was actually really good to see how Raleigh has not only bought trade into the village but also offered a conduit for young lads to get out of there and perhaps find new opportunites. Three guys from the village came on the expedition as participants and I heard some of them might have had job offers from the main dive company in KK which represents a great opportunity for them.

Unfortunately this trip was rounded off with news of the worst kind. As some of you may have seen in the press back home one of our groups had been on a day trip to Sepilok orang utan sanctuary and coming back in two minibuses the first bus was involved in a accident. Two participants were severly injured and and a project manager and friend of ours called Toby was killed.

Toby

Just to say a few words on Toby. We only knew him for a months, a time that was unfortunately far too short, but in that time we had fun and got to know him. The only photo I had was this one of Tobes, me and Derek making fools of oursleves to the weather girls at Karaoke. In some ways though it's quite suitable as he was always up for a laugh and responsible for some great comedy moments. If by any fluke any of Toby's relatives or friends ever end up reading this we'd just like to say it was a pleasure working with him and that he was well liked by everyone on expedition - staff & participants alike.

There's not much more I can say really - anyone who knew Toby knew what a great guy he was. This accident has reinforced our belief that taking time out to do something like this has definitely been the right decision. The old cliche about you only live once etc.. is oh so true. You can spend years stockpiling money & possesions back home then something happens and before you know it your times run out.

It was a tough week back at fieldbase - we had a lot of work to do in the aftermath of the accident. Thankfully both of the participants with serious injuries were ok, although it was obviously heavily traumatic experience for all the group concerned and the expedition was in the balance for while. Thankfully everyone pretty much took the attitude of getting on with things and after a few days break at a hotel the group involved went back to finish the expedition working on the eco lodge they'd been building, fair play to everyone involved as some of these guys had been involved in pretty serious first aid at the accident scene, I'm not sure if I'd have felt like going back.

(One successfully dug hole!) (bathing at the Imbak falls) (the group - bless'em)

For the last eight days of expedition I was called back out to project site - Imbak canyon. I've talked about Imbak on a previous post so I won't say too much. It's a remote conservation area which the BBC recently filmed and expedition documentary in. I got there just in time to help them finish digging an eight foot deep hole where the foundations for a new bridge were going to go and trek a load of stuff out to the Ranger camp. The ranger's camp actually had satellite TV and as we finished the work with about four days left we got to catch up on some football - watching the Chelsea players bottle it in the Liverpool - Chelsea penalty shootout in the middle of an area of primary rainforest was bizarre (and of course highly amusing - unlucky Gatrell if you ever read this). We also got to give the rangers a couple of games of footy.

(Footy against the rangers - the bloke in the blue was far to quick and skillful for his own good. Still, if you notice that's me in the blue shorts and him heading towards the floor. Somethings don't change my tackling one of them)

The group were a good laugh and evening highlights included a game of 21 with truth or dare subbed into drinking as a penalty. 113 boys - amazingly I have found someone who is even worse than Ned & I. Paul - if you ever read this, sorry mate - ended the night dressed in women's clothes having been continually stitched with dares and having had to sink about half a tub of chilli sauce and eat several cloves of raw garlic.. unlucky

The highlight of this week was a hike we did up to the top of one of the canyon's ridges. The view we got at surnise was incredible and walking along the ridge was like something out of a Lord of the Rings movie - we were basically walking along a high ridge on springy moss with mist in the tree's and spider webs coating everything (unfortunately my photography skills - or lack of - meant I couldn't quite capture it properly on camera)

(crossing the river at Imbak, helped as ever by the rangers, possibly the most patient people I have ever met)

(Decamping our ridge site at sunrise)

(more jungle - the view of the outside of the Imbak canyon ridge)

I stayed at Imbak until the end of the expedition's working phase. We then returned to KK & put on an end of expedition party at a beach resort - Bukit Nagra - for all the participants. Theme was Pirates (handily as I still had my Danum Valley costume). Unfortunatley for some - including me - the party was cut short as some general incompetence from head office had meant several participants were on 0730 flights back the following morning. This resulted in me having to drive some of them to the airport for 0530 and given we didn't get back from the party until 0230 the previous morning I wasn't in the best of moods the following day. However the participants were gone and we were free, knackered but following three months of continually looking over your shoulder to make sure there wasn't an 18 year old boy about to drop kerosene in the fire or fall off a cliff etc... it felt good to finally relax. And of course now we could have a drink !

(Sunrise over the low lying morning mists)

(broken down on the way out of Imbak - the standard 25 people crowded around all offering competely different and ultimately useless advice!)

(Washing up liquid and water slide on the beach - site of several nasty friction/sand burn injuries including one on my hip)

(Random water buffalo walked past the party in the sea - guess they get pretty hot too ?)

This is turning into a massively long blog entry so I'll save the next

bit for a few days time - stay tuned for pictures of the staff team "relaxing" by climbing a 4100m mountain and the mandatory pictures of drunk people at the staff party.

(Charl, Tarik, Dave & I)

(Pirate barbecue skills on the go)

(Bukit Nagra - highly recommend it it if anyone's ever out this way)

Thanks again for the comments

- Steve & Alex, catch you guys soon

- Dad - never seen so many dawn starts in my life - my body actually wakes me up about six at the moment, hoping it's a habit I can ditch pretty quick afterwards

-Elly, good luck in getting chopping to trawl through all of this but if you succeed hope it helps to get him back on the road.

Cheers all

Si & Charl