I never thought that myself and Jamie would be ‘wildlife’ people! What I mean by that is, usually our time away is spent doing our best beach-bum impression, finding the best spot for a few sundowners and getting to know the local cuisine and culture.
However last week we found ourselves in the middle of the Bornean jungle, waking up at 5am to cruise the misty, chocolate highways of the Kinabantangan River in search of spotting the elusive Borneo Orangutan in the place where they should be, in the wild, but we did and we both loved it!
Although, feeling slightly out done by our fellow trip-goers that our camera didn’t have a detailed enough zoom to get the best shot of these amazing primates.
Borneo is the third largest island in the world and split into 4 distinct areas, Indonesian Kalimantan claiming the largest of the areas, however mostly unexplored, the more popular Malaysian States of Sabah and Sarawak and the tiny independent state of Brunei.
We arrived in Borneo by flying into Kota Kinabalu (KK) the capital of Malaysia’s Sabah State, KK is a great point to explore what the North west has to offer.
It comes alive at night around the busy night market on the waterfront where you can get everything from fresh fruit and vegetables, cooked to order noodles and rice dishes, stall after stall of fresh seafood cooked to eat there of freshly scaled and gutted to take home.
Moving on from KK, we took a 6 hour bus journey east to Sepilok, the journey itself breathtaking with forever changing views of Mount Kinabalu and mile after mile of lush rainforest.
A few hours in however, the scenery changes to one with a slightly sadder tale, it’s not hard to see the perfectly even rows of palm oil trees, and mass areas of new deforestation appearing daily.
One of the biggest problems of this is the destruction of the bio-diverse Bornean rainforest which has a huge effect on the amazing animals which call it ‘home’.
Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: Pea and Moss: Borneo Part 1
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