A more exciting Borneo Eco Film Festival

KOTA KINABALU: This year’s Borneo Eco Film Festival is set to be more exciting with the coming on board of WWF-Malaysia as its official partner.

The partnership is synergistic – the annual film festival aims to celebrate Borneo’s bio-cultural diversity and WWF-Malaysia has the mission to achieve a future where people live in harmony with nature.

The festival, which will be held from September 27 to 29, aims to highlight the relationship among local people and Borneo’s natural heritage through the showcasing of environmental films.

Admission to the three-day film festival is free.

The Boleh Bah Filem Kita! (BBFK), which is one of the core events of the festival, is an eco-film competition where local film makers must demonstrate how people relate to their environment through a short-film.

To encourage more participation, WWF-Malaysia will present a special award for the best video themed on the proposed Tun Mustapha Park, the largest marine protected area in Malaysia once it is gazetted.

The film must be under 10 minutes, shot in Borneo by people who live in Borneo, and the submission date has been extended from August 15 to August 31.

Besides that, the festival also aims to nurture film-making among the local communities.

Through a series of workshops named SUARA KOMUNITI/ The Voice of the Community, the local communities will have the chance to tell their own stories with their own voices.

WWF-Malaysia is supporting community members from Semporna Priority Conservation Area and the proposed Tun Mustapha Park to participate and benefit from the film-making workshops.

SUARA KOMUNITI activities are conducted all year long through village-level workshops where indigenous and local communities work with SUARA guest trainers for two to three days on film-making approaches, styles and techniques.

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Hitch-hiking in Borneo leads me to a mystery island

Hitch-hiking definitely divides opinion, even amongst travellers. People usually respond in one of 3 generic ways:

* You’re crazy… no-one will pick you up and those who do probably want to eat your brains

* Wooooow, that’s so cool. I’d like to try that sometime

* Nice. I hitch-hiked through Europe…. fun isn’t it?!

What surprises me is that even some long term backpackers would only consider hitch-hiking as a last resort and are quick to point out the dangers. I won't be making hitch-hiking the focus of my travels, but Borneo is an expensive place and hitching a ride is a fun way of getting free transport and meeting friendly people at the same time.

I was attempting to hitch-hike from Tuaran, a small town 33km from Kota Kinabalu (capital of the Sabah region) with my destination being Kudat, a town in the north some 190km away. I didn’t really know much about Kudat but it looked pretty cool on a map, so off I went.

Because I started within a town I needed to find the main road. I was fully laden with my backpacks walking along the side of a road when a car stopped and a friendly guy offered to drive me to the junction. His English wasn’t great and he was really confused about what I was trying to do… essentially ask people to drive me to my destination for free. I'm positive he just popped out to buy some milk but he ended up dropping me very close to the next major town, Kota Belud. His parting words were ominous “Don’t trust anyone…. Thieves here.” I thanked him, promised I’d take a bus then found a good spot to hitch my next ride. He turned his car around and went back the way he came, probably to pick up his warm milk. Really nice guy.

I had to wait 10 minutes before my next ride, a lovely couple due to be married in 6 months’ time. They were planning to stop in Kota Belud, about 20kms away from where I stood. I thought there’d be more possibility to get a ride to Kudat from there, so I jumped in. He was a repair engineer and was driving around fixing things, she just appeared to be keeping him company. I couldn’t be sure though, as Ferendly said “Sorry, my English is broken”. I told them my final destination was actually Kudat and with a big smile Ferendly told me that was his home town. The couple spoke amongst themselves in Malay and after 5 minutes he turned round to face me and said “We’re going to Kudat, today is now a vacation.” And with that little nugget of information, I had a ride all the way to Kudat. Sweet.

We parted with smiles all round and had my picture taken with his fiancée. They pointed to the bus station, then off they drove. I didn’t really know what to do next so I walked around and got chatting to 2 locals hiding from the sun, “There’s a nice island 90 minutes away… you should go… the public ferry leaves in 15 minutes”. It was settled… if some random guy tells me it’s a nice island, then it must be. I jumped aboard.

After a 40km ride across a choppy sea I made it to Pulau Banggi. I didn’t know anything about the island and in my rush to catch the boat I forgot about the small detail of accommodation. I had taken the last boat of the day and didn’t even know if I could stay here! I asked around and after much laughing (at my expense) I found a homestay. I had to haggle hard to get a price anyway near my budget and we agreed on 30 Ringgit (about £6), which is twice as much as I have been paying anywhere else in Malaysia. It did, however, give me a single room, quite a rarity these days.

I found out once I arrived that this island is mentioned in the Lonely Planet as a place for “travellers who want to fall off the map”, that’s probably why the 4 foreigners who were at the homestay already were a bit surprised to see me.

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A haven of rich biodiversity

THE mountain tops of Sela’an Linau Forest Management Unit (FMU) in upper Baram should be gazetted as a totally protected area.

Emphasising this call, Hose’s Civet and Small Carnivore Project, Borneo (Hoscap) founder and project leader John Mathai stressed that biodiversity was at its maximum in the area.

Speaking to The Star here recently, the research fellow at Universiti Sarawak Malaysia (Unimas) said initial studies had shown that ideally the mountain tops should be legally protected because images captured on camera trappings showed that there were more animals there compared to elsewhere in the lower elevation.

“The whole Sela’an Linau FMU is rich in biodiversity but the maximum (number of animal species) is up on top. Eventually we need to identify a corridor to join the mountain tops to nearby Pulong Tau National Park to better protect the biodiversity in the area,” he said.

The Sela’an Linau FMU covers 55,949ha or roughly 560sq km, of which Samling Group is the licensed concessionaire.

The FMU is thriving with biodiversity, particularly small carnivores, which are considered threatened under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Some of these species are endemic to Borneo.

A former field researcher with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), John said the society initiated an exploratory research in Sela’an Linau between 2004 and 2009, adding that initial data collected showed the logging concession area was rich in fauna, particularly small carnivores.

“The Hose’s Civet is endemic to Borneo and during WCS’s research period, we recorded the highest encounter rate of the animal, between 20 and 25 images captured compared to other scientists in other parts of Borneo,” he said.

John said Hoscap decided to continue where WCS had left off with in-depth research in Sela’an Linau last year, focusing on Hose’s Civet and small carnivores which were mainly shy, nocturnal and least known to science.

One of the significant images captured by Hoscap so far was the Bornean Bay Cat last year, one of the rarest and most elusive cats in the world, he said.

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Nature Lodge Kinabatangan: Budget Lodging in Borneo’s nature

There are a lot of lodges and resorts catering to the wildlife enthusiast along the Kinabatangan river in Borneo, but only a few of them fit into the budget of a backpacker or budget traveler.

The Nature Lodge Kinabatangan is one of them where I ended up staying 3 nights and 4 days. The initial plan was to stay 2 nights and 3 days, but the experience was so good for me that I ended up staying an extra night. I would have loved to stay more, but I had a flight already booked to Kuala Lumpur.

The below review is based on my recent experience of staying here.

1) The lodge is located right in the midst of pristine nature and by the banks of the Kinabatangan river.

2) The place is not too remote, but is remote enough to ensure nothing disturbs you. Since it is elephant territory, the entire lodge perimeter is protected by an electric fence to keep away elephants.

3) The lodge has dormitories (fan cooled), fan cooled small private rooms and air-conditioned large rooms.

4) The reception and folks managing the place do not speak good English, but it is manageable.

5) Food served here borders good to edible. There was nothing special and at the same time, food was not bad either.

6) The worst part about this place is that they do not keep filtered or boiled water. This means that we end up buying more plastic mineral water bottles.

7) The place doesn’t have wi-fi, but who wants wi-fi in the middle of forest.

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MASwings adding more aircraft to its fleet

Malaysia Airlines subsidiary company MASwings has added another aircraft to its fleet - a Twin Otter DHC6-400 – to beef up its rural air service in Sabah and Sarawak.

The DHC6-400 is one of six new DHC-400s that will be added to the MASwings fleet over the next twelve months.

Fitted with the most advanced flight avionics of its class, the plane will replace an older model.

The press release from MASwings today touts the new plane’s enhanced features, which include its full freighter service capability as well as its additional ability to take on medical evacuation duty for which it is equipped with a stretcher kit.

According to the statement the aircraft will be based in Kota Kinabalu and used for familiarization training by pilots and engineers until 14th September 2013.

Following this, the aircraft will enter service on 16th September the 50th Anniversary of Malaysia Day. This is the second aircraft delivered to MASwings in as many weeks, the first being an ATR 72 - 600 received the week before.

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