So I arrived back in America after almost 50 hours of traveling, including two 8 hour layovers in both Kuala Lumpur and Amsterdam. My last 24 hours in Borneo were crazy of course. Rosli took us to the Gomantong caves, these huge limestone rocks with caves where bats and swiflet (birds) nest. These are the birds that people use the nests (made from their saliva) to make the prized ‘bird nest soup.’ Rosli showed us the type of ladder they use, made of rottan vines (though today they use ropes – and yes they still do this today). They climb up to 200 feet into the tops of these caves! here are some pics of the caves:



here is the entrance to the cave

the stench of bat shit is overpowering. holding your nose doesnt even help because the stench is felt on the tongue - like a sharpness in the mouth. outside the cave and along the cliff there are houses of the birders who collect the nests. Rosli took us up one of the paths to try and get to the top (where tourists dont/arent allowed to go).

the cliffs are limestone - this white rock which is 'soft' as in it will crush easily, but sharp as in it will hurt when you scrape urself. at the top we could see down into the cave, a perilous 200-something feet.
the view from here was spectacular - overlooking the rainforest. there was a house of some of the workers up here too, in the middle of knowhere, a 20 minute hike up steep rock, and they had satellite TV. i think EVERYONE in malaysia must have TV.

anyway, we waited here until around 6, just after the sun sets, to see the bats come out. the swiftlets all come into the caves at this time and all the bats stream out of it. there were hawks/falcons waiting around for the bats too - and when they came out we saw the hawks dive bomb them, just literally fly into the stream of bats to try and catch them, talons out. it was really amazing to see - and especially since this wasnt part of the tourist package, this was only because ROsli knew the path and took us up.

a really special thing.


they came out of the rock in a stream - one long line of millions of bats. they flew paralel to the mountain for a bit, through the forest, and then out into the air and swirled around like ripples of water. it was absolutely amazing to see. we then had to make our descent before it got too dark because we realized that out of the 5 of us, only 2 had flashlights and we had to scurry down almost vertical rock.
the drive back to the village was horrendous since it rained so hard we literally could not see 2 feet in front of the car. we were also supposed to spend our last night in the eco camp. luckily by the time we got back to the village and onto the boat it had stopped raining. my last night was perfectly spent in the eco camp, waking up to the sounds of the jungle and taking that last river boat ride to the jetty to drive to the airport with Hasan and Ateh at 8 in the morning to catch my flight to KL (Kuala Lampur).
In KL, capital of Malaysia, i had an 8 hour layover so i left the airport and took a bus to the main city to walk around the market, chinatown and see the petronas towers:


its part of a really snazzy mall - in fact the whole city is very modern and luxurious with a kind of subway above ground. im glad i went to see KL because Sabah (the state of Malaysia i was in) is not very modern and even the 'cities' aren't really cities, including the capital Kota Kinabalu. it was chinese new year this week and there were people dressed in dragon costumes parading around with gongs and drums. the city reminds me a bit of Bangkok but with more of a middle eastern influence. lots of indians and arabic architecture (mosques etc, because its a muslim country) as well as asians of every sort and the malls have all the latest technology cool things like interactive maps to figure out where you are and how to get where in the mall - because you cant simply LOOK at a map and figure it out, you need to see the image of the little man walking from where you are on the map to the place on the screen you want to go. i had the most amazing smoothie: mango and apricot. it was heaven. and some roti chanai. back to the airport for y 13 hour flight to amsterdam where bob met me at the airport (at 7AM!) to go have breakfast at his house and then walk around amsterdam (another 8 hour layover). i was only in amsterdam a little while but it was absolutely beautiful - i really love european towns. the canals and little appartments all lined next to each other




bob lives in a very nice appartment right on the canal which looks like this. it was nice to see a beautiful european city after the crazy asian city. it felt much more familiar. it was cold though. now im home sitting on the couch with kitty and it feels like i've never left - sort of surreal considering what i've been through. but i will now work on compiling and editing all the footage as well as organizing my thoughts on international conservation work, travel, and all that fun stuff for school (and myself).
thanks for reading!


P.S.
here is the call of the Bornean Gibbon:

Today is my last day in the Batu Puteh village! This past week we didnt do a whole lot - i was in the office for a few days helping Rosli put together a photo/movie thing about how MESCOT started. MESCOT got an award in 2004 for best community conservation program (or something like that?) and now the organization wants a movie about them to put on their website. so i got to go through old photographs of MESCOT and how it started etc which was pretty cool - as well as see some cool photos of some of the work that has been done. conservation is such a long term project that even in the 5 weeks ive been here thats not nearly enough time to see any progress made. it can get frustrating where sometimes you feel like you're not making any difference, but just us being here - and having many volunteers over years and years - is what counts. our last two days of work we moved wood, and after working in the office, indoors and sedentary, i was really happy to be outside and doing physical work again! also learning about the community here and how this project has brought people together (although initially it wasnt welcomed because locals thought it would cut them off from being able to use materials from the forest). but it made me think about the communities i belong to - especially nantucket (and even marlboro too) and how important they are to me. here they're are very proud of the culture and environment they are working to conserve, as well as being sustainable and not having to commute to work - they're working in the community they live in to support it. thats not something very common in america, and i feel very strongly for my community on nantucket - when i was working as a tour guide and learning about the history of nantucket, as well as being connected to the ocean and that lifestyle. a community like this is wonderful, but i dont want to live here. i feel very much that my life was left at home, and its been on hold for a while, so i am very much ready to get back to it. im anxious to put together all my footage and edit it into a consice whole, as well as organize all my thoughts and experiences i've had here. i still need to digest this whole month! its difficult to do when in the moment, in the place. i need to go away to appreciate what i have - both at home, and when i go home what i had here.

tonight is my last night and we're spending it in the eco camp. im excited because staying in the homestay is wonderful, being with the people and eating their food etc., but i came here to be out in the nature and experience the jungle. yesterday we were moving wood and hanging out in the eco camp and there are all these monkies around and amazing bird calls and being able to see the bird that makes the noise. theres one really cool one called the white rumped shama which has a crazy call thats really cool, you can listen to it here on youtube:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HafuBw9dCVY
apparently the chinese really like to have these birds in cages because they sing like this in the mornings.
i also saw a few of these scarlet rumped trogons - which are a brilliant red against the dark green and brown of the jungle. very beautiful:



i've really enjoyed getting to know the sounds of borneo. the call of gibbon can be heard in the morning, like a whooping noise that starts out slow and then gets faster and more intense. also the noise of the hornbills, very prehistoric, i imagine its what a petrodactle sounded like. a great big squak - a rather horrible noise actually but cool nonetheless. anyway, the sounds here have been great, and another cool thing im not sure i wrote about was when we were driving back from KK through the mountains we stopped at once of the roadside markets and i bought some honey!!! i cant wait to share this with anna because i know she loves honey, but this stuff is amazing. it honestly tastes the way the rainforest smells. they also had the stuff that they give the baby bees - a thick yellow stuff that just taste sweet, not that characteristic 'honey' flavor. but that was cool too, i'd never seen/tried that before in the US.
i wanted to embed more videos/sounds of gibbons and the wrinkled hornbill but youtube is being a butt right now so just look it up on ur own if u r so inclined.
thank you for reading my journal! i shall see u all in the US soon!!!

so we made it from the jungle of the city back to the jungle of the rainforest. the trip back took all day, even though we left early. we were stopping at fish nurseries so Rosli, the big boss in charge of MESCOT, could look at how communities were doing this and other fruit planting co-operatives so that Batu Puteh could start doing this too. We also stopped at some hot springs and took a dip which was extremely relaxing and then we slept in the car. buuuuuuuuuut thanks to Yahyas driving, we got 2 flat tires and after our spare tire burst we had to wait for someone from the village to bring another.

will is on the right and emelie is on the left. they were packed into the back of the car along with all our gear - pretty tight squeeze espcially considering how tall will is (about 6 foot 7) thats a lot of leg to get in there!

we were so packed in the car with the other tire in the truck and all our gear on our laps, and then waiting by the side of the road in the night in the rain for the other tire to come, which then didnt even fit so we just took the car back to the village and someone slept in the car overnight to look after it and fixed the tire the next morning. pretty rediculous.
so we got back to the village quite late. the past few days we have been working in the jungle a lot. we went to maintain one of the towers which are used to look out for forest fires, by picking up trash thats left there and clearing the brush that grows up around it - there are also some pretty spectacular views from the top - overlooking the rainforest and palm plantations. you can see the village and the winding river, its been raining a lot lately too so the hills were covered in an ethereal mist. lovely.
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this is the after picture - we put those machetes to good use!!




this is the spectacular view from the top of tower



and this is the muddy trail to get to the tower...did i mention its raining??


rosli is the guy on the right, he is the executive director of MESCOT, the big boss, and emelie is the girl in the pink poncho on the left. she is from sweden and currently the only other girl volunteer with me. we stay in the same homestay and have become quite good friends!

we also did a wildlife survey, which involved getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go for a hike (with all the leaches and mosquitos!) to make note of all the wildlife we heard/saw. there were mostly birds, we used a bird book to identify them and it was cool because i'd been hearing all these birds for a month now and i could place a picture with the sound i was hearing. the point of this was the area we were surveying was reforested, so this was forest that was bouncing back from being deforested and they compare the data from several areas to see the difference in wildlife variety and number. so that was cool. we heard one monkey and heard a wild board rumaging around, but other than that mostly birds and of course lots of leaches. we also made a sign that says 'please do not litter'


here i am reading up about birds while on our breakfast break after the wildlife survey at the top of one of the observation towers.

yesterday we were cutting a new trail from area of the village to Supu, where we did the hammock camping. we walked through a palm oil plantation until we got to the rainforest, and then started hacking our way through with a machete and Rosli (aided by his GPS) as our guide making our way through. We waded through rivers (up to our waiste!) leaches, mosquitos, and the constant rain. it was quite an adventure. i felt that this was the closest to the rainforest i could get. i was like one of those early explorers cutting their way through.




Ateh showed us a vine that you can cut and drink the water from it.



here is the pitiful little structure we built (a tarp between some trees) to protect us from the rain while we ate our lunch.


we were clearing vines near Rosli's uncles land, where they grow tapioca, so he took us across the way to see how they process it. we had been listening to the motor of the grinder all afternoon and then got to see how they did it. the plant is a tall spindly little tree, and they cut it down to get at the root which is then peeled and washed (by putting it in a big barrel full of muddy water and using their feet to swish them around in the water. thats their idea of 'washed') and then put through a grinder. if the root is ground to a pulp it is measured and wrapped in some cloth which is then put through a mechanical press to squeeze the water out. then the blocks of hardened tapioca are put into plastic bags ready to be sold! apparently its really popular with philipinos - who are the workers in this picture:



so in this picture on the left is the blue tub with all the 'washed' tapioca, whith is then put into the grinder, the metal black thing on the left, then pushed down to the guy on the right who measures it and wraps it in the cloth to be milked of the liquid.
they cook the tapioca in a coconut shell with coconut milk. i really want to try it. malaysians eat rice, philipinos eat tapioca.


so now i have exactly one week left! im not quite sure what else we're doing this week, but its incredible the range of thigns i've gotten to do since being here for so long, and while i didnt exactly enjoy every minute of it, im certainly glad iäve done/am doing it!

we went on a little impromptu trip to KK (Kota Kinabalu), the capital of Sabah.
It's a small city, not very built up and doesnt take long to walk through, but had a really relaxed vibe which was nice. it's by the ocean and surprisingly wasnt as dirty as Lahad Datu or Semporna.



Rosli, the director of MESCOT (who we volunteer for in the village) had a meeting with the Sabah Forestry Department (apparently he has one like every other week) so we joined him for the 6 hour drive to KK. It was really beautiful countryside, passing through lots of mountains and rainforest. We passed by Mount Kinabalu, which is the biggest mountain in Borneo.




there are tour groups who climb it, and one of the volunteers (emelie!) will be climbing it next week after she finishes volunteering.
we didnt exactly DO much in KK, but hung around and explored the city. It's all decorated for Chinese New Years with red lamps hanging along all the streets. It's not as dirty a city as I was expecting. I ate Roti Canai which is this delicious indian bread which you eat dipped in a mild currey. yum yum. There were tons of markets so we bought stuff.



they have some really beautiful textiles - i love the colors, they're not as bright as the sarongs

we then went to the night market and ate our way through the fruit section. mangoes, pineapple, papaya, watermelon. SO GOOD. they had everything for sale there, chicken, fish, veggies, fruits, prepared sweets etc.




they also have lots of fruit juice smoothies here, which is just ice and fruit blended and is the most refreshing thing ever. my favorite is the watermelon because its just like lightly flavored water and really cold. yuuum.


it was a very nice day off. we spent two nights at a cheep hostel and today we drive the 6 hours back to our little village. they drive absolutely crazy here. there are no 2 lane highways, so everyone passes one another and cars dart and zip past each other like mad. Yahyah, a guy frmo the village, was driving and Rosli was in the front seat. it was a much mroe comfortable ride than if we had taken the bus (and probably quicker too). So I'm glad that i got to go to KK, because i probably wouldnt have gotten to see it otherwise. but i am glad to go back to the jungle now!

we spent four nights at the homestays where i got to cook with some of the women which was fun. we made this spicey mango thing made from 'sour' mangoes (which is unripe magoes, they're green and sorta sour) which you shave and add sugar, salt, chilies, and sour plum powder. it's a condiment that you add to everything and it's actually reaaaally good (in the less-spicey version). we also made some sweats, and got to sample a lot of sweats, made from rice flour. apparently EVERYTHING is rice. it gives pastries an interesting gummy texture which i actually like. and everything is fried. in a wok. cool. so we got to hang out and move more wood. whoopee. i am so tired of moving wood. we got pretty sore, but then had big massage chains where we all rubbed each others shoulders. with tiger balm. that made it feel nice.

we then spent two nights at the eco camp, which compared to hammock camping is luxurious. we had our meals served to us there and had flushing toilets and showers where mosquitos did not bite our butts by the hundreds everytime we tried to relieve ourselves. we went on a night walk and saw the western tarsier! its borneos smallest primate and really rare, even those who live here see it very rarely (not since 20 years ago!) and Ateh (our guide/friend) was SO excited to see it he was practically peeing himself. by the way, its the cutest thing ever.




we also saw a civet cat, which looks like this:




as well as a crocodile!! (finally!!) we saw glimpses of them here and there, including a few juvenile ones, but then we saw one good sized one warming himself on the river bank with his mouth wide open - just as you see in national geographics.

we met two girls travelling together from autria and denmark who were cool and hung out with us - we went on a river cruise together and saw lots of monkeys (as always, probiscus, mackaque, silverleaf). there was also a TV crew from singapore who came to do a piece about Sabah wildlife preservation. so we did silviculture (chopping down invasive vines) in an area that had previously been affected by forest fire and had new growth, so they were planting trees there but invasive vines are in the way and overgrow the trees, killing them. so they filmed us planting trees and clearing land and then interviewed us which was cool. we saw another cultural performance, held in their honor (so they could film it), and took a night cruise where we saw flying foxes and an owl.

being in the eco camp was really fun and the past two days seemed to go by super fast. now we're sitting at the jetty (mescot headquaters) waiting for the bus to take us to our new homestays and time has slowed down again. gives me time to count all my new mosquito bites and think of marlboro.

so just got back from spending four nights hammock camping in the rainforest. it was pretty itnense. lots of mosquitos and leaches. we packed the boat full of stuff, like water and food, and toilet paper and tarps etc. we took the boat 45 minutes upstream into the jungle. we set up our hammocks which have an attached mosquito net and looks something like this:




and then we string up a tarp overhead to protect from the rain. we camped on the edge of the forest near the water and took showers by pouring buckets of water over our head while standing on the front of the boat. one evening when me and emelie were taking a shower we heard something big move into the water and swim away. crocodile! ah. we also saw one's tail in the water when boating up to the camp site.

while there we were doing trail maintenance, where we use our machetes (or parang in malay) to cut vines, weeds, etc to widen the path. our first day we did a four hour hike into the jungle for trail maintenance. the trail led to these big limestone rocks where traditionally the malay buried their people in wood coffins in the cliffs or caves. this is like 6-900 years ago. on the way back we climbed up this ridge which gave an amazing view of the rainforest! something like this:



there were also a bunch of caves in this area which we were exploring, filled with bats, bat poop, bugs, and deadly centipedes.

we were also helping out at the new campsite which is being build right near where we were hammock camping. this is supposed to be a new eco-camp but for hammocks. it's still under construction so we were moving scrap piles of wood, picking up trash, and doing silverculture - cutting invasive vines from growing trees. this is all secondary rainforest, so it's still quite relatively young and the trees cant grow if there are tons of vines on them.

in the nighttime we hung out by the fire, helped make dinner (always rice! or sometimes noodles and some sort of veggie. cabbage and green beans.), and went for a nightwalk. this was really cool because the birds were asleep! so we got to get really close to them. we saw this beautiful kingfisher nesting, and its eyes even blink so it really looks like its awake but it doesnt fly away. after a while they poof up all their feathers to keep warm and its really cute:



waking up in the morning to all the different birds is realyl fantastic. its never quite. there are always cicadas, which can be REALYL obnoxiously loud at times, almost sounds like a car alarm, and the hornbills are everywhere and they make a loud squaking noise too - almost like a seagull.




on our trecks during the day we would get really sweaty, often really muddy, and baithing in the river never got you really clean. the water level has dropped significantly, even in just a few days, so the muddy banks are exposed. there was about 3 feet of mud we had to wade through just to get our gear from the boat to shore. so we constructed a bamboo pathway by using our machetes to cut down bamboo and lay it on top of the mud.

heres a picture of me and emelie, a volunteer from sewden (whose computer im using at the moment, and has her pictures from her camera on it) putting the bamboo down. we're all hot and sweaty and muddy


while i'm here with emelies computer, here are some pictures of the other volunteers and our guides and stuff.

this is Mit, on the left, and Bob, a volunteer from holland who has been here for 10 weeks. he leaves on tuesday.



this one is some of the volunteers sitting at the MESCOT headquaters - this is the office where all of the people who work for the eco-tourism cooperative work.





and here we all are again at the tree nursery. we were planting trees and sifting throug the tiny seeds. i think i wrote about that on a previous post.




and here i am carrying wood. it looks like im only carring three pieces of wood, but each one weighs a lot! so its heavy...



so that's all im going to put up now - but im friends with ateh, one of our guides here in batu puteh, and he has lots of pictures up on facebook. i'll tag myself in some of them so you can see them too.

so im sitting in the office of the hotel place we stayed at. we were out on a little island called Mabul which is an hour boat ride (in a small wooden motor boat that goes reaaaally really fast, for an hour) from Semporna. we stayed at this little rickety place which was like a dock, out over the water. it was beautiful sitting there at night looking into the water at all the fish, eels, sea snakes, starfish. amazing how much life is there, and yet so much trash around. the island takes about 30 minutes to walk around and there are some crazy ass resorts here that look like this:



we payed the cheap price, but then went a hung out at the nice resorts. the signs say 'private property, no tresspassing' but the locals who work there dont really care. had a delicious watermelon smoothy, just cold ass watermelon in a glass. aaah so refreshing. we stayed 2 nights because we arrived in the afternoon - spent all day on the bus and on the boat to get here. saw soooooooooo many palm oil plantations. honestly, i'm not surprised the rainforest is gone - its ALL palm oil plantations. it looks like this:






strethcing as far as the eye can see. there were patches of rainforest, and it's much more mountaneous here on the coast. its really beautiful and when we got here we hung around the markets for a bit waiting for our boat to take us out to the island. saw a DRIED fish market which was incredible. octopus, squid, fish, shells, sting rays, coral, shark fin, shark teeth/mouth, everything. hadnt ever seen anything like that:







there was a lot of trash in the water here right by the market. lots of fruit and fresh fish too. we were the only white people, which confused me - but then we got out to the island and realized that that's where all the white people are haha. the boatride out was really cool tho. the coast is beautiful and there's lots of ramshakle huts built on stilts in the middle of the water. literally out to sea there will be reefs and huts built there, people living in water villages with their boats.





they have fishing lines which they tie empty coke bottles to, which help them float (makeshift buoy) so it looks like a sea of trash, but its fishing line. there is lots of trash in the ocean too - sometimes it gets stuck in the rudder and they have to stop the boat to get it out - and they throw it back in the water of course.

the boats here are pretty cool, kind of remind me of thai boats with the pointed tip end and brightly colored. lots of people use these, making a living off of fishing.




on the island we stayed there were these incredibly expensive (like $500 a night or something) resorts with beautifully manicured white beaches, lovely wooden bungalows, and then RIGHT next to it the village where the local people lived which was literally a shit hole.






the houses looked like they were just thrown together with whatever random bits they could find, and probably were made like that...some houses were nicer than others, but the ones right on the shore were surrounded by garbage. the huts on the interior of the island were a bit nicer. the people who lived there too were a lot darker skin. i saw skin whitening soap in the supermarket here too - i remember seeing that in thailand as well.
there was so much trash very where though and we saw the kids actual shit on beach. a lot of the little kids would run around naked and then when they felt the need, just pop a squat on the beach right there. crazy. what a juxtaposition. i felt bad for the way these people lived, but at the same time pick up ur shit right? i mean they dont LIKEe living that way do they? dont they SEE and SMELL the horribleness? if i lived there i'd want to make it nice. but whatever floats ur boat i guess. so odd. i dont get it.


anyway, the place we were staying at was a cheep place right on the water made for divers. everyone staying there was really there just to go diving or snorkling. we all went snorkling and saw loads of fish, sting rays, puffer fish, lobster, nemo's, fan coral and anemonies.





i had never swam in such big schools of fish too. it was juts like in natioal geographics, the big school of fish all in a ball, moving together, and as you get closer they move.



the ocean is such an amazing color too, and so clear. that will never get old. we went on three snorkle boats, where they took us out to snorkling/diving spots. one was Kapalai, which is really just a sandbar at low tide, but there's this big fancy resort built on stilts out there, but its amazing the coral. im surprised theres any of it left (though a lot is quite bleeched and not as vibrant as it probably once was) considering how many boats go out there, and they dont use biodegradable soaps and a lot of the bathwater goes straight into the ocean...really, these are the places where using biodegradable soap matters! not in the US where they treat the water....
anyway, so that was a cool place to snorkle. we also just walked to the other side of the island to another resort place that had a dock you could walk out to and there were tons of schools of fish there hiding under the dock. there was some pretty imressive fan coral




and table coral, which sting rays and fish like to hide under.





there were clown fish in purple anemones - the colors of these fish are truly amazing.






just the combinations, purples and yellows, oranges and blues. ah. so pretty. was great fun to just float along. even just sitting on the dock and looking into the water never got old. we saw a sting ray come up to the surface and fly by. really cool. lots of giant clams, who were not so giant.

so we spent the whole day snorkling, and this morning went on one last boat ride out to a snorkle spot before washing, packing, and heading back on the boat to semporna where we will shortly catch the bus back to our little village in the jungle. this week we're gunna go hammock camping out in the rainforest and spend a night in the eco camp which should be fun!

Today is January 8th, but for me it's a saturday. we finished our last day of moving wood - thank god! we were all pretty tired of that. the only nice thing is that after a days work you feel really accomplished and tired in a good way - i was talking to another of the volunteers (Remco) about how working in an office, you're sedentary and you feel tired after work, but you still need to move around and have to schedule that time in. hopefully, though, the other work won't be any more physically demanding than this is... but generally we like it. it's not like there's anything else to do. one of the days we were planting trees in the nursery, but we had to sift the dry fruit (some sort of fig?) from the tiny seeds. these trees are allowed to grow until about 1-2 feet tall and then planted in the rainforest.

we changed homestays and now i'm in the village, which is really nice because it's more centralized and you don't feel so isolated since you're stuck at the house on the side of the road (literally, ON the side of the road). our host mother is Katijah, who works at the office where we volunteer and she's 40, has 4 daughters, the oldest who is 22 already has 2 babies and lives in the house with her husband. Katijah's youngest daughter is 1yr 6 months, her name is Apop, and she is a very little aunt! it's fun to hang out with the kids, and i've filmed the family at dinner time - the baby was entranced with watching himself on my movie camera. it's not novel, though, because everyone has TV - and a few have nice camera's themselves.

there was also a cultural show one night in the village. this is put on for the tourists by the MESCOT office, as part of tour group packages, but we got to just sit in on it - and participate (they made us dance with them at the end which was fun). They did traditional Malaysian dances from several areas of Sabah, including one guy who did this cool type of karate-type dancing which I'm not sure what they call it. the costumes were really lovely and colorful - very elegant. our homestay mothers gave us some of the traditional clothes to wear. the men wear the Baju Melayu, which is very much like the indian kurta of pants and a long shirt




while the women wear the Baju Kurung which is a long skirt with a long dress on top.


the music is really cool too, played on that kulintangan

it sounds like a zylophone but a deeper, rounder sound. they also have variations made of a type of soft wood, as well as big metal base gongs that they hit to keep tempo along with a drum.

yesterday after working in the eco camp we went for a little river cruise down one of the tributaries of the kinabatangan and saw a lot of monkies and hornbills. we also got to see the sunset from the river on the way back which was absolutely gorgeous. the air was cool, the breeze from the moving boat. so nice.

tomorrow is our weekend day off, so we're all going to a little island off the coast of the small city of Semporna, in the south of Sabah Malaysia - about 3 hour bus ride from where we are in the Kinabatangan.










we're gunna rest, go snorkeling, eat food blah blah blah.

hello everyone!!! so i'm in my village now, which really comprises three seperate villages into one area which is the batu puteh community, batu puteh being the main village. they started MESCOT in 1997 which stands for Model Ecological Sustainable Community Tourism. They wanted to have tourists come visit the rainforest in a way where they can learn about the environmetn and culture without it being like a huge tourist thing where they are more tourists than locals and huge resorts (like in phuket, thailand). It's amazing how on top of things they are, trying to preserve the environment with their eco lodge, which we are expanding on in this project, and keeping it small with us volunteers staying in homestays. every 4 days we change homestay, which is kind of cool because you get to know a lot of different villagers as well as see how different people live - there are variations in how well off they are. my first homestay i am with Remco, a guy from the netherlands (we each have our own room, with a bed and mosquito net). there are about 15 children, as its a father with his daughter, her husband and their children. but always people coming and going. the food is great, rice with either fish, meat, or some veggies in delicious sauce. we've have papaya cooked in coconut milk, or papaya flowers stir fried in coconut oil, and for breakfast they like to have fried things - like banana mixed with flower and shaped into little balls and fried (like donut holes).

the homestays can look like anything from this:




to this:




right now we're working on moving all this wood from the main area, onto a boat, then down the river a bit, then off the boat and into the rainforest a ways. the eco camp, which is in the same area, was all built this way - by man power moving all this incredibly heavy wood (because it's a hardwood, so each board is really heavy). I'm getting really strong haha! it's also been raining...which keeps us cool but we get wet. i smell very bad. every week, which is tuesday-saturday we work on something, like moving this wood to eventually build a walkway as part of the eco camp, or clearing invasive species, or planting trees. the point of planting trees is that the area around here is mostly secondary forest, so it had originally been cleared and is now growing back, but there are gaps where there are no trees and just wild grass growing so the tree seedlings cant get enough light to grow - so they have a tree nursery here and then they plan them in these gaps so that the orangutans and other animals can move through the forest.

we have two guids who come with us and the other group of volunteers are great. two guys from the netherlands, another girl from the US, a girl from sweden, and a guy here for just two weeks from canana (but he lives in paris). they're all about 20's and we have fun joking around with the villagers. they are river people, sunai, but we are not allowed to swim in the river because of strong current and crocodiles. we've seen a lot of monkeys, big lizards, spiders, massive crickets (in my room....yay) and butterflies and otters in the lake near the eco camp - which looks likes this:



its nice to finally meet up with the other volunteers - we all get along and now we're figuring out what to do on our weekends off (which is our sunday, monday). maybe go to the ocean.

the village is situated right next to the only road. so we're in the middle of nowhere, but unfortunately right next to a road. so its nice to go down the river to work because then we are really in the rainforest away from the road. the office where we meet every morning and afternoon before and after work has internet which, if no one needs the computer, we are allowed to use. so i snatch some time to write a bit. will write more later.

MALAYSIAN BORNEO!!!



Here is my first post in Borneo. It is January 1st here, and I've been here three days now. Tomorrow i leave to start the project with GVI (Global Vision International - the same organization I went to vanuatu with). This is a 5 week conservation project geared towards eco-tourism and flora/fauna surveys. I'll be living with a family in a homestay in the Batu Puteh community.

Here is a map of the area:



Borneo is a big island, the northern half owned my Malaysia, the southern half by Indoneisia, and small part owned by Brunei. There are two Malaysian states on Borneo Malaysia - one is Sarawak and the one where I am is called Sabah.
Here is a map of the state of Sabah:


The closest city to where I will be (which is the Kinabatangan river) is called Sandakan. I am currently staying at a hotel in the village/area called Sepilok.



I'm using images from websites because i dont have my computer so i cant upload pictures i've taken. but this way you get a visual of where i am.


Here are some snippets of stuff I've done so far.

On the flight from Rome to Kuala Lumpur (the capital of Malaysia) I was sitting next to an older guy who lives in the US but grew up on a palm oil plantation on peninsular Malaysia. He was telling me how he really loved growing up out in the wild like that.We were talking about the differences between American and Malaysia and what I was interested in looking at there (the culture and conservation) - and he knew a lot about the bigger economic and political picture which was interesting. He was first generation indian, like quite a few people here.

On the flight from KL to Sandakan (the small city closest to where I'll be), which was a small local domestic flight and i was the only white person, I met these 24 yr old muslim Malay school teachers. They spoke pretty good english (as it seems most Malay people do) but had never talked to a european before, though they had seen them, because they were shy. so they were very eager and interested to talk to me and me likewise! We talked about american movies and TV (they watch spongebob squarepants, and national geographics, bbc) and about living in Malaysia. and i said i was here to look at the animals etc and they thought that was cool - referencing national geographics haha.

I'm definitely getting pangs of familiarity from when I was in Vanuatu. Same feel and smell of humid heat, getting used to the feeling of flies buzzing around me again - tho the rainy season here makes it considerably cooler with all the rain.

The people remind me a lot of thai people, but with more chinese and indian influences. the area around the hotel is beautiful surrounded by the green jungle. Im about 20 minutes outside Sandakan city and driving out of the airport and the surrounding area it is much more developed, industrial that i may have thought, but oddly spread out. Random housing projects and buildings in out of the way places it seems. Vanuatu was not so developed - or so spread out i guess. and people drive on the left side.


My first full day I went to the Rainforest Discovery Center (RDC) which was a 2 minute walk from the hotel im at.


there was a little museum with waaaay too much information to take in, but i read some cool stuff about the rainforest and different spices grown like pepper, cumin, coffee etc. there were marked trails into the rainforest which i walked on and they had a canopy walkway.




it's about as tall as a 5 story building or something, so you could walk at the level of the tops of the trees.
there were these two old japanese guys with MASSIVE camera lenses (like 2 feet long, no joke) and they came all the way from japan JUST to take a picture of this realy rare bird only in borneo.
here is an example of the type of equipment they had, this picture is taken at the Spilok Rainforest Discovery center, but is not the japanese guys, just an example:


They were after a bird called the borneo bristlehead. they had this binocular thing that looked like a telescope and i got to see the bird through it, apparently it's really rare and hard to see. the japanese guys had hired 2 malays from Kuala Lumpur who were trained to spot wildlife - it was really hard to see birds in the trees because theres so much texture and color variation in light/dark so luckily i got to see it!



did i mention how AMAZING the rainforest is???


it's imposbile to translate what its like through film - it just doesnt capture how huuuuuge and tall the trees are, but they're so skinny!! and dense underbrush, i know the rainforest is divided into the canopy, mid and lower levels but you REALLY understand it when you see it. there's also little lizards running around everywhere, and the smell of the forest permeates everything. such intense greens too. there was a garden at the RDC which had all the different species of borneo in one place like pepper plants, coffee plats, FIG TREE! (didnt know thats where fig newtons come from!), and tons of different types of pitcher plants and orchids. i always imagined the rainforest would smell wonderful, refreshing and full of plants but its really not the most amazing smell, sort of decomposing, humid smell. sometimes you get a nice wiff of a flower and up on the canopy walk there was a bit of a breeze which was pleasant.

later i went to the orangutan sanctuary, had lunch there and then two indian-looking guys began talking to me. they live in kuala lumpur and their parents emigrated from india and they grew up on palm oil plantations. they were in their late 20s and work in the city now and were just on vacation. they were cousins, and sikh. we were talking about malaysia, america, american movies and music - theres so much of it over here! and we know nothing about malaysia in america. they speak very good english too - even when growing up on palm oil plantations.we didnt see the orangutans then because everyday it starts POURING at 2 oclock. the mornings and evens are quite cool - even cooler than vanuatu, and then it gets really hot at 12 and pours at 2.

so i was talking with these guys and they invited me to eat sea food with them in Sandakan, the city nearest us. at first i was afraid - these are two older men, what do they want with me etc. but i had been talking with them for maybe 2 hours now and they seemed trustworthy so i took a risk and was really pleased i did. they were really good guys and it was exciting talking to people who actually lived there and had an informed perspective on the country. we went to this seafood place where a wedding was going on, but we sat on the deck outside overlooking the ocean and i was the only white person there haha. but they knew what to order, could speak the language, and had delicious fish, shrimp, veggies in ginger sauces and such wonderful condiments. malaysia is supposed to be the best country in the world for food - people come here specifically to eat. sounds like my kind of place! i hadnt been able to eat before tho because i feel nauseous - maybe from the heat or the malaria pills. so i've had to force myself to eat and now i feel better, more like eating.


Friday I went to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center again, in the morning, and ended up spending the day there.



They have two feedings a day, one in the morning at 10, and another at 3. It all started because locals would find abandoned baby orangutans in the palm oil plantations because their mothers had been killed during deforestation or abandoned because the mothers could not find enough food to feed them - usually orangutans look after their young for the first 8-9 years, so it is incredibly unusual that babies will be left alone. So the rehabilitation center was started in response to all these babies, which are taken care of and fed, and eventually gradually reintroduced into the wild.


There are three feeding platforms, only one of which tourists can see and the others are deeper in the forest. I walked to the place from my hotel and on the way saw a lot of tour buses going by. The day before when I was there there were not so many people, so when I got there that morning I was surprised to see about 150 tourists.


You pay to get in and to take ur camera. I saw a mother with her baby, some juvenile males, and the one big adult dominant male who came very close to me because he was climbing down a tree and came into the railing of the wood walkway/platform.



I caught that on film, but it was an intense moment because i wanted to experience being this close to a 'wild' animal but also to get a good shot, so relating to the experience through a camera was definitely modifying the experience. I didnt' like how having to film it i couldn't participate, i felt removed from what was going on. I did spend time simply observing the orangutans and not filming, but that moment really highlighted the issue of filming vs experiencing.



I also interviewed some people on what they thought of the place. One lady from Australia used to work there, as part of an NGO, and explained how the program got started etc. She was very professional, not revealing what she privately thought about it's effectiveness. Other people really liked it, though they were aware maybe having so many people around orangutans who were trying to get back into the wild was not the best thing - but at the same time the tourists bring money which help support the project.

These two french people who i met really did not like it though. I talked to and hung out with them after the first feeding and looked at the small informational exhibit (which none of the tourists on their tour groups stopped to look at). i felt like we connected on a level about what it means to travel. the guy, 23, and his gf, 21, were just in the Philipines and were the only white people for miles. They were staying with local people and this was the first very touristic place they had encountered since being in Borneoand were really disappointed/dissolutioned by it. They felt like it was "give me the money, heres the show, now leave." I think they were a different kind of 'traveler' though.

we stuck around and went to the second feeding at 3, and this time there were much less people, more local malaysians, and it felt a little less like a circus show. it was fun to meet the frenchies but their english and my french were not so good, and talking philosophically about anthropology, travel, culture was difficult.

I'm still not sure how i feel about this in terms of conservation effectiveness. but thats what i'm here to explore.

I'm thinking a lot about what it means to travel as well, and talking to the french guy was interesting because he had spent a few months living in a rural village in china. He was there to explore and learn about their traditional music. He was alone then, and said that the experience was much more intense (he then met up with his girlfriend to be in the Philipines). Being alone also forces you to talk to and meet more people and you are more focused on being there and not distracted by the person or tour group you are with (which, i think, can also create an 'us-them' mentality), but having someone who can speak your language and share your experience with is priceless - i feel like im missing out on that a bit at the moment.
I am anxious to meet up with the other GVI volunteers and go to the village.

here are pictures of what the Kinabatangan river looks like - though currently i have not been there yet!











I hope you enjoyed this! I'm not sure when I will next be able to post once I start the GVI program.

Selat tahun baru
(pronounce that sala-maht ta-hoon bah-roo - means happy new year in malaysian)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

location: Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu