It is now even easier to make a difference to BRINCC and help fund our expedition. Donations of any size will help buy equipment, fund an Indonesian student to join us, pay for local staff wages or pay for our food for a day!
Every penny counts so please visit www.giving.ox.ac.uk/wildcru where you can make a tax-exempt or gift aid donation through the University of Oxford. Just click on the *BRINCC* option in the list provided, and the rest remains the same! Remember to also send an email to brinccborneo@googlemail.com saying it is towards "Danicas personal fundrasing goal"
Thank you again for all your support!!
Kinabatangan River, Borneo - July 2009
21 September 2010
11 September 2010
There is something unnerving about fireworks going off right next to the runway during take-off
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| Slow loris foot which I tried describing last posting. Notice the cute little finger nails and then the mean claw! (Photo: Rich) |
A couple days after I arrived at the centre, there was a large number of primates that were brought in – 16 lorises and 15 long tail macaques. The macaques went into quarantine, where they will stay until all the tests come back (for diseases and such). So in the mean time, they are grouped 1-3 individuals to an enclosure. So we made up some bamboo tubes with holes and put their food in there so they had to work a bit more to get the fruit out. It wasn’t much, but it was better and more than what they had before.
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| 2 of the permanent resident pig tails (Photo: Rich) |
Had to go into Bogor, the nearest big city, to print off my poster for the conference in Kyoto, which ended up being a bit of a wild goose chase. Due to Ramadan and Idul Fitri just a day away (those being the answer to basically every question of “why?” this month – why are there fireworks at 3am? Why is their music coming from the mosque allllll night long? Why is there nothing open during the day and why does everywhere close so early at night? Why is there NO FOOD!). Anyways, why was the print shop closed until mid-october? That’s right. There were 2 people sitting outside of it who told us all about it being closed and then directed us to a different one. But as we pulled away, we noticed a sign for another print shop – so we popped in there, but they have to send their printing to Jakarta, so that wouldn’t work. But he gave us the name of another, and called to make sure they were open. So we decided to go to that one instead. Took us awhile to find it (Bogor is a crazy city), and by the time we found it, the rain started. And turns out this print shop didn’t even print posters! Agh! We tried waiting a bit for the rain to die down, and when it wasn’t, we just decided to go to the print shop that this last shop told us about. Again, took us awhile to find, and when we got to the area it was supposed to be, nothing was open. So after about 3 hours of going from print shop to print shop, we ended up at the one that the people at the first shop told us about and it was open and they could do it in about 30 minutes! Oh boy. So we treated ourselves to some yummy pizza – we deserved it! But the rain didn’t stop, and was just getting heavier. Since we were going by motor bike we decided to station ourselves in a coffee shop with internet until it slowed or stopped. But by 2130h, the shop had closed so we decided to make a break for it. Needless to say, we were soaking wet and I have been sneezing ever since, even as I type this.
Ran into friends at the airport in Jakarta which made the hours waiting for my flight much more enjoyable. It’s always nice to see a familiar face or three! Unfortunately, Marie and Susan couldn’t get on the same flight as me, but we are on the same flight to Osaka together (from Kuala Lumpur) and then roomies for the next week so I’m looking forward to that!
Just a quick note about the flight – regarding the title of this posting – I know it is celebration time in Indonesia, but it really is unnerving when there are fireworks going off right next to us as we were taking off! However, by the time we were over the height of the fireworks, it was very pretty – all over the city there were fireworks – quite a sight!
Beng-Beng time with Malaysia Airlines!! Mmmm!
Next stop – Japan. I am so excited – I never ever thought I would be going to Japan, so it was kind of surreal when Rich left yesterday (we have different flights going there), that I could say “see you in Kyoto!” I am especially looking forward to seeing all my monkey people I haven’t seen in ages from my undergrad at the UofC and also to see Chrissy Campbell, my howler monkey supervisor from Panama! Plus all the proboscis monkey people there it will be fabulous! I just have to think about what I want to talk to them about so this quite expensive 10 day trip ends up being worth it! I have no idea what to expect, which seems to be the theme of my summer, and I like it!
Sampai jumpa nanti Indonesia! See you next year!
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| Me and Jojo - the little orphaned slow loris. Cute little guy, but remember, not a pet! As soon as he can eat solid food on his own, he'll be out of our hair (literally) |
03 September 2010
Loris? Lorisi? Lorises!
Guess it is about time for an update from Java! I have been here for a week already and it has been flying by. I can’t believe it is only one more week left until I head north to the land of cherry blossoms!
I am currently about 40 minutes away from the “City of Rain” – Bogor, in a small village (or near…not quite sure) called Ciapus. So needless to say, hujan lagi, more rain.
Flying back to Jakarta went seamlessly, and Richard was there at the airport to greet me and it was so wonderful that he had come in a car so we didn’t have to take public transportation back. Especially because the just over 2 hour journey ended up taking us about 4 because of heavy traffic. So we didn’t get to his site until after dark.
I was going to go up the mountain (Gunung Selak) with Richard the following night, as they have slow lorises that they are in the process of releasing. But true to the name of the area, it rained. And rained and rained. However, I am finding the rain here much more enjoyable than in La bundo bundo. Maybe that is because I don’t actually have to go out in the rain if I don’t want, but I think it is also because of the amazing lightning and thunderstorms that come along with the rain. That first night the thunder was so loud that all the dogs at the guest house except one (so 6!) ran into rich’s room and were hiding under the bed and desk and us.
The following night we made it out, after just a short storm. Basically the way it is set up is that there is a cage that has been put up in the forest on the mountain that just surrounds a bunch of trees and vegetation. They put the lorises that they think are suitable to be released in this enclosure (called the habituation cage), as kind of a half way house between their captive life and being back in the wild. They leave them there for however long until the lorises look as though they are ready to be released (not stressed, foraging and moving around naturally). This time, luckily for me, the cage was set up only about 30 minutes up the mountain, instead of the 4-5 hour walk it has been in the past! We got up to the camp around 9pm, had a cup of ABC Mocca (yum!) and then headed for the cage, which was another 10-15 minutes up. We stayed up there from 11pm to about 530am (although I have to admit I brought my sleeping bag and slept the last 2 hours next to the cage!). It was a full moon that night so it was so bright in the forest (well, relatively), but it was cold!
After leaving the mountain in the morning, I went almost straight out to Jakarta, to help give a presentation at an International School. We had been invited by a Grade 1 class who have had International Animal Rescue (IAR) come give talks in the past. They joined classes, so there were 40 grade 1 students which were full of comments! I did a talk on what Animal Welfare is and Animal Trade. They actually seemed quite interested in it, but I think it was mostly the cute pictures of cats and dogs and lorises that got them. Indri, who was the girl I was helping, who is the education officer at IAR, then showed a few videos of slow lorises and also on taking care of your pets at home (dogs and cats). The kids had so many questions and many more comments, and turns out that a couple of them had monkeys as pets before (one got rid of it because it peed on his head), or fathers had bought live croc’s (which I don’t really get). So basically we were just trying to get in their heads why they shouldn’t buy wild animals as pets and what to do if they saw one at the market.
I also helped out one afternoon when the vet and keepers were giving medication to all the lorises at the center (there are about 100 now – 16 new ones just arrived this last week). Rich is needing pictures of all the lorises to look at their facial patterns (and I don’t know what else), so I was his scribe for the photos he was taking. Not a very big help I was, but it gave me a chance to get really close looks of this funny little critters. Lorises are such strange animals, much different than I was expecting. They have tiny little finger nails on all fingers except one, on their feet, where there is a large claw. When they are a little scared, they clasp their hands together and put them over their face, which I thought looked like hiding from fear, but it might actually be (I’ve been told) that they are getting their poison ready – lorises are poisonous! I love it! They have little glands around their inner upper arms that they lick and when it mixes with their saliva it become a toxin. They hiss and strike like snakes, and they have this black stripe on their back that makes them look like snakes when they are moving. I also had a loris grab onto my finger with his foot – and then his other, and ended up hanging onto my arm with his feet while the loris keeper was trying to get it back into where it was supposed to be going – and what a grip it has!!!! Their hands seem to be structured differently that makes them serious grabbers.
Since then I have mostly been helping Richard with his data – since he is out on the mountain (especially now that they release one of the lorises that was up in the cage when I went out) from about 6pm until 5am, he needs to sleep during the day. He is giving a talk at the big conference in Kyoto in 2 weeks, so I am helping as much as I can with making sure he has all his stuff ready for that. I have also been working on my poster presentation for Kyoto and next step is finally get the article I have been trying to write for the last 6 months out and off my plate! And I’m going to get out and help with the enrichment for the macaques and hopefully lorises for the last week!
I am currently about 40 minutes away from the “City of Rain” – Bogor, in a small village (or near…not quite sure) called Ciapus. So needless to say, hujan lagi, more rain.
Flying back to Jakarta went seamlessly, and Richard was there at the airport to greet me and it was so wonderful that he had come in a car so we didn’t have to take public transportation back. Especially because the just over 2 hour journey ended up taking us about 4 because of heavy traffic. So we didn’t get to his site until after dark.
I was going to go up the mountain (Gunung Selak) with Richard the following night, as they have slow lorises that they are in the process of releasing. But true to the name of the area, it rained. And rained and rained. However, I am finding the rain here much more enjoyable than in La bundo bundo. Maybe that is because I don’t actually have to go out in the rain if I don’t want, but I think it is also because of the amazing lightning and thunderstorms that come along with the rain. That first night the thunder was so loud that all the dogs at the guest house except one (so 6!) ran into rich’s room and were hiding under the bed and desk and us.
The following night we made it out, after just a short storm. Basically the way it is set up is that there is a cage that has been put up in the forest on the mountain that just surrounds a bunch of trees and vegetation. They put the lorises that they think are suitable to be released in this enclosure (called the habituation cage), as kind of a half way house between their captive life and being back in the wild. They leave them there for however long until the lorises look as though they are ready to be released (not stressed, foraging and moving around naturally). This time, luckily for me, the cage was set up only about 30 minutes up the mountain, instead of the 4-5 hour walk it has been in the past! We got up to the camp around 9pm, had a cup of ABC Mocca (yum!) and then headed for the cage, which was another 10-15 minutes up. We stayed up there from 11pm to about 530am (although I have to admit I brought my sleeping bag and slept the last 2 hours next to the cage!). It was a full moon that night so it was so bright in the forest (well, relatively), but it was cold!
After leaving the mountain in the morning, I went almost straight out to Jakarta, to help give a presentation at an International School. We had been invited by a Grade 1 class who have had International Animal Rescue (IAR) come give talks in the past. They joined classes, so there were 40 grade 1 students which were full of comments! I did a talk on what Animal Welfare is and Animal Trade. They actually seemed quite interested in it, but I think it was mostly the cute pictures of cats and dogs and lorises that got them. Indri, who was the girl I was helping, who is the education officer at IAR, then showed a few videos of slow lorises and also on taking care of your pets at home (dogs and cats). The kids had so many questions and many more comments, and turns out that a couple of them had monkeys as pets before (one got rid of it because it peed on his head), or fathers had bought live croc’s (which I don’t really get). So basically we were just trying to get in their heads why they shouldn’t buy wild animals as pets and what to do if they saw one at the market.
I also helped out one afternoon when the vet and keepers were giving medication to all the lorises at the center (there are about 100 now – 16 new ones just arrived this last week). Rich is needing pictures of all the lorises to look at their facial patterns (and I don’t know what else), so I was his scribe for the photos he was taking. Not a very big help I was, but it gave me a chance to get really close looks of this funny little critters. Lorises are such strange animals, much different than I was expecting. They have tiny little finger nails on all fingers except one, on their feet, where there is a large claw. When they are a little scared, they clasp their hands together and put them over their face, which I thought looked like hiding from fear, but it might actually be (I’ve been told) that they are getting their poison ready – lorises are poisonous! I love it! They have little glands around their inner upper arms that they lick and when it mixes with their saliva it become a toxin. They hiss and strike like snakes, and they have this black stripe on their back that makes them look like snakes when they are moving. I also had a loris grab onto my finger with his foot – and then his other, and ended up hanging onto my arm with his feet while the loris keeper was trying to get it back into where it was supposed to be going – and what a grip it has!!!! Their hands seem to be structured differently that makes them serious grabbers.
Since then I have mostly been helping Richard with his data – since he is out on the mountain (especially now that they release one of the lorises that was up in the cage when I went out) from about 6pm until 5am, he needs to sleep during the day. He is giving a talk at the big conference in Kyoto in 2 weeks, so I am helping as much as I can with making sure he has all his stuff ready for that. I have also been working on my poster presentation for Kyoto and next step is finally get the article I have been trying to write for the last 6 months out and off my plate! And I’m going to get out and help with the enrichment for the macaques and hopefully lorises for the last week!
30 August 2010
Asking for your support :)
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In June 2011, we (BRINCC (Busang River Initiative for Nature Conservation and Communities)) will be heading into the northernmost hills of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, Borneo. For 4 months, we will travel along the Busang River, surveying primates, small mammals, birds, butterflies and moths, reptiles and amphibians, as well as conducting work with communities in surrounding villages. I am the only Canadian among the 15 scientists on this trip and will be responsible for GIS and GPS mapping of the area.
We want to make the ecological impact of this expedition as small as possible, which means state-of-the-art equipment and minimal use of motorized boats. All the equipment will be used by local people after the expedition to continue monitoring biodiversity in the area or donated to conservation projects in Indonesian Borneo.
In order for this to be possible, our fund raising efforts will have three approaches:
1) each non-Indonesian expedition member will fund-raise for their own expenses,
2) applying for grants and
3) requesting corporate sponsorship.
Each team member is aiming to raise £1000 (about $1500 Canadian dollars) towards the expedition, and I am asking you to consider helping me reach this goal.
As much as I love being in Borneo, there is a greater purpose to what we will be doing as our knowledge will be shared by producing management plans identifying threats to the ecosystem and the local communities, DVD documentaries, blog entries and press releases, and training Indonesian students and conservation workers, to name a few. We will also be getting schools in Canada, Europe and the UK involved.
Borneo may seem far away to us, but many of the decisions we make as consumers has a definite impact on Borneo’s economy and environment. If we know more we may be able to make a positive difference. Borneo is a major producer of palm oil, a product which is used in many products we buy every day, such as a vegetable oil in foods (margarine, bread, chips, cereal, cookies, chocolate, chewing gum, etc.), and other products such as cosmetics, soaps, shampoos, and toothpaste (it makes these products lather!). The increase in demand cannot be met with the current number of oil palm plantations, but only by increasing the total area of plantations. This would require existing forests to be cut down, as land used for other plantations (rubber, cocoa) has become limited and expensive for oil palm conversions. A goal of this expedition is to identify this area as an important area of biodiversity and therefore protect it (and all of its wildlife, including proboscis monkeys!) from the encroaching oil palm plantations that are spreading all over the island.
Whether you are donating to BRINCC through the Canadian, American or UK office of the University of Oxford, you can receive a charitable donation receipt.
For all donations please send an email to BRINCC brinccborneo@googlemail.com stating the amount you have donated and that it is a donation towards "Danica's personal fundraising goal", so your donation can be directed properly.
Here is how you can support me:
1)Donations from UK or Canada please click here
Select “Emergency Fund” and “Donate by Credit Card”
Please complete all the fields and in the field “Subject Studied” please write “DONATE TO BRINCC WILDCRU”
Select “I would like the University of Oxford Development Trust Fund to reclaim tax on this donation and all donations I make on or after the date of this declaration until I notify you otherwise. I am a UK tax-payer and pay an amount of income tax and/or capital gains tax at least equal to the tax to be reclaimed on my donations.”
OR
Select “I am a Canadian tax payer and I would like the University to issue me with a tax receipt.”
2)Donations from USA please click here
In the section marked “It is my preference that” please state “other” and put BRINCC Expedition, WildCRU” in the space
3)Donate by post or from any other country
Please send a cheque to payable to “BRINCC Expedition” to the following address. Please indicate it is a donation towards Danica’s personal fundraising goal.
BRINCC Expedition
C/O Dr Susan Cheyne
Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU), Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, The Recanati-Kaplan Centre, Tubney House, Abingdon Road, Tubney, Oxon, OX13 5QL, UK
MANY THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR GENEROSITY IN SUPPORTING MYSELF AND BRINCC :-)
Green The Film
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| From Green The Film |
Please realise that so much of what we do in the comforts of our supermarkets and shops is directly influencing the forests of (in particular) Indonesia and Malaysia, the largest exporters of oil palm in the world.
The photo I've added is just a screen shot from the credits of the film - have a good look through the list and you will undoubtedly recognise many names.
And please watch the film - it is free to watch on the website http://www.greenthefilm.com/
24 August 2010
KL with a bang!
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur (Peninsular Malaysia) with a close call/hiccup with my luggage. The bags weren’t coming out so I decided to use the bathroom while I waited – I wasn’t in there for long, but by the time I came out, everyone had gone and all the bags had gone as well…except one. But not mine. But it was the exact same bag that I have and had a Canadian flag on it as well! So I sat and waited and the air asia staff looked up the details and took off, then arrived minutes later with a couple of frantic looking Canadians. They were just about to put my bag through the security scan as they were going on a connecting flight when they realised the bag they had was FILTHY and a slightly different Canadian flag. So luckily that worked out, but I was sorted of looking forward to shopping if my bag wasn’t returned! Lol!
I arrived at Carrie and Katie’s place after the scariest cab ride of my life and after getting slightly lost! They are just outside of KL, in a place called Petaling Jaya or PJ. I arrived just in time for pedicures with the girls, which was seriously in need. Spent Saturday catching up and eating yummy Katie food (eggplant wrapped around ricotta, mm!)!
Sunday we went off to FRIM (Forest Research Institute Malaysia) for a little nature walk. It is a really pretty walk up to and from the canopy and back down. The canopy walk itself is about 200ft above ground and is 150m long. There are some great views from up there, and get a nice glimpse of the city from a distance. After the canopy walk we went to go find a banana leaf meal and in another terrifying taxi ride, we actually did get into a car accident! Our taxi driver rear ended another car which ended up hitting the car in front of it. No one was hurt thankfully, but the taxi itself was MESSED up. So the lesson of the trip: if you want a cheap taxi ride, an accident will do the trick (not too serious though!).
After eating, we were all ready to just sit and relax after the whole taxi incident, so we went back to their place and went for a swim and laid in the sun for a bit. Once the sun went into hiding, Carrie, Liv and I went off to the Central Market in KL for a bit of shopping and searching for hippie pants (North American pants, not UK pants). The market reminded me of the stalls in Camden Market in London – lots of crafts and fabrics and jewellery! After perusing as many shops as we could, we headed over to the old Chinatown, there they have a huge street market, with knock-off everything you could think of.
Katie, Carrie and Liv had to go to work Monday so I wandered around the city on my own, which consisted of getting lost with almost every turn I took. But I did manage to find everything I was searching for, just taking the longest route there probably is. Besides going back to the markets we went to the night before so I could buy the things I should’ve bought then, I went and saw Merdeka Square, which is their independence square, where on 31 Aug in 1957 (I think that is the year), the union jack was taken down and the Malaysian flag was raised for the first time. They have their independence day celebrations in the square every year. I also went into a beautiful hindu temple, the oldest in KL. I was speaking to a Hindu man who lives in KL before I went in, who asked me where I am from and when I said Canada, I was expecting him to say “oh Toronto” like everyone does, but he said “oh Edmonton!” hahaha. Random! Anyways, this temple was amazing, and what was really cool was that there was some sort of ceremony or service going on when I got there so it was full of people and wonderful sounds (drums and horns) and wonderful smells (incense, fires). The men were lined up wearing towels around their waists, some with white paint on their bodies, and taking some sort of plant up these stairs into a shrine (which looked like a steam room to me). But once they went up the stairs you couldn’t see them anymore. The temple had just been re-done (is redone every 12 years for a special occasion), so the colours were so vibrant in there.
After the temple, I went over to the Petronas towers – the tallest twin towers in the world. And true to my style, I spent the first 30 minutes there accidently taking pictures of the wrong buildings. Lol! When I got out of the train station, there were two large buildings next to each other, but I didn’t understand why they are called the twin towers if they didn’t look anything alike and they didn’t seem to connect the way I had been told they did. I wasn’t too impressed, but they were tall and so I figured that was it. Ended up being the KLCC (the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre), and was a shopping mall inside. One of the buildings I was looking at was one of the twin towers, but the other was hiding behind it. So after I walked all over the mall on all floors trying to find a way up to the view point, I gave up and was about to head back when I saw a bunch of people around the bend, so I followed the crowd and lo and behold some actual twin towers!! However, since it had taken me so long to get there, the viewing platform was closed so I didn’t get to go up and have a look over the city which was too bad. I decided that I would call it quits after that and headed back to Katie and Carries for dinner. We went out for Sushi then back at theirs I made them each one of the bracelets I learned to make in Sulawesi.
KL is an interesting place - totally different than any of the cities that I have been to in Indonesia or Malaysia so far. At times I forgot I was in KL, as it really reminded me a lot of Vancouver. I think mostly because there are people from all over living there besides just Malaysians, whereas in the other cities it has been mainly only Malaysians or Indonesians. It didn’t feel as foreign as somewhere with a 15hour time difference from Vancouver should feel. Also, you could easily and comfortably get by in the city without having to speak bahasa Malaysia because everyone speaks English (although I am sure you wouldn’t get messed around with as much if you could speak Malaysian).
It was a short but sweet trip. It was so nice to catch up with them again and see what their new life is like over in Malaysia! Now it is time to see what Rich's life has been like the last 9 months! Back to Indonesia...
I arrived at Carrie and Katie’s place after the scariest cab ride of my life and after getting slightly lost! They are just outside of KL, in a place called Petaling Jaya or PJ. I arrived just in time for pedicures with the girls, which was seriously in need. Spent Saturday catching up and eating yummy Katie food (eggplant wrapped around ricotta, mm!)!
Sunday we went off to FRIM (Forest Research Institute Malaysia) for a little nature walk. It is a really pretty walk up to and from the canopy and back down. The canopy walk itself is about 200ft above ground and is 150m long. There are some great views from up there, and get a nice glimpse of the city from a distance. After the canopy walk we went to go find a banana leaf meal and in another terrifying taxi ride, we actually did get into a car accident! Our taxi driver rear ended another car which ended up hitting the car in front of it. No one was hurt thankfully, but the taxi itself was MESSED up. So the lesson of the trip: if you want a cheap taxi ride, an accident will do the trick (not too serious though!).
After eating, we were all ready to just sit and relax after the whole taxi incident, so we went back to their place and went for a swim and laid in the sun for a bit. Once the sun went into hiding, Carrie, Liv and I went off to the Central Market in KL for a bit of shopping and searching for hippie pants (North American pants, not UK pants). The market reminded me of the stalls in Camden Market in London – lots of crafts and fabrics and jewellery! After perusing as many shops as we could, we headed over to the old Chinatown, there they have a huge street market, with knock-off everything you could think of.
Katie, Carrie and Liv had to go to work Monday so I wandered around the city on my own, which consisted of getting lost with almost every turn I took. But I did manage to find everything I was searching for, just taking the longest route there probably is. Besides going back to the markets we went to the night before so I could buy the things I should’ve bought then, I went and saw Merdeka Square, which is their independence square, where on 31 Aug in 1957 (I think that is the year), the union jack was taken down and the Malaysian flag was raised for the first time. They have their independence day celebrations in the square every year. I also went into a beautiful hindu temple, the oldest in KL. I was speaking to a Hindu man who lives in KL before I went in, who asked me where I am from and when I said Canada, I was expecting him to say “oh Toronto” like everyone does, but he said “oh Edmonton!” hahaha. Random! Anyways, this temple was amazing, and what was really cool was that there was some sort of ceremony or service going on when I got there so it was full of people and wonderful sounds (drums and horns) and wonderful smells (incense, fires). The men were lined up wearing towels around their waists, some with white paint on their bodies, and taking some sort of plant up these stairs into a shrine (which looked like a steam room to me). But once they went up the stairs you couldn’t see them anymore. The temple had just been re-done (is redone every 12 years for a special occasion), so the colours were so vibrant in there.
After the temple, I went over to the Petronas towers – the tallest twin towers in the world. And true to my style, I spent the first 30 minutes there accidently taking pictures of the wrong buildings. Lol! When I got out of the train station, there were two large buildings next to each other, but I didn’t understand why they are called the twin towers if they didn’t look anything alike and they didn’t seem to connect the way I had been told they did. I wasn’t too impressed, but they were tall and so I figured that was it. Ended up being the KLCC (the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre), and was a shopping mall inside. One of the buildings I was looking at was one of the twin towers, but the other was hiding behind it. So after I walked all over the mall on all floors trying to find a way up to the view point, I gave up and was about to head back when I saw a bunch of people around the bend, so I followed the crowd and lo and behold some actual twin towers!! However, since it had taken me so long to get there, the viewing platform was closed so I didn’t get to go up and have a look over the city which was too bad. I decided that I would call it quits after that and headed back to Katie and Carries for dinner. We went out for Sushi then back at theirs I made them each one of the bracelets I learned to make in Sulawesi.
KL is an interesting place - totally different than any of the cities that I have been to in Indonesia or Malaysia so far. At times I forgot I was in KL, as it really reminded me a lot of Vancouver. I think mostly because there are people from all over living there besides just Malaysians, whereas in the other cities it has been mainly only Malaysians or Indonesians. It didn’t feel as foreign as somewhere with a 15hour time difference from Vancouver should feel. Also, you could easily and comfortably get by in the city without having to speak bahasa Malaysia because everyone speaks English (although I am sure you wouldn’t get messed around with as much if you could speak Malaysian).
It was a short but sweet trip. It was so nice to catch up with them again and see what their new life is like over in Malaysia! Now it is time to see what Rich's life has been like the last 9 months! Back to Indonesia...
23 August 2010
The End of My Borneo Adventure….For Now
Two weeks on this river fly by like nothing at all. It is so easy for the days to disappear when it involves the lovely boat and funny monkeys and scary crocs! I feel like this isn’t my last time on the Kinabatangan because it feels more at home to me than most places have. I’ll just have to wait and see when the next time is but I am already looking forward to it!
The last couple days I spent doing a few different things I hadn’t done before! I spent half a day going around helping check camera traps (well….i didn’t help all that much, but I watched them check the cameras!). It was interesting to see the process, which surprisingly involves a lot of raking! The nicest trails I have seen are those for camera traps – all raked and clean from debris! Apparently a nice clean trail attracts animals (especially the cats of interest….and apparently MANY macaques) so it increases the chance of animals walking in front of the cameras. The macaques are so funny to see in the photos of camera traps and I don’t think I will stop giggling every time I see a picture of just the eyes of a macaque staring into the camera, so curious about what is going on that it’s face is basically pressed up against the camera. They also seem to time their matings just right so they are right in front of the camera for it. Camera trapping also involves a lot of sitting on a boat to go in between sites and therefore resulted in some pretty bad tan lines for me! But all in a days work!
Our last day we went for a last walk through the forest in hopes to see a snake, but the closest we got was a large millipede. But it is such a nice forest and SO easy compared to the one in La bundo bundo. I had forgotten that it can actually be enjoyable walking through the forest when you don’t have to worry about falling down a limestone cliff!
The afternoon we went to Gua Gomantong – a MASSIVE bat cave just about an hour and a bit away from the field site. The first thing you notice is the smell. It’s a smell that gets right in your head and seems to push out any other senses that are trying to express themselves. There must be millions of bats in that cave and so the amount of guano and ammonium is enough of a smell to hit you right in the face over and over again. BUT it is still an amazing place. There is a board walk set up which walks the inside perimeter of the cave, which I was very happy for, because the entire floor of the cave is covered in small mountains of guano and cockroaches. I don’t know if you guys have seen the planet earth caves episode but they filmed it in this spot, and had a camera run up the guano mountain. When you look quickly at the ground it just kind of seems shiny, but not anything special. But if you keep your eyes in one spot for a few seconds even, you will see the ground starting to move from all the cockroaches. You also have to watch your step on the boardwalk since the cockroaches are everywhere! And don’t even think about using the handle on the board walk to help yourself go up or down the ramps or you’ll get guano and cockroach allll over you! After going through the cave we sat outside and waited for dusk – and it was amazing. All the bats started streaming out of the cave, and it looked as though they were actually in a stream! They would flow out in a continuous stream and break off into small groups which look just like the bait balls fish go form when they are being attacked (although the bats going into this formation weren’t necessarily being attacked). But there were a few brahminy kites soaring around the entrance of the caves trying to snatch up whatever they could get! But kites don’t seem necessarily built for quick action strikes but it was still really cool to watch!
This cave is an important cave as it is harvested 3 times a year for the edible bird nests. So there were many people living outside the caves, and up on the mountain that work for the bird nest industry. Two of the guys came over and showed us the bird nests and told us a bit about them. There are two types of nests that are collected from the caves in the area (there are many, but only one accessible to visitors) – a black type and a white type. They are made from the birds basically up-chucking (I don’t know the proper word!) and so the nests are kind of gummy and rubbery. The black ones have more feathers in them, but the white ones are basically entirely this rubbery material and the bit that attaches to the wall had a bit of blood in it still. The white nests are more expensive than the black ones, but both are used for Chinese medicines and in soup. They were saying they would get about £400/1000kg of nests, and each time they harvested nests they are collecting about 3000kg worth of nests – so in a year they are collecting about 9000kg of these nests! They do it 3 times a year because the nests take about 3-4 months to be made, and they said that they wait until the chicks have hatched and have left the nest before they harvest them, which I hope is true, otherwise this harvesting would not be able to continue for too long.
We left the field site early Friday morning and headed back to Sandakan. Following tradition of last year, we ordered pizza from pizza hut and had it delivered to the hostel. We each had our own regular sized pizza and it was amazing!! I don’t seem to have a problem completely demolishing a pizza there, and not even feel disgustingly full after! Lol! Also, I found out about a roof top patio that the hostel has, so we ate up there and were able to listen to some beautiful music being played along the water. It was a great way to end the Bornean trip!
Now it is on to Kuala Lumpur for a couple days to visit some of my lovely ladies who are doing some great work there. I can’t wait to lay by the pool!
The last couple days I spent doing a few different things I hadn’t done before! I spent half a day going around helping check camera traps (well….i didn’t help all that much, but I watched them check the cameras!). It was interesting to see the process, which surprisingly involves a lot of raking! The nicest trails I have seen are those for camera traps – all raked and clean from debris! Apparently a nice clean trail attracts animals (especially the cats of interest….and apparently MANY macaques) so it increases the chance of animals walking in front of the cameras. The macaques are so funny to see in the photos of camera traps and I don’t think I will stop giggling every time I see a picture of just the eyes of a macaque staring into the camera, so curious about what is going on that it’s face is basically pressed up against the camera. They also seem to time their matings just right so they are right in front of the camera for it. Camera trapping also involves a lot of sitting on a boat to go in between sites and therefore resulted in some pretty bad tan lines for me! But all in a days work!
Our last day we went for a last walk through the forest in hopes to see a snake, but the closest we got was a large millipede. But it is such a nice forest and SO easy compared to the one in La bundo bundo. I had forgotten that it can actually be enjoyable walking through the forest when you don’t have to worry about falling down a limestone cliff!
The afternoon we went to Gua Gomantong – a MASSIVE bat cave just about an hour and a bit away from the field site. The first thing you notice is the smell. It’s a smell that gets right in your head and seems to push out any other senses that are trying to express themselves. There must be millions of bats in that cave and so the amount of guano and ammonium is enough of a smell to hit you right in the face over and over again. BUT it is still an amazing place. There is a board walk set up which walks the inside perimeter of the cave, which I was very happy for, because the entire floor of the cave is covered in small mountains of guano and cockroaches. I don’t know if you guys have seen the planet earth caves episode but they filmed it in this spot, and had a camera run up the guano mountain. When you look quickly at the ground it just kind of seems shiny, but not anything special. But if you keep your eyes in one spot for a few seconds even, you will see the ground starting to move from all the cockroaches. You also have to watch your step on the boardwalk since the cockroaches are everywhere! And don’t even think about using the handle on the board walk to help yourself go up or down the ramps or you’ll get guano and cockroach allll over you! After going through the cave we sat outside and waited for dusk – and it was amazing. All the bats started streaming out of the cave, and it looked as though they were actually in a stream! They would flow out in a continuous stream and break off into small groups which look just like the bait balls fish go form when they are being attacked (although the bats going into this formation weren’t necessarily being attacked). But there were a few brahminy kites soaring around the entrance of the caves trying to snatch up whatever they could get! But kites don’t seem necessarily built for quick action strikes but it was still really cool to watch!
This cave is an important cave as it is harvested 3 times a year for the edible bird nests. So there were many people living outside the caves, and up on the mountain that work for the bird nest industry. Two of the guys came over and showed us the bird nests and told us a bit about them. There are two types of nests that are collected from the caves in the area (there are many, but only one accessible to visitors) – a black type and a white type. They are made from the birds basically up-chucking (I don’t know the proper word!) and so the nests are kind of gummy and rubbery. The black ones have more feathers in them, but the white ones are basically entirely this rubbery material and the bit that attaches to the wall had a bit of blood in it still. The white nests are more expensive than the black ones, but both are used for Chinese medicines and in soup. They were saying they would get about £400/1000kg of nests, and each time they harvested nests they are collecting about 3000kg worth of nests – so in a year they are collecting about 9000kg of these nests! They do it 3 times a year because the nests take about 3-4 months to be made, and they said that they wait until the chicks have hatched and have left the nest before they harvest them, which I hope is true, otherwise this harvesting would not be able to continue for too long.
We left the field site early Friday morning and headed back to Sandakan. Following tradition of last year, we ordered pizza from pizza hut and had it delivered to the hostel. We each had our own regular sized pizza and it was amazing!! I don’t seem to have a problem completely demolishing a pizza there, and not even feel disgustingly full after! Lol! Also, I found out about a roof top patio that the hostel has, so we ate up there and were able to listen to some beautiful music being played along the water. It was a great way to end the Bornean trip!
Now it is on to Kuala Lumpur for a couple days to visit some of my lovely ladies who are doing some great work there. I can’t wait to lay by the pool!
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