10/13/2013 - Borneo Bound

Kuching, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, is only an hour and 15 minute flight from Singapore, perfect for a weekend trip.  After a nice relaxing break in the Maldives, a jungle adventure seemed to be the perfect jolt to bring the energy levels back up.  We woke up early Saturday morning with a full day spread out before us.  First stop would be the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre to get up close and personal with the local orang-utans with the rest of the day being spent kayaking down a jungle river.

After winding through the Chinese quarter to pick up our fellow adventures for the day (from Hong Kong and Australia) we spent another 30 minutes driving out to the reserve.  Once there, we applied copious amounts of bug spray hoping that that the legendary mosquitoes of Borneo had not encountered Deep Woods Off before.  Free advertising for SC Johnson, it worked.   The only instructions we received from our guide was “be quiet and don’t make sudden movements” and then a gesture towards the path that was winding its way through the jungle.  Not entirely sure what we had gotten ourselves into, we followed the herd of people with cameras and started picking our way slowly over rocks and roots, necks craned skyward.

Two hundred meters later, 8 people were looking way up in the trees and pointing.  A brief flash of reddish orange hair contrasted against the green foliage and then it was off and moving.  Thick, ships rigging ropes had been hung in the tops of the trees and as we continued walking, we saw that they all led to one place – a natural amphitheatre with a large platform and hundreds of bananas on it.  The orang-utans are in their natural environment, but the park rangers have two daily feedings to draw them out.  Personally, if I could play in the trees all day and knew where food would be morning and night, I wouldn't leave either.  For the next hour we watched them cartwheel down the ropes to the ranger, grab a few bananas and then clamber halfway up to eat before repeating the process.  The little baby hanging onto and climbing over its mother to grab a snack was easily the highlight.

Eventually the food was gone and the big apes went swinging off to where they had come, probably for a banana induced nap.  We earthbound creatures followed the path back to the van to gear up for round 2 of our excursion.  30 minutes later we reached a local Dayak village, one of the indigenous groups of Borneo, to meet our guide and carry our kayaks down to the river.  

Within 30 seconds you had the Survivor theme song alternating with Indiana Jones music ringing in your ears as your mind couldn't make up its own mind about which one was more appropriate.  You didn't know if an au naturale Richard was going to roll down the hillside into the water or if an overhanging tree was going to dump a serpentine present into your vessel.  Personally, I thought a mini snake would have been fun, if only because I had at least 3 different lines ready to go with, with the leading contender being “snakes, why did it have to be snakes?"

The 11 kilometre river journey took us over some ‘mini-rapids’ past soaring limestone cliffs, up a back creek to a waterfall and a stop for lunch at a local village.  After eating about 4 coconut pancakes with palm sugar in the middle for dessert, I have a new rival to peanut pancakes as my go to Asian Pastry.  I had 3 pieces of pink dragon fruit too though, so that balanced out the sugar.  Near the end of the voyage we came to a natural sandbar where we went swimming in the surprisingly cold water and up into a natural cave on the other side of the river.  Feeling refreshed and glad to give our tired shoulders a break, we had the energy to finish strong and once again haul our gear up a steep escarpment.   At that point the day finally caught up with us and the entire group passed out hard on the trip back to Kuching.  No easy feat given the winding, bumpy road.   A nap in the car turned into a nap in the hotel, followed by a pretty early bed time.  We may have survived 1 day of adventures in Borneo, but 39 days with Jeff Probst watching on would have likely done us in.