Getting back through Malaysian immigration, I met up with a Belgian traveler who wanted to share a taxi into the city. His brother already had a hostel downtown, and I didn't have any plans, so I went along, as did two other Germans, making the taxi quite cheap. When I arrived, the place seemed good enough, so I booked a bed in the dorm room and looked outside just as a massive downpour was beginning, sending sheets of water down the streets and flooding the gutters, though the locals didn't seem to blink an eye, as these torrential storms apparently come and go in the area. While in the hostel, I also met a Malaysian named Azri, along with his wife and four month old daughter. The super-friendly couple were just sitting down for dinner in the hostel after fasting for the whole day (this was right in the middle of Ramadan), and they insisted that I join them. This gave me a chance to try one of the local favorites - fish head curry. Obviously the name didn't appeal to me, but the brown, spicy curry was actually really good, eaten with bread, so I mostly just avoided the fish parts and picked out the sauce and vegetables. Both of them spoke English quite well, though the problem in Malaysia is actually that sometimes the locals are too confident with their English, which sometimes has a strong accent and uses local slang, so they speak quite quickly (as we all do in our native language) and a few phrases here and there were lost in the mix. Even so, Azri spent hours talking to me that night, fascinated to be talking to an American. Apparently he has a great interest in America and American history, so he impressed me with his knowledge of former wars, presidents and other significant events in our history. He was also very inquisitive, questioning me to fill in the blanks and provide some reasoning behind many of the facts that he had read or seen on tv. I had to rely on knowledge mostly acquired during my 10th grade US history class (about 11 years ago), though that was a great class, and I was happy that I actually remembered many of the details he wanted to know. He was also really, really appreciative, as a few of the wars and presidential decisions now made sense to him. Finally, about 1 in the morning, we both decided to get some sleep.
I was now in Kota Kinabalu (KK), the capital of the state of Sabah. It is the hub for the entire region, serving as a base for expeditions into the jungle, forays to the idyllic islands and world-renowned diving of the East coast islands and a starting point for the climb to Southeast Asia's highest mountain, Mt. Kinabalu. The one or two day climb up to the rocky point of Mt. Kinabalu takes you to 4,095 meters (about 13,000 feet), though it's not supposed to be the hardest of climbs. I had originally planned on climbing to the top, but with limited time and a few sweaty volcano climbs already undertaken in Indonesia, I decided that I'd pass on the hike, thinking that I should spend my time in Borneo on other things.
The next day I spoke with a few people and found a bus heading across to the East coast town of Sandakan, the home of the Sepilok Orang-Utan Rehabilitation Centre, the best known orangutan center in the world. Arriving at the bus terminal was one of the most chaotic scenes that I had come across in Malaysia. It was just a small place, but the touts spotted a tourist (me) in the taxi and the onslaught began. An entourage of six or eight guys yelled, screamed, tugged and did anything they could to get my attention and get me to buy a ticket from their company. During the confusion, I actually dropped my sunglasses out of my hand, but one of the men was nice enough to hand them to me, though I almost didn't notice, as I was basically trying to ignore the cacophony around me. The bus ride would be about six hours each way, but it turned out to be a beautiful road, so I was glued to my seat, staring out the window as we climbed the steep mountains backing the city and then began slowly making our way back down on a more gradual downhill, passing through views of mountain peaks covered in ethereal mist, thick forests with no signs of development and raging rivers below. The very scenery that I had come to Borneo to see was right there outside the bus window. As usual, we passed through a few rainstorms, though things cleared up when I arrived at the junction from the main road to the sanctuary where I hired a local driver to take me the 5 km down the road. With the aid of an extremely helpful worker at one of the travel agencies, I had made a few plans for the next few days and even booked a bed at the hostel, so it's a nice change to know where I'm going to sleep when I arrive in town. (And the agent didn't even make any commission, since I wasn't using any of his company's packages - a lot of the people here are truly just happy to help you when they can.) I got to the lodge, had another wonderful Malaysian chicken curry dinner and went to sleep, ready to see some primates.
The center was just about a 20 minute walk from my lodge, so I showed up right as it opened, waiting outside for a few minutes and deciding to have a little snack. I had picked up some cheap crackers for the bus ride and had some left over in my bag, which I found out was a really bad move in a place like Borneo. Though our hostel didn't seem to have any ants, at some point during the bus ride or the night, a whole colony had sniffed out my crackers and had taken over my backpack, so I spent the next 15 minutes cleaning out every piece in my bag, squashing hundreds of tiny little ants and trying to finish what was left of the crackers...anyone that knows me knows that I couldn't just throw them away and waste the food (and the 50 cents' worth that was left over). I also put on my bug spray, as you are not allowed to bring it into the sanctuary because some of the chemicals can be very harmful to the orangutans. Through the forest, an elevated wooden walkway leads you about 10 minutes to a viewpoint where a bunch of tourists gather in anticipation every morning and afternoon. The center was started in 1964 as a place to rehabilitate abused or orphaned orangutans, some that were kept as pets illegally, some that were abandoned, etc. Once rehabilitated, the orangutans were released into the wild, though many of them tend to come back for feedings every couple of days instead of finding food on their own. So at 10 and 3 every day, the workers gather bunches of bananas and fruit up on the platforms and see what comes out of the jungle. Standing there in the sweltering Bornean sun, I realized that the ocean breezes of the Keis had tricked me into thinking that I was completely accustomed to the tropical heat, and I was sweating just standing still with the sun beating down on my neck.
Soon enough, a few of the ropes hanging between the trees began to shake, and then one by one, the rust-colored apes began to emerge out of the thick, green foliage. They would swing down the ropes with incredible ease, making their way to the platform to grab a few bunches of food, hang around for a minute or two and then keep moving. The social hierarchy was also obvious, with a few waiting their turn or being chased away when the bigger ones came. The workers have names and know the characteristics, hair styles (yes, they do vary), personalities and everything about the orangutans, though it was hard to tell the difference from our vantage point, about 30 feet away. It was amazing to see the 'wild' animals appear out of the seemingly quiet forest and then disappear again a few minutes later, though the views of the animals weren't all that different from the Singapore zoo. The attraction is obviously that this is one of the very few places in the world to see these magnificent, endangered animals in the wild, observing their human-like movements and expressions and marvelling at their strength and agility.
I had originally planned on staying for both the morning and afternoon feeding and taking the late night bus back to Kota Kinabalu, but I decided that the first feeding was enough, as it would just be more of the same the second time around, so I caught a local bus back out to the junction, enjoyed a nice melon flavored popsicle and waited for the next bus. I had already bought a ticket for the 6 pm bus, and the workers at the center told me that they wouldn't let me change my ticket now, but I figured I would just play dumb when the 12:30 bus arrived. I flagged down the bus and did exactly that, with the driver and his assistant staring at the ticket for a while, muttering something to each other in Malaysian and letting me on. This put me back in KK with a little more time to relax, and it also gave me another chance to enjoy the incredible scenery along the bus route. Unfortunately, parts of the Eastern portion of the ride are lined with the oil palm plantations that have clear cut the land to plant rows of the thick palms, a huge problem all over Malaysia, but these eventually gave way to the natural beauty, offering rays of light shining down through the clouds and a colorful sunset just as we crested the high mountain pass and headed back into KK. I caught a local minivan back towards town and had to walk a few kilometers back into the city when I heard a car stop and someone say what sounded like "Derek." I was so used to ignoring random taxi and motorcycle drivers asking me if I wanted a ride that it didn't really register, but I looked back and saw Azri with his head out the car window. In the entire island of Borneo, there was probably one person that knew my name, and this was him, so it was quite a surprise to hear this. Later on in the hostel, he said he was happy to see me again, wanting to learn more about American history and putting in the Flags of Our Fathers dvd to ask me some war questions and learn about some of the little pieces to the war movie that he might not understand. The next morning I was up early again, ready to move South down the Bornean coast to Brunei, an interesting little country/kingdom just to the South.
(Back to the amazing food of Malaysia. This is a Chinese inspired black-bean noodle dish, as it's hard to find any true Malaysian places that are open during the day while Ramadan is being observed.)
(Yet another picturesque mosque of Malaysia. This was on the way to the bus station to get to the Sepilok Orang-Utan Rehabilitation Centre.)
(Just before 10 am, things were quiet in the Bornean rainforest, with the guides sitting on the platform, getting ready to pull out a few buckets of fruit for the orangutans who were lurking in the nearby forest.)
(Here's one of the first to arrive, already making his way back with a bunch of bananas in his foot.)
(One of the little guys was playing around while eating his bananas before being chased away by the bigger primates who were ready to eat.)
(They moved around the ropes and trees effortlessly which probably shouldn't be that surprising since that's where they live. Even so, it was incredible to watch their agility and grace.)
(They didn't seem to mind, but the tropical sun felt really hot in the humid forest. We were on a raised boardwalk nearby, observing the feeding.)
(Since this is a rehabilitation center, the primates aren't really that afraid of humans, though they do live on their own in the wild, and are free to come and go, so it was interesting to see them in their true, natural habitat, as there are very few places in the world where this can be done.)
(Two of the adolescents. Apparently they all have very distinctive markings, hair, hair color, faces, etc, but I couldn't tell the difference. But if you tell them that they all look alike, you get in big trouble.)
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