Breakfast with the Orangs

Spent the day around Sepilok after getting back from the jungle camp. They have an orang utan rehabilitation center there, which I walked to. You can pay to go see the orangs which they are rehabbing. They are partially wild in that they are free to come and go into the rainforest as they like, but they usually come back during feeding times to get food from the center. I didn't pay to go in as I'd seen them in the wild and am going to danum valley which also has them, but I walked a bit around the rainforest and found a couple of snakes. I wanted to do a night walk there, but you needed two people, so I went back to uncle tan's to look for someone. I met a nice swiss gal, nini, and she was interested in going, so we headed out after dark. Saw some cool things including a flying squirrel, a flying lemur, and a HUGE male orangutan. Back at uncle tan's base camp we met another swiss guy, patrick, who was very cool and just the happiest person you could imagine. It was only the 3 of us and one family staying there that night, so it was quite peaceful. We just stayed up late into the night talking and reading story books with uncle tan's little girl. They were leaving the next morning to go on the jungle trip I had just been on, and it was too bad I only got to hang out with them for such a short time, b/c they were both so fun and nice.
The next morning got a ride from uncle tan's to the intersection with the main highway and then caught a van to lahad datu where I just hung out a bit to wait for the field centre's van to danum valley. There is only one resort in danum valley and it is very expensive (about 200 US per night), but there is a field centre you can stay at if you have the credetials. Thanks to Dr. Walser from ACI and Judy Visty from RMNP for writing me letters to get in. I think Judy's was the clincher as she was hosting a guy from Borneo NP's at the same time so could throw out his name.
On the van in was george, an american teacher, two parents of jenny a PhD student from the University of York (England), and 3 guys (blanking on the names) who are undergraduate zoology students at cambridge helping out on a project for the summer. All very nice. I ended up doing a fair amount with george as the parents were hanging out with jenny and the cambridgers were getting into their project. It was a long, very bumpy, and very muddy road to the field center, but very beautiful. It wound through mountains and valleys filled with huge and beautiful dipterocarp trees. A very nice change from the oil palm plantations. Upon arrival we checked into the dorms and walked to the dining hall and main area to check things out and get dinner. I met a really nice filipino researcher, noel, who is working on his PhD at York, but has worked in san fran for a research company there. He wants to move back b/c he says in america, asians can get high positions in jobs unlike in the uk. He was staying in the more luxury rooms rather than the dorms and had two beds, so he invited me to stay in his room as the dorms can be a pain to sleep in when the muslim prayer starts at 5am.
The research centre is quite amazing. One of the better research places I have been. They have great facilities with labs, library, dining hall, a sweet veranda with fans, badminton courts, a football pitch, and nice places for the researchers to stay. And the whole area with trails and everything is laid out perfectly for researchers with quadrants and markers and all that. Right now there are 12 researchers studying here, mostly all my age and mostly all working on PhD's. Life here isn't too bad as a rainforest researcher compared to some of the other places I visited b/c they go out and do there field work in the morning, come back have a cold refreshing shower, and then sit and analyze their data on the breezy veranda overlooking the river and forest or in the a/c computer lab. And none of the people here seem overly stressed or working too hard.
The first day I woke up a bit after sunrise, walked a few feet from noel's room to the veranda to get some tea and cereal, sat down on the nice cushioned chair to look out over the forest while having breakfast and a couple monkeys (macaques) looked right back. This isn't too bad I thought. By my third spoonful of cornflakes, I looked back up and what did I see? Two beautiful orangutans on top of the nearby tree having their breakfast (forest fruits) as well. Although the nearby borneo rainforest lodge (the expensive one) had Eddie Murphy and Julie Roberts staying there at the time, I think I preferred to have my cornflakes with a couple orang utans than hollywood stars. Watched the orang utans (orang= man and utan = jungle in bahasa malay) for a while and chatted with the researchers. Then George and I took a rainforest walk to 4 different waterfalls. They wre nice and being completely sweaty and hot in the jungle, we took a dip in the cool, clear water. Made it back in time for lunch and got to watch the orangutans again. That afternoon, I explored around the research centre complex as it's mainly too hot for any of the animals to be out. When it started to rain, I went back to the veranda and, of course, was treated to some bornean gibbons munching on the fruits in the trees in front. A bit later a wild bearded boar stopped by as well. That night we joined a group of 3 british guys for a 4 hour night drive. These 3 guys were quite crazy. You've no doubt heard of birders with their checklists and such. Well, these guys were mammalers. They must have been incredibly rich b/c they had been all over the world seeking out the rarest mammals.--chartering planes into gabon and the central african republic to see rare apes to hiring private boats to search out rare whales off of argentina. They had just got back from a month trip to alaska to specifically find the canadian lynx. They were here in borneo on this trip to find a clouded leapoard and marbled cat. A cool thing that they are looking for so much wildlife, but at the same time, they miss so much of everything else in a country like the people, the travel, and non-mammalian scenery. Anyhow, the night drive was quite nice. We saw several malaysian palm civets, a couple mouse deer, some sambar, a slow loris (slow moving nocturnal primate), 3 species of flying squirrel (and got awesome looks a two flying!), and an apparently lost housecat (the brits got all excited b/c at first they thought it was the coveted marble cat). One of the most memorable things of the trip though was the nearly full moon drifting in and out through the mist and huge dipterocarp trees.
The next morning, I again got to have breakfast with the orangutans. I took a walk by myself that morning through some of the research transects in the primary forest. I made it to a tree observatory where you could climb 100 feet up this ladder up to the canopy of a large dipterocarp. It was a bit of a nervewracking climb, but the views (as well as the breeze and lower humidity) were well worth it. After finishing that trail I hiked the coffin trail to some wooden coffins (only about 4 feet long) hidden under a large rock. On the way back you have to cross a large suspension bridge over the river. As soon as I crossed the bridge, I looked to my right, and there, not more than 5 feet from me was an orang utan! I sat and watched him browse along the river bank for awhile. Then he decided to cross the bridge, sometimes walking, sometimes swinging. I followed him to the other side and watched him up really close eating some bark and fruits in the trees over there. Quite the amazing and up close experience with an orangutan! 100 times better than any of those "rehabilitation" centres they have around here.
That afternoon, I mainly just sat on the comfortable couches beneath the fans on the veranda and watched various primates come and go in the fruiting trees. That evening, after dinner, I went for a night walk along the nature trail.
In the morning, we said one last goodbye to the orangutans before taking the muddy road back to lahad datu.

Staying at the research centre was quite the awesome experience. Got a good look into one of the last remaining strongholds of borenan primary rainforest and got to see what I always dreamed borneo looked like and the way that national geographic and other nature shows depict it. I've been struggling lately on what I want to do with my life. Back home where the american dream is the primary focus, graduate school, a good job, a picket fence and a golden retriever seem to be the norm and what is accepted you will do, but here with all the travellers, I run across so many other exciting possibilities: teaching english in dubai or seoul or thailand or vietnam; being a dive master on an island or liveaboard, working at high paying, but short term jobs in alaska, being a tour guide in se asia etc, etc. But here, I got excited about ecology and zoology and research again. All the researchers talking about projects and results and such and then it just being such a cool research centre. Of course, just adding to my overall future life confusion. I couldn't help but be a bit jealous of the researchers out there. The interesting thing is that they seemed much more relaxed, less stressed, and less busy than the other grad students I have met (I'm thinking specifically Roger with the bears, the shoals marine lab people, and other researchers at rocky) Yosh tells everyone that I am on my journey to "find myself" but in fact I am getting more and more lost it seems, which is probably really not that bad.