Sepilok Jungle Lodge, Borneo 11th – 13th March

After managing to prise ourselves away from Mabul, we arrived at the Jungle Lodge amidst the tropical rainforest. From our room, the noises of the jungle were immense, from singing cicadas, croaking frogs, monkeys and unidentifiable sounds, which you could spend hours thinking up some elusive creative of the night that it came from. We went straight to the Orangutan Sanctuary, which rehabilitates the apes at different levels preparing them to go back into the wild. This means that they are not in an enclosure as such, rather gather around feeding platforms for an easy dinner but are still free in the jungle. To get to the feeding platforms, you potter along the jungle boardwalks passing all kinds of butterflies, insects, frogs, etc. We went in the afternoon which meant that the place was practically empty and were very pleasantly surprised. Although I love apes with all their human characteristics, I did not have great expectations for somewhere I imagined to be very controlled and zoo-like. However, there was something very magical about watching the Orangutans come in to feed. A mother with her baby, the controlling father, and by far the most entertaining, a toddler who wowed us with his acrobatics and double jointed maneuvers, obviously seeking attention from his parents, and who got it on stealing a bunch of bananas from his father and running off! Just when I was about to say to Mark, there is no enclosure, a huge male walked straight past us on the boardwalk and leapt up to the feeding platform – brilliant! We decided to go on a little walk around the paths, although the tropical downpours we had been having made it a bit tricky. Then we saw one. In the tree staring at us, with what seemed to be a natural smile on its face. We got a bit closer and it did not seem scared, in fact it came down the tree and sat beside us, and on walking away, seemed to follow us around. It was so exciting and made me so happy! It also seemed to stay fairly placid when I started jumping around like a leprechaun because there was a smelly leech attached to my arm and the little sucker did not want to come off. Mark found all of this fairly amusing, as did I after the event. But not as amusing as when Mark got a leech on the palm of his hand (of all places!) later on that day and reacted in exactly the same way as me – it was hilarious!

While at Sepilok, we also went to the Crocodile farm in Sandakan, which was entertaining in a bizarre way. It looked like a few corrugated shacks which had been nailed together in a mishap manner and then a load of crocodiles thrown in for good measure. It had signs like 'this is Taka, the crocodile who is 60 years old and has eaten four people which is why he is here now' in a pen which would be very easy for a 800kg croc like him to jump out of. The 'show time spectacle' was surreal – 3 men bowing then getting in the croc pen, cheesy music playing on the loudspeaker then one of them picking up a baby ish croc and dancing around with it on his head, the croc's mouth deliberately opened into a big cheesy grin and the man dancing like you pray your parents will never dance at your wedding. The shop contained some stuffed crocodiles, who were…wait for it…playing baseball, pulling a tuk tuk, wearing sunglasses – worth the 5 RM we paid just for the ironic comedy of the whole thing. We later visited the Probiscos Monkey Sanctuary, which was miles down a track in a palm oil plantation. It was in essence a lodge with a veranda where you could drink tea and watch the monkeys, so not as fun as the Orangutans where you could walk in the forest. It was also double the price to get in, so not quite such good value. They are funny creatures through – translated in Malay as the Dutch Monkey, due to its big bulbous red nose and fat belly – am sure Bart will be thrilled when I inform him of this. The other highlight was the Hornbill bird, which was floating around the lodge and looked like a big Toucan – absolutely beautiful! Mark and I took local buses and got totally drenched twice in tropical downpours, which was highly entertaining. Two more things I want to say:- 1) the Jungle Lodge provides breakfast and makes its own jam – banana and pineapple – it is heavenly. 2) This morning when we left, Mark found a rather large spider under his rucksack which looked positively evil. Thankful I did not know about it last night. JG