We came to Borneo for the wildlife but NOT under Liz's bed! Kota Kinabalu, Borneo

Bowen, geting a head start on studying in a university dorm room (with his parents as his room-mates!) Here he does his mock Provincial Achievement Test for Grade 9 Science. The internet has certainly changed home schooling - and allowed us to yank our youngest out of the traditional school system for a year to get a real education! While staying caught up on math and science and language arts, of course.

Having checked out one end of Borneo, we were keen to check out the other. It is a testament to the wildness of the island, which is charming in so many ways, that we opted to fly, as all other travel options were tortuously long and uncomfortable and ultimately, probably as expensive. Ground travel is always a poor option in Borneo - there is a reason why the natives stuck to the rivers and oceans for as long as they did!

As with so many other places we have visited, we arrived with many pre-conceived notions that were almost immediately blasted away upon arrival. Having come from the quaint, colonial climes of old-town Kuching, we were greeted by the post-war concrete sprawl of Kota Kinabalu. Streets are laid out in a grid, which is easy to navigate, but that is about the only saving grace. KK, as it is known, was completely flattened by the Allies during World War II in their efforts to drive out the Japanese. It was rebuilt as a port town, with all the associated charms of such a place, which are few. We did get  a chance to catch a movie at one of the newer malls, and the proximity to the Philippines meant that we were able to sample the cuisine. Accommodations were spartan, however, and we ended up being shifted between a number of dorm rooms in the hostel where we had installed ourselves. A handy Chinese noodle house that served really good coffee provided the breakfast experience that preserved good spirits for Remy and Liz, while Bowen appreciated the "big city" amenities, which included a fast-food meal. Overall, however, there is far less charm to KK than what we had become used to in Langkawi, Penang and Kuching.  

Anyone need eggs?

Dinner time at the Filipino food market! If it swims or crawls in the ocean, you can have it grilled for you here, with a healthy side salad of gelatinous seaweed and a hot sauce that will scorch your eyes right out of your head. We ate here twice much to the disappointment of Bowen.

A small example of what is on offer at the Filipino food market. Most of it has been pre-cooked, and they warm it up on the grill again before serving you. The tents are often filled with smoke from the dozens of BBQs, which is blown away by the occasional zephyr off the waterfront, which also serves as the open sewer for the city. And you can watch the antics of the rats as you wait for your meal. It is a microcosm of all of South East Asia.

You have to hand it to the Filipinos, they eat everything that they catch, which  in this case includes a couple of different species of parrot fish. Parrot fish make a living scraping off coral, so I am not sure how great they would taste. Liz loves watching these particular beauties swim while snorkelling so couldn't bear eating them.

Seaweed on the side, with a hairdo to match!

A village of "sea gypsies" built on stilts off the beach of an island across the bay from KK. Tourists are warned of all sorts of dire consequences should they choose to travel among these fringe dwellers, many of whom lack citizenship in any country. 

Our water taxi driver had to stop to pick up his grand daughter on the way to our snorkeling destination. It is amazing to see very young children living above and playing in the water, completely unsupervised. It seems very likely that they might not touch dry land until they are grown, and we did not see any schools in the village.

Another bold fashion statement by Remy, who has borrowed a page from other sea creatures in that if you look alarming or strange enough, things will leave you alone underwater. This policy extends itself to above water. Yes, the bathing cap is to keep the top of my head, which is no longer protected by any follicular growth, from being sun-burned.

We have finally managed to bore Bowen to the point that he actually read a book. Not a bad place to do so, if we say so ourselves.

Some of the beautiful hat styles to be found in this part of the world. Remy would wear any one of them in public, if the rest of his family allowed it.

Proof that fishing is a mental pathology- remember the open sewer mentioned above? Guaranteed these fellows would eat whatever they caught. Luckily for them, they are as successful at fishing as Remy is. Still, not a bad place to while away a couple of hours.

At our favourite breakfast place, having a typical Chinese bowl-o-noodles. The coffee was excellent, and the whole meal only cost a couple of dollars.

There is some urban beautification in KK, and here we are showing our appreciation of it.

The big, glass mega-mall, complete with movie theatre where we watched Dwayne Johnson save San Francisco. One saving grace to KK's having been destroyed and rebuilt is that it has sidewalks in most places (not right here, though), which are a novelty in South East Asia.

Taking in the view from Signal Hill after a short but steep jungle walk to get there.

The view of downtown Kota Kinabalu. We like that the jungle comes right down to the city's edge.

This effusive gentleman visiting from Yogyakarta insisted that Remy try on his head gear, known as an iteng.

Kota Kinabalu is primarily used by travellers as a jumping off point for the many natural attractions in Sabah, most notably Mount Kinabalu. However, the arrangements needed to stay at and climb the largest peak between Everest and Papua New Guinea were too much for us so we gave it a bye, as appealing as it looked. Instead, we decided to do some more jungle wildlife tourism, and so made the twisty and uncomfortable 7 hour bus ride (all of 200 kilometres away) to the Kinabalu Nature Lodge, located on the banks of the second largest river in Borneo. Again, we had pre-conceived ideas about what this would be like after our experience at Bako National Park, but we were (mostly) pleasantly surprised.

Enjoying our welcome drinks at the Kinabalu Nature Lodge. We like that the whole focus at these places is to see as much wildlife as possible.

Some of the accommodations at the lodge - fan cooled only! and it's HOT.

At the dorm building, where we had a four-bunk room to ourselves.

Some of the critters we shared the environment around the dorm building with. Luckily for us, these were all victims of some big die-off event, but it must have been a hazardous evening before they all died off!

On our first evening river tour we got to see this big male orang utan having his dinner. It was great to see these creatures and know that they are still completely wild.

Bowen, spotting wildlife from our river boat.

We got lucky and ended up seeing four orang utans in total, including a mother and baby.

Wind and rain - the full jungle river tour experience! Our guide had the most uncanny ability to spot animals in the dense jungle. Otherwise, we would have just been cool and wet.

An egret, also known as "crocodile food".

The jungle grows right out over the river banks. Our guide said that at some times of the year the river runs clear, but it looked like bad coffee the whole time for us. 

Who are the greatest apes in this jungle?

This place is wild. The river is the only way to navigate these parts, unless you are comfortable traveling along the tree tops.

A cool shot of  proboscis monkey taken using binoculars as a telephoto lens. We would have much more closer encounters with many more of these creatures later.

This boy is committed to fitness! Bowen doing his commando workout on the floor of our dorm room. Luckily the workout is the only thing that is commando.

On the river again at dawn. Bowen actually got out of bed at 5:30 AM to sit in a boat to look for animals.

Jurassic worm castings in the jungle.

Remy got the first leech of the jungle trek, as well as the second and third.

Liz checking out the footprint of a pygmy elephant that had passed through the jungle near the lodge a couple of months earlier. While they are small for elephants, they are still elephants, and are quite sizeable creatures. We did not see any during our stay at the Nature Lodge.

Doing the free "fish spa" with the Borneo piranhas at Oxbow Lake. The fellow in the foreground is Mark, an Aussie that was supposed to have arrived at the same time as us but was delayed by a bus break-down. He's been travelling for several years now and has no intention of going home any time soon.

Having a nice break at Oxbow Lake, the turn around point of the jungle trek. 

This was the rat that infested our dorm room. Admittedly, we had left Oreos out, and so were responsible for his being there in the first place. The staff at the lodge had placed traps under our bunks, and of course he got himself caught in the trap ( around midnight)  that was under Liz' bed which caused her to be somewhat "unsettled", to say the least. Remy and Bowen wanted to paddle him across the river in a kayak to release him on the other side, but the staff on the lodge took him instead and told us that they had taken him to a nice farm a long way away where he would live the rest of his natural life in happiness.

Liz's note: "unsettled" is Remy's respectful way of saying Liz lost her mind! The truth was that I was very upset ( crying) and decided all the "wildlife" was not worth it and that we would have to check out in the morning. There was no way I could sleep there two nights with these critter visits and sauna like conditions all on a brutally uncomfortable bed.
 It was not looking like any of us were going to get a good nights sleep to begin with and then the rat triggered the trap in the middle of the night which made a very loud THWAP and woke us all up. Things are always worse at night and having a rat under my bed was just too much to overcome. "The rat is caught now Mom, you don't have to worry about it getting in your bed" YA RIGHT! Bowen expected me to just roll over and go back to sleep with this thing pacing the inside of the trap. Remy put the rat and the trap outside and we all went back to bed ( Remy and Liz sharing a skinny twin bed in case any more creatures found their way in to our room then Remy could fend them off)
Let's just say that things looked much better in the morning and we enjoyed the 2nd night there after all with
no more unwelcome visitors!!

Our palatial digs at the Nature Lodge. At least we did not have to share the room with anyone else. These were about the most primitive accommodations we have had. Thank goodness the food is so good!

A wild crab-eating macaque! That is actually more exciting than it sounds, as we have become jaded with the garbage-eating specimens that have become habituated to living in urban and tourist areas. These ones actually use their tails to catch crabs from the river banks beneath them.

This macaque is having a pensive moment....

...while dozens of tourists snap his photo! Hard to say which behaviour is more extraordinary.

You can see where the water from two tributaries is starting to mix. While the area around the Nature Lodge is protected, all along its borders is oil palm production, with all the same environmental issues as other industries- like, say, oil sands production. The green, algae-filled water is run off from the a palm plantation, while the coffee brown water is how it is supposed to look.

A family of macaques doing what monkeys do...and say, and hear, and see.

A specimen of one of the seven species of hornbill that inhabits Borneo. They are fascinating and prehistoric-looking birds.

A good shot of a large male Proboscis Monkey.

Our second beautiful sunset on the river.

A Kingfisher, one of the more beautiful birds in South East Asia, as well as being a fine beer label.

Puffy-faced and squint-eyed, we got up for our second sunrise river tour. Bowen opted to sleep in, but it was worth  it to Liz and Remy.

Jackpot! One of the three very large (I know they grow bigger in Australia) salt water crocodiles we managed to surprise in their morning sunbathing spots.

Group shot at the Nature Lodge with our new acquaintances, Mark from Australia and Stephanie and Walther from Belgium, all long-term travellers.

Rather than brave the arduous bus journey back to KK, we opted instead for the much closer major town of Sandakan. Luckily we only had to spend a single night in this depressing burg. Its main claim to fame is the number millionaires that call it home, mainly due to exploitation of the local primary resources. Tourism was significantly stunted during our visit due to the actions of Filipino pirates who had taken one of the local millionaires hostage shortly before, making Borneo the subject of numerous international tourist warnings. Sandakan's other noteworthy attribute related to the actions of the Japanese during World War II. They had established a POW camp in the city that housed a couple of thousand Commonwealth (mostly ANZAC) soldiers. The camp administration underfed the prisoners as a matter of policy to make them easier to manage, and when they war turned bad for the Empire of the Rising Sun they forced all the soldiers to march 450 km to the west, killing off many of them en route and finishing the job using the prisoners as forced labour at the other end. Only six soldiers survived of the 1800 that began, and that was by virtue of their having escaped during the march. There is a grim monument to this in the city, matched by a similar monument to the hundreds or thousands of Chinese that were massacred in the city as part of the same operation. There are lots of ghosts in this town.

A rare glimpse inside Bowen's mind. It is a hard image to live up to, with so many types of Kryptonite around and being married to Wonder Woman. This was part of some promotion inside Sandakan's big mall. It says something that we found little that was photo-worthy outside.

A view of the river we had camped along. This is the outlet to the sea near the town of Sandakan, the depressing and gritty town where we caught a flight back to Kota Kinabalu. From the air, it is very apparent how much land in Borneo is under cultivation of oil palm, which was kind of depressing after our time in the midst of native jungle.

Mount Kinabalu, from as close as we were going to get to it. This is a much more comfortable way to see the top of the mountain. There was an earthquake that happened shortly after we left Borneo, which locals blamed on the disrespect shown to the mountain and its gods by a group of western tourists (including a couple of twin sisters from Saskatchewan) who had climbed the mountain and taken their clothes off at the peak for a photo. A rockfall killed more that a dozen people on the mountain. You can't mess with the gods on this island.

Our tour of the wilds and surprising civilizations of Borneo is at an end. We achieved our aim of seeing as many of the big animals of Borneo in their wild setting as possible (disappointed not to have seen elephants, though- who would have thought they could hide so well?) We have lived in, and with, the jungle and shot blow darts and shared the rivers with crocodiles. Any longer and we all would have had ourselves tattooed.

Our original plan had been to continue heading eastward to the Philippines, but we have reconsidered as there is an opportunity to visit with Liz' Uncle Dale in Bali. We are travel-weary at this point, having been constantly on the move since we left Goa, and it is too tempting to pass up the opportunity to have someone else do the tour-guiding for a while. Luckily it is easy to hop a quick and pain-free flight from Sandakan back to KK, then a direct trip to Bali.

~Remy