Borneo Report

So, FINALLY, I'm writing about our trip to Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.... Don't judge. We've had technical issues with picture formatting, VPN providers, and laziness. A nasty combination!

OK, so we saw a lot of cool creatures in Borneo. Our first stop was the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. The rehabilitation has four stages with the ultimate goal of rereleasing these magnificent animals back into the wild. At the fourth stage, orangs are in the wild, but feedings continue twice a day in case the orangs cannot find their own food. Here we were lucky enough to see two mother Orangs with babies in tow and one curious little juvenile!

This juvenile orang was less than 2 meters from Michael!

He was walking on the handrail of the boardwalk to which we humans were restricted. Unfortunately Jill and I had stepped back from the handrail to let some kids get a better look just before this guy hopped on to check out the "silly humans". Darn!

Prior to the boardwalk... in the bushes.

Mommy and baby.

So, after the rehabilitation center, we spent two days in the jungle along the Kinabatangan River. Most of the wild animals we saw were along this river.
There were many opportunities to venture out to see them.

Rain or shine...



Here we actually did see wild orangs (big males), but even if I showed you the pictures you'd think I was pulling your leg. They were much further away, and Michael's camera just didn't have the capabilities to produce any high quality images.

The photographer.

However, Michael did manage to capture these other cool animals in the wild...

A crocodile. It took forever to spot one of these on the river bank.

I was elated! We were 20 feet away in a small boat!
This one was about 3 meters long, but they can get up to 7 meters!

The common monitor lizard.

This guy was about 2 meters long, and, yes, that really is the color of his tongue!

Macaque monkeys.

Probiscus monkey. They travel in family groups, and they were all along the river.

The dominant males have very large noses.

This is how they attract females.
In fact, the bigger the nose, the bigger the..................harem.

Come on, what did you think?

When we weren't on the boat, we wandered along the boardwalk at the lodge.

We weren't as lucky spotting animals here. Except macaques and probiscus monkeys.

Michael and me in a bird stand at the jungle lodge.
Yeah, we saw lots of exotic birds, too.

Did I mention this was an ecotour?

We planted trees. Our tree numbers are lot 1089.

Michael= 1

Megan= 2

Jill= 3

Supposedly, we can email the jungle tour company

every now and again and get updates on our trees.

The trees are grown by local villagers and help support their economy.

We also visited a local village.

We had lunch and played games with the kiddos.
(OK, OK, I played games with the kiddos...)

Michael and I brought school supplies and such for the kids.

They were adorable!

Our last night at the lodge, we donned traditional Malay dinner attire.
That's right, everyone wears this skirt, its just folded differently for guys and gals.