Pulau Redang: Island Getaway

After the hassle of arranging all of the earlier described trips, we decided to take it a little bit slower. A few hours of browsing, arguing, and analyzing finally made us choose Redang Island as our island getaway. We arranged a package for 2 days/3 nights including transportation and all meals. But first we had to fly to Kuala Terengganu.

Kuala Terenganu wasn't really a nice place to visit (most people go either straight from the airport or hotel to their respective islands) but we did manage to get cheap accommodation before we headed out to the island.

The next morning, we were transported to the small marina, where apparantly only Malysian, Chinese, and Korean (and some Indian) people where joining us. We were the only two "caucasians" probably because of the Chinese New Year (Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!) Anyways, the transfer by boat wasn't that smooth and many of our Asian friends got sick and threw up several times. Yummie!

But all of this was undone once we arrived at the island. Redang Island is locally known as Pulau Redang and is one of the largest and most beautiful of the islands off the east coast of Malaysia. Redang is one of nine islands, which form a marine park, and which offer snorkeling and diving opportunities. Now we can talk about how beautiful and relaxing it was but we'll let the pictures do the talking. It is worthwhile to mention that we went snorkeling and saw a big turtle, a couple of sharks, an enormous amount of colorful fishes, a bunch of Nemos or clown fish, three giant moray eels (scary dudes), and two 1.5 mtr barracudas. Oh, and the coral was ok too (not like the Great Barrier Reef but then again we didn't dive). Finally, let's stop talking and do some viewing instead!

Paradise in a nutChel

Sepilok Orang Utan Rehab Center

We bet we know what you are all thinking, but no, this is not a sanctuary for junkie or alcohol-abusing monkeys. Instead, Sepilok is one of only four Orang Utan reserves in the world. Orang Utans are kept here that are either sick and/or injured and then nursed back to good health. They are then released back in the wild. Furthermore, wild orang utans get fed twice a day in the giant reserve. Keep in mind that there is no fence, and the orang utans sometimes leave the reserve grounds for months. But when they are there, they can enjoy some milk and bananas twice a day before a big tourist crowd (which kind of threw us of at first, until we saw the orang utans).

The big guy... showing off his "gear"

The orang utan is 97% related to humans, and it shows very much in their way of communicating. We were even lucky enough to see the big guy wandering about and chewing down some bananas. As with the big nose of the proboscis monkeys, the dominant male orang utan has big cheeks which attracts the ladies and signals his dominance. This has something to do with the fact that some male orang utans produce more of a certain hormone and therefore grow the big cheeks.

Off course, the little guys are also endearing. They frolic around and swing about with such ease and grace which makes us humans look clumsy and stiff. We were really pleased to hear that the orang utans could leave whenever they pleased and that they were taken such good care of them. So despite the huge tourist masses, we do recommend this place if you're ever in Malaysian Borneo. Another great experience to add to our list(s). Next stop: the beach before heading out to Thailand.

Rafflesia Hunting !!!

Before we can talk about the beach, however, we did do a little side-trip while we were in Kinabalu National Park. A registration office driver tipped us off that there were Rafflesia's growing near an area called the Poring Hot Springs. Now you might wonder what a rafflesia is and this is where Wikipedia comes in handy:

"Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic flowering plants. It was discovered in the Indonesian rain forest by an Indonesian guide working for Dr. Joseph Arnold in 1818, and named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the leader of the expedition. It contains 15-19 species (including four incompletely characterized species as recognized by Meijer 1997), all found in southeastern Asia, on the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra and Kalimantan, West Malaysia, and the Philippines. The plant has no stems, leaves or true roots. It is an endoparasite of vines in the genus Tetrastigma (Vitaceae), spreading its root-like haustoria inside the tissue of the vine. The only part of the plant that can be seen outside the host vine is the five-petaled flower. In some species, such as Rafflesia arnoldii, the flower may be over 100 cm in diameter, and weigh up to 10 kg. Even the smallest species, R. manillana, has 20 cm diameter flowers. The flowers look and smell like rotting meat, hence its local names which translate to "corpse flower" or "meat flower". The vile smell that the flower gives off attracts insects such as carrion flies, which transport pollen from male to female flowers. Little is known about seed dispersal, however, tree shrews and other forest mammals apparently eat the fruits and disperse the seeds. Rafflesia is an official state flower of Sabah in Malaysia, as well as for the Surat Thani Province, Thailand [...]"

And there you have it. These flowers are extremely rare. They take anywhere between 9-18 months to fully develop and flower only for 4-7 days before they rot away again (as a big slimy bulb). All in all, a very rare occurrence which we were fortunate enough to see in the wild (or, more precise, somebody's very big backyard for 15 ringgit p.p.). Stay tuned for more info soon. Many greetings from Chickie Rendang & The White Ringgit.

Climbing Mt. Kinabalu (Part II)

You guys honestly didn't think it was a goodnight's sleep, did you? Nope. Because of the altitude, there was less oxygen to breathe as we were used to. Combine this with Sois having a healthy cold and clogged nose which produced some major snoring and you know just how much sleep Chel got. In addition, the alarm buzzer rang at 2:00 am in the morning as we had to leave to the top at 2:45 am. Sleepy-eyed we jumped into our clothes, strapped on the backpacks and headed downstairs where our mountain goat.. err... we mean guide. We put our headlights on and headed out, right into the cold night.

We started walking straight up the solid granite rocks, actually overtaking people that had started before us until we were walking solo. It was such an amazing site, three little people on a gargantuous mountain (see pic above: the glowing thing is Chel). However, our confident pace dropped steadily as the lack of oxygen and the altitude were starting to affect us. We decided to lower the pace a little and instead just try to trudge along. Along the way there were white ropes to hold on to, but somehow they proved to be more of a burden than a help.

As we continued our ascent , Chel started to become a little affected by the height. While she was able to breathe properly, it seemed she suffered from a mild form of altitude sickness. Nevertheless, we continued because she didn't want to leave Kinabalu Park without reaching that summit. After a hard final 500 meters, the three of us managed to get to the top and take this picture (where we are looking quite bewildered I might add).

It was very cold at the top; we had to wear all the layers of extra clothing we had brought to stay warm. Although Chel was feeling victorious, her situation worsened at the peak and we decided not to wait for the sunrise and start a little bit earlier on our descent. So we packed up everything (except the cameras) and followed our mountain goat who was staying close to Chel just in case.

During our descent, the sun was slowly rising up from the valley. The fog was also setting in but we managed to take some nice pictures. The further we got down, the better Chel was starting to feel. We went down quicker and quicker and decided not to stop until we reached the Laban Rata guesthouse where we had to pick up our big bag and the trusty walking sticks.

After the quick pitstop at Laban Rata, we decided that we would walk down as fast as possible because the path was steep and didn't offer many chances for sightseeing: we did that on the way up ;-) The pics used here are taken still on the upper parts of the mountain. These amazing sights alone made it worthwhile to do the climb. A lot of people that rached the resthouse, however, decided not to go to the top because it was relatively demanding.

Let's talk about the descent now to finish things off. In general, the ascent went pretty well, especially the last part (despite Chel's altitude sickness, we were doing fine condition wise). However, the descent was long and tedious and very demanding on the knees. In addition, it had rained the night before, making the path very slippery. Chel fell in total 5 times, but walked away everytime without serious injury. Sois made a few slips but got saved everytime by Chel and our guide.

After 12 hours and 15 minutes of climbing and descending (without the overnight stay at Laban Rata, but including other rest stops), we finally made it back to the Timpohon Gate, only to be confronted with the sign portrayed in the picture above. And yes, you are reading this correctly: the people that do a "climbathon" here every year (running up and down the mountain) do all of this in 2 hours and 50 mins. Wow! Despite this, we were happy to be down again.

All in all, it was a great experience. Both of us have never stood so high above sea-level in such beautiful surroundings. But we were both hammered, and after a well-deserved lunch, we went back to Kota Kinabalu to get ourselves ready to visit Sepilok (an Orang Utan rehabilitation reserve) and some R&R in one of the East Coast Islands. Let's go...

A dreamy Chel pondering about our past and forthcoming adventures

Climbing Mt. Kinabalu (Part I)

After we got back from the river and jungle in Kota Kinabalu, we had to prepare for our trek towards the summit of the mighty Mt. Kinabalu in Kinabalu National Park. This park is the first World Heritage Site in Malaysia ad features the highest mountain between the Himalayas and he Snowy Mountains of Papua Barat (New Guinea Island). It's a massive granite mountain measuring 4095.2 meters. Guess we had our work cut out for us. It took us two hours to get into Kinabalu Park HQ with a Colin McRae rally-like insane taxi driver which gunned his 1978 Datsun (with big roaring exhaust) up the narrow mountain road. Glad as we were to have survived this, Sois complimented him on his driving skills to which he grinningly responded: me go vroom vroom!

At the HQ, we had to pay the entrance fees, register for our climb, pay for a guide (mandatory), and get climbing insurance. It was relatively expensive considering other things in Malaysia but we had made the commitment so there was no turning back. After the administrative hassle was over, we went to our cabin and got repacked our backpacks in order to take the right gear and supplies up onto the mountain the next day. Oh, and we did do a short guided walk among of the other trails and a visit to the park's botanical garden. But honestly... this kind of sucked, maybe in part that we were anxious to get up that mountain. Finally, wedid have a great dinner at the very hospitable park restaurant.

The next morning we were up and running at about 7:00 am to get a decent breakfast in the park canteen. The previous night, we had decided that we were going to take a longer route to the summit because we had heard from some locals that it would be more "adventureous" (whatever the hell that meant we didn't know at that time) and that the scenery would be much better. Usually, most people leave from the so-called "Timpohon Gate" just outside HQ which is an almost entirely upwardly sloping trail of approximately 8.7 kms to the top (17.5 km return trip). Yours truly, however, took on the Mesilau trail which measures approximately 10.9 kms to the summit (19.6 kms return back to Timpohon Gate, not Mesilau starting point which is even longer). Let's just start of by mentioning that it was indeed more scenic...

Now that breakfast was gobbled down, we met our guide who spoke only a little bit of English. He would watch us on the mountain, as there have been (fatal) accidents. The park now requires everyone, no matter how good a climber, to take a guide with them. Our guide was called Tumas, a silent small Malaysian guy that hopped up and down the mountain like a frivelous mountain goat. Now that the team was complete, we still had to take a 4WD taxi for a half hour drive to the Mesilau trial starting point. When we got to the trail's start, it went immediately upwards and didn't stop for the next hour or so. We slowly started to get an idea of what the locals meant with "adventureous".

The next 5 hours and 20 minutes, we passd through some magnificent scenery including temperate rainforest, streams and waterfalls, bonsai trees as far as the eye could see, and a thick shroud of cold mist which covered the mountain before noon. Our guide had brought us some walking sticks which we first reluctantly used, then learned to appreciate, and finally simply deemed essential to relieve our knees a little.

We were both carrying quite a lot of gear (incl. water supplies) which actually semed to get heavier along the way. Dragging ourselves further up the mountain, covered in sweat, but still keeping a positive attitude, we managed to reach the Laban Rata basecamp within 6 hours. Here we would take a much needed resting break and glutoneous dinner (which was awful btw - stick to Malaysian food in Malaysia).

We had to share a room with a Swiss couple because there were no separate rooms available. We were very lucky as they were very nice, polite, and quiet people. Chel took an ice-cold shower, while Sois (who was patient enough to let his sweat dry in first... hmmm) had steaming hot water and looked like a lobster when he got. After that, we slipped into our pyjamas, rearranged the single bag we were going to take to the top (incl. some warm clothes as the temperature was estimated to be around 4 degrees celsius at the top - without windchill factor). And with some final applications of Tiger Balm on the sore spots we went to sleep peacefully at around 9 o'clock.

Halfway at last!

Kinabatangan River & Sukau Jungle (Part IV)

Here's another shot of the proboscis monkeys we were talking about on the other post. Just look at the nose and his other accessoiries.

Hey dude, what are you looking at?

Whoops, forgot to talk about the actual jungle trek in the previous post. When we arrived at the oxbow lake, we cruised around a little and got ashore to do a small jungle trek during the day. Now this was exciting. We both bought "leech" socks the night before (cotton socks that come up to your knee to prevent leeches to cling themselves on to you and force you to "give" blood) so that was already a signal. It had rained the night before and everything was very muddy (almost like clay). We wandered through the jungle at a snail's pace, carefully watching where we put our hands and feets (and even our heads) to avoid getting bit, stung, or worse by some jungle resident. We trudged on for an hour, running into mostly insects and leeches, because most bigger-sized animals are either asleep, camouflaged, or long gone before we even came close. It must quite a terrifying experience to be lost in the jungle because you can only move very slow, there's no way to orientate yourself, and you don't know what's watching you. Luckily, our guide pointed out a tree that the locals use when you need help: you just bash it with a big piece of wood and the tree resonates a deep bass drum that can carry up to three kilometers further. However, a stay in this part of the jungle wasn't part our itinerary.

That night, we also did a short trek through the deep, dark, and weird-sounding jungle. Armed with only our ANWB headlights, we snooped around for about 45 minutes. again warned not to touch anything and look out for those damn leeches. The jungle was pitch black, but the path was slightly better and we got to see some nice insects but again no jungle wldlife. But that was actually a thing to be happy about because that particular jungle is home to a certain type of leopard that sees a whole lot better in the dark than we do. However, the night's piece de resistance was actually something very simple: at the end of the track, we were told to turn of our lights and be submerged in a pitch black jungle with the accompanying scary noises (and small eyes everywhere like those of a rather relaxed owl). Again, not a comforting place.

What's that in the friggin trees??!!

Why it's just me... your friendly local lizard

Tiger leech - 100% guaranteed to suck you dry

"Lantarn" bug

To sums things up: we had a blast in the jungle and on the river. We never thought we were going to see so much wildlife, especiallty since the people we spoke too were already ecstatic when they'd seen some proboscics monkeys. Hey wait? Did somebody say proboscis monkey? You know (before we forget, must have been the altitude at Mt. Kinabalu), we have got some amazing footage of these guys jumping out of 10-12 meter high trees right into croc-infested water. The leader decided to check out the other side of the river and just jumped in. Of course, the rest were obliged to follow him. Even mother with their infants jumped in and swam across (the kids clinging onto the mothers's bellies and holding their breath). They all jumped on the lowest tree branch and continued to rampage around the river banks. The "thumping" sound that these monkeys made when they landed flat out on their bellies is amazing and adds to our collection of must-see video. And with those acrobatics and other great experiences in mind we headed out towards our next adventure: climbing the mighty Mt. Kinabalu! So strap on your hiking boots and join the climb.

Kinabatangan River & Sukau Jungle (Part III)

The next day, we did two more cruises down the river and two small jungle treks. Now, spoiled as we are with wildlife, we didn't really expect to see that much. Wrong again. The day started off with 8-9 Asian elephants having a breakfeast on the river banks. They were chomping down the young riverside plants and the more they ate, the better we could see them. We were able to bring the boat up close and personal, and Chel got some good shots.

Chel, chillng with her elephant buddies

And a good morning to you too

More elephant than meets the eye

The pic above shows a small river inlet that lead us to one of the many oxbow lakes located around the river. An oxbow lake is a type of lake which is formed when a wide meander from a stream or a river is cut off to form a lake. They are called oxbow lakes due to the distinctive curved shape that results from this process. So now you all know something about the destination, here are some things we saw along the way: a baby croc, cheekily giving us the uber-predator stare, another snake reticulated python and off course some playful makakes.

Straight out of Jungle Book

Before we headed back, however, some locals had saved a hornbill bird who was chased and attacked by two other birds. He almost drowned but they managed to pull him out the water and was given some treatment at the river camp before they set him free again. Chel said he reminded her a little of Sois when he has just waken up. With the bird and the awfully dirty shoes in the boat, we headed back down the river.

On the ride back, we found a tree full of the so-called proboscis monkeys. Now these are known for their noses (and some other reddish attachment as well). You could argue that the male's nose looks like a glowing red, hairless scrotum. The females (who have smaller, pointy noses) seem to dig these facial scrotums: the bigger the nose, the bigger the chance that that guy is going to get lucky and become the dominant male (who off course gets all the chicks). Another interesting fact about these monkeys is that they can only eat the leaves from certain trees along river banks. Their stomachs get easily upset and eating fruits, for instance, can create so much intestinal gasses, acids and stress that they could die. This means that their habitat is limited and because more and more people are starting to live further down the rivers, these guys see their options dwindling (as so many other animals). The next post will showcase some pictures and a final story about the abovementioned proboscis monkeys. Unitl we blog again!

Kinabatangan River & Sukau Jungle (Part II)

The Kinabatangan area is known for its remarkable wildlife and habitats like riverine forests, freshwater swamp forests, oxbow lakes and salty mangrove swamps near the coast. And that was exactly where we were heading. After the bus took us further, we got a 5-10 minute transfer to our cabins near the river. After we had checked in and got some lunch, we went for our first "rivercruise". Now I bet you you're all thinking that it was very big with a lot of people... just mass tourism. But we were pleasantly surpirsed as we were going with small motorboats 6-8 people around the river to spot some wildlife in the water and along the river banks. In total, we did three of those trips and with all of them, we proved to be very lucky once again. Here's a quick recap of the things we've encountered:

Some makake monkeys, chilling in the trees, the elusive proboscis monkey (more on them in the next post), big monitor lizard (1.5m) chewing down on some awfully smelly carcas, a reticulated python snuggly curled up in the tree, some very nice birds, but that day's smacker came in the form of an Asian elephant family. Now Asian elephants are not that common anymore in Borneo but seeing a classic, almost Disney-like, case of family love is even more unique. Here's how it went down. We heard some rumbling throught the bushes and thought, wow, this must be quite a big animal, nothing more. But than the big guy started trumpeting and pushed his way through to the river bank. Suddenly, on the opposite side of the river, a female elephant and a baby elephant came out of the bush and they started trumpeting towards each other (the baby made such a cool noise, you have hear on video).

Sois and his well-footed new friend

Curious baby pigtail Makake monkey

Pigtail Makake Monkey

Now it started to seem that they were missing each other more and more every minute, judging by the trumpeting and beating around the bush. After a minute or two, dad couldn't refrain himself any longer and walked into the river and swam approximately 2 meters from our boat towards the other side to be reunited with his family. We almost cried of joy and excitement ;-). Truly magnificent animal equalled truly magnificent experience (yet again). And with that in mind (and quite a nice jungle buffet dinner in our tummies), we went to our mosquito-net covered beds (we were also taking malaria tablets just in case). Alright, see ya'll next morning.