27 DEC 08

Well Christmas day seems a lifetime ago now, but in reality I suppose it's only been two days. The problem is that we've been up since 8am yesterday (It's now 8pm today!) in order to get ourselves across the Thai border. We finally managed it, after arriving in Kuala Lumpur to find that all train and bus tickets to Thailand had long sold out. We could however get a bus to Alor Setar in Malaysia where we were assured we could catch a connecting bus to Hatyai in Southern Thailand. That was a lie.
After being unceremoniously dumped an hour earlier than scheduled, at 4am, in what could only resemble a ghost town, we then had the challenge of finding any sort of transport to *somewhere* in Thailand... eventually we get a taxi to the border with two students from Singapore on a similar mission. It was only after we'd left Malaysian soil that Chloe and I realised that we'd completely forgotten to get any Thai currency. We'd spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Kuala Lumpur with our backpacks waiting for the 2300 bus, so there really was no excuse. We'd even had time to find a Starbucks and play snakes and ladders for two hours, so we really should have considered currency, but we didn't. It took 3 hours of standing in a queue to cross the sencond border-check into Thailand, and by some miracle we found a minibus that would take Malaysian Ringgitsto get us to Hatyai. Now we appear to be here, and we leave in the morning for the island of Koh Lipe which looks beautiful and much less stressful (one hopes) than the mammoth journey to get here!

Christmas Day itself was rather odd but very nice. We attended a Church service which turned out to be in English and Chinese. Straight translations we could have worked with, but the system was a little more complicated, with people given the option to respond and sing in either language (or both)!
As a result, some prayers and readings were in English, some in Chinese. The sermon was in both and hence took the best part of an hour. Everytime they returned to English we'd forgotten the previous sentence, which wasn't helpful in a particularly heavy-going speech. The most interesting part was the music though with a Christmas-carol-megamix performed by the choir and dancers with tamborines performing at the front of teh Church. The congregational carols were traditional, including 'O Come All Ye Faithful', but even that turned out to be complicated when everyone switched to Chinese in the second verse, leavign Chloe and I caught between bewilderment and hysterics.

Christmas dinner went remarkably well and we managed to cook chicken, rice, veggies and potatoes. The only hitch was getting into our precious bottle of wine without a corkscrew, which no-one could help us with as they'd not seen a cork in a bottle like that before!

In the evening we went ahead with our meal out (we'd assumed lunch would be a disaster!) and went to a hotel to have the weirdest concoction of foods imaginable. As a result I had chicken, lasagne, fried rice, meatballs, vegetables, noodles and a random bit of lamb. It was a buffet-style affair and we thought we should make the most of it!

I hope everyone's well, and I'm sorry I can't sit and write the anecdotes I'd like to share, but maybe another time... Although i shall mention that one slightly strange lady yesterday asked me for a piece of orange peel on the plane yesterday and spent the flight sniffing it before discarding it on the airfield on arrival. Any ideas as to what that was about on a postcard please!

Best wishes,
Rachel x

24 DEC 08 - Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve! I'm no longer in the jungle. I was this morning, but now I'm in Sandakan once more, where we'll be spending Christmas Day. On Boxing Day we head to Kuala Lumpur on an attempt to reach the Thai border, renew our visa and get back to the city in time for New Year. Fingers crossed, eh!?

It's rather hot today, although I don't know how hot, and we were commenting this morning on how it doesn't feel all that Christmassy without the coldness of the British festive period. We then had to kick ourselves as we realised that if 'the first Christmas' was infact on December 25th (debatable, I know), then it'd probably be much closer to this sort of climate than that of Dorset or Cardiff, so really this is how Christmas feels afterall.

The most bizarre thing about our Christmas so far has been seeing THREE crocodiles on the banks of the river this morning (which are visible now that the water level's lowered a little after the easing of the rain). I mean, I don't think I've ever seen one crocodile on Christmas Eve before, lettalone three, so that was pretty cool.

I don't know how tomorrow will go - basically I'm dreading it. We have to cook a Christmas dinner for far too many people in a hostel in Sandakan and probably feed all the staff as well. I find it all very stressful and am suddenly very thankful I don't do this every year. Although maybe next year I'll be a bit more helpful when Mum's sorting it all out! I'm absolutely convinced we're going to poison the lot of them (touch wood not), as I can hardly cook super-noodles, nevermind a chicken, but maybe Chloe knows what she's doing??? If not we have a back up of a large amount of rice and a cake that we're going to make tonight. We also have the telephone number for Pizza Hut, although the last time we attempted to order to the hostel we accidentally rang Kuala Lumpur and got the new kid who had no idea where Borneo was. We did get to eat pizza in the end, but it was almost midnight by the time it had arrived, so we'd rather do the roast chicken if possible. It brings me some comfort to know that Shelley's in a similar situation at home this year! :)

Even if tomorrow is a complete disaster, at least we can look back on last night and smile. We were told by Ancu, who works at the centre, that due to a shorting in the cables at the jetty, caused by a tree falling on the wires during heavy rain, the electricity wouldn't come on when the sun goes down and we'd have to wait a little longer. We also weren't allowed to leave the house. (In Malay... must be getting better!) We thought it was all a little bit strange as the rains hadn't been that bad and an electrical problem at the jetty surely shouldn't constrict us to a dark room for several hours. Eventually Ancu came to collect us and we all walked over to the main building. Just as we were about to climb the steps to enter the building, Ancu exclaimed that there was a sleeping pig under the building. Indeed there was. Two infact. He'd obviously lost his last marbles down at the jetty, so we tried to enter once more. This time he announced that we had to sit and talk on the steps...
...Eventually we were allowed in and between Ancu and Salin, Zainal and the girls who've started working in the kitchen, they'd lighted almost 40 candles, decorated the field centre and cooked huge prawns on a BBQ!!!!! And they don't even celebrate Christmas!!!! It was such a lovely thought and we had a fantastic evening. They'd even managed to find blueberry-Cadbury's-chocolate-eclairs (very odd, but surprisingly tasty) and bought ginger beer!!! We had noodles, goat with mint sauce, vegetables, potato chips, prawn and fried chicken bits - a feast fit for a King! We listened to the 'Jive Bunny Christmas' CD Mum had sent in the post, followed by the Malay Rock CD and played 'Violent Snap' and 'Cheat' with everybody until Chloe had added so many new rules that the girls were falling asleep and everyone else was as confused as I was when first walking into Vietnam and trying to find a taxi (very).

Don't tell Chloe, but it's 1600, 24 DEC 08 and I still have to find her a Christmas Pressie so I should really go and get it now or else the shops will all be shut!

Happy Christmas everybody,
Wish you were here,
Rachel xxx

09 DEC 08

This is Lisa (orange) and I (white). A large male from Sukau (see previous entry!)

Me and a millipede...

Rupert the Bear...

Chloe, Marc and I by the river.

Pumbaa...

Sheldon...

A Macaque...

Lisa again...

Tra-daa!!! You have no idea how long it took to get those photos online in this stupid internet cafe! It's the most ridiculous place with really grumpy owners and the curtains are always shut so you can hardly see the keyboard! Anyway, rant over, I hope you enjoy the photos! Rachel

08 DEC 08

It’s definitely the rainy season!

The waters of the oxbow lake are not much more than ten metres from the main building now and the trails are un-walkable (although I did consider making some stilts…). However, the animals seem to be visiting much more frequently at the moment. I supose that has something to do with there being less land to work with. In the last two days I’ve seen: two orangutans, billions of macaques, wild boar, more lizards than I can count, a giant squirrel, a big black squirrel (possibly a Prevost’s squirrel for those of you who are squirrel enthusiasts, although I wouldn’t quote me on it), a pigmy tree squirrel, a civet in a tree and a bird of prey which I almost stood on as it seemed to think that the ground was a suitable place to sit. I tried to explain to it that if it didn’t start being a bit more sensible then it’d be taken out by natural selection, but it flew off before I could finish.

The two orangutans, as you can imagine, caused considerable excitement. Unfortunately Chloe wasn’t feeling very well when I first saw them (they were near the centre for two days), so I took my notepad and camera and set off to make observations every few minutes in an attempt to improve my recording skills. This was working marvellously until I spotted the second orangutan, who only co-operated for a short while before taking off in a different direction. Not wanting to lose either, I resolved to switch between the two, taking observations from one every three minutes and another minute later for the other orangutan. Of course this ended in disaster with me losing both orangutans, after tiring and confusing myself by running through the jungle over an increasing distance, as they moved further apart. The next day they were spotted after lunch and I decided not to take observations like before but just to note down interesting behaviours and to follow only one. By this time they’d acquired the names ‘Lisa’ and ‘Sheldon’, and I chose to follow Lisa as she seemed the friendlier of the two. For those of you who know their human name-sakes, Lisa had long straight hair like, well, Lisa! As for Sheldon, there are the obvious links with Monkey World…That afternoon gave me my most incredible orangutan experience to date, with Lisa turning out to be incredibly un-bothered by my presence. With patience enough to ignore the mosquitoes and a few adaptations of my own behaviour to mimic hers, I managed to spend nearly three hours with her. At first I kept my distance, watching her snack away at the fruits and leaves near the water’s edge, but it wasn’t long before I didn’t have to worry. She descended until she was only a few metres from the ground and moved to a tree closer to my sitting position. I kept as still as I could, considering the incessant ‘neeeee’ noise of the mossies around my head, and picked off leaves from the nearby trees, fiddling with them like she did. When she moved, I waited until there was enough space between us and followed quietly. She was aware of my presence, as she shot curious glances in my direction every now and again, but carried on with all the usual orangutan-type activities. At one point she came right down to the ground to cross to a sturdier looking tree, before climbing back up again to continue her afternoon feast. We parted as night started to fall and I left her to make a nest for the night. Sometimes if orangutans are disturbed it affects their nesting habits, and although she didn’t seem to worry about me being there, I didn’t want her to end up without a bed on my account.

I popped back to see Sheldon by the jetty afterwards, but he just grunted at me and carried on his previous activity which appeared to be staring at a tree trunk. An angry looking macaque then presented himself on the path in front of me and bared his teeth, so I decided to make a careful retreat back to the field centre. The macaques are generally alright and only cause trouble if you’ve left food around, but there seems to be a particularly ‘difficult’ group around at the moment! The Monkey Mafia are still raiding Zainal’s house and aren’t in the least bit concerned when you try to shoo them out. I’d happily bet that this brave little character looking for a fight was one of these, but I suppose you get ‘chavs’ everywhere these days. (Interesting note, the spell-check on this computer just automatically changed the word ‘chavs’ to ‘chives’!)

Anyway, Chloe’s taken to baking cakes in the jungle and I’m currently missing out by writing this to send in town tomorrow, so I’ll bid you goodnight and write soon!

Love from Rachel x

01 DEC 08

It's December 1st and this evening I get to open the first door of my CADBURY'S Advent calendar!!! It arrived from Mum last week, so Chloe and I each have a very squashed, slightly melted, but very Christmassy treat to lead us up to Christmas!

We returned back from our trip to Sukau last week, and since then have been writing up our field course reports from July. Yesterday afternoon, the monkeys that have been causing so much trouble at Zainal's house came to visit us outside the computer room. There were about twenty macaques sat on the grass, having an afternoon snack. Other wildlifey encounters incude Pumbaa the pig snuffling around the kitchen on a regular basis, and a particularly brave monitor lizard who had somehow made his way into the kitchen on Friday. Goodness knows how he got in, but he certainly left in a hurry!

In Sukau we discussed our work further and were able to go into the field to help collect the data. It was really nice to catch up with our new friends there again, including Haji who let slip to Boss Benoit about the existence of this webpage, so I'll have to be a bit more careful now... (Don't worry Benoit, your Centre's in good hands!) During our stay, we saw a large, flanged male orangutan and two mother and baby pairs. We were also lucky enough to see a group of elephants at a very close range. They weren't at all bothered by our presence after a little while and carried on munching away at the vegetation and destroying every small tree they came across. From the small clearing we found them in, they then headed for an oil palm plantation, where we witnessed them stripping several palms of their leaves and demolish an electric fence. Eventually they moved on from the plantation, but they certainly made their mark. I don't know why anyone ever used the phrase 'Bull in a china shop', 'Elephant in an oil palm plantation' is much more appropriate! By the time they'd left us, I was bright orange with the contents of an oil palm kernel (as the 'Orangutan Warrior') and we were all drenched due to the heavy rain. We looked a comical assortment of people as we headed back to the river, with Marc carrying the bags in a black binliner over his shoulder, much like a tramp, Haji tripping over various remnants of elephant-damaged vegetation, Chloe soggier than my washing (which I can never seem to get dry out here) and me in orange war-paint. It was one of the best afternoons I've had since arriving though, and every time we spot the elephants they go up another notch on my favourite animal scale. Of course, the orangutans are still safely at the top, especially after seeing Maria and Jenny's tiny babies this week! They're ever so funny to watch as they explore the branches near 'Mum' whilst she's sat nibbling nonchalently on whatever fruit she can find, and amazingly the regular characters seem to get on with their day whilst completely ignoring the presence of researchers on the ground below!

Unfortunately this computer is giving me awful trouble typing so I'm going to have to call it a day. I hope everyone's well, and as rumour has it that internet may be slowly snaking its way to Danau Girang, I may be able to write again soon!

Love from Rachel x