28 OCT 08

Before I head back to possibly the last place on the planet without internet access, I thought I'd reflect on the two countries we've just visited.



Both were such different places that it would be difficult to compare the two, but I can point out the obvious bits to give you a little overview of our trip!



Of Vietnam, we saw three cities; Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), Hue and Hanoi. Each could easily have been a country of its own, but all shared a frantic atmosphere that left us somewhat shell-shocked. Even the modern life of Kuala Lumpur couldn't prepare us for the maniacal motorcyclists and apparent lack of road-rules found on the streets of Ho Chi Minh, and it wasn't possible to walk the 200 yards from the hotel to the end of the road without being hassled to buy something. No matter how many times I pointed to the shades on my face (worn solely to avoid eye contact with the street vendors), they insisted it was necessary to purchase a dozen pairs of fake, Gucci sunglasses. The cyclo drivers weren't much better, and whilst I appreciate the need for them to attract customers, I was very much ready to explode in their general direction if anyone so much as muttered the word 'cyclo' at me again! Their general cause wasn't helped by the fact that one tried to swindle Chloe and I out of several thousand dong, which didn't impress us much! Having said all this, there are some fascinating sights around Saigon, including the Cu Chi Tunnels, a Cao Dai Temple, the Reunification Palace and so forth.

A bbig 'plus point' for Hue was that Karen and Naomi wereto meet us there. Unfortunately, I hadn't anticipated falling ill on the overnight train, and as a consequence, couldn't join the tour with everybody the next day. I don't think I've ever been so frustrated! Still, a quiet walk around town the next day showed us a much calmer place than Saigon, with its fair share of entrepreneurs, but also a respect for personal space, and so Hue was a far more enjoyable place to exist.

The sleeper buses we caught to Hanoi were travelling in convoy, so my initial disappointment that we couldn't all travel together was soon lifted as we pulled into a coffee stop half-way. The buses are worth a mention as unlike normal coaches, the seats are horizontal beds whereby your feet are inserted into a dark hole underneath the person infront! I've never seen anything like it!

Hanoi was just as busy as Ho Chi Minh City, but whether it was because we'd become used to it or for some other reason, it seemed a much more charming place. We stayed in the Old Quarter where the grubby streets form a winding maze of confusion. My sense of direction is usually quite good, but our primary activity in Hanoi was getting lost, followed closely by finding our way back to somewhere familiar.

From Hanoi, we took day-trips to Ha Long Bay, Cuc Phuong National Park and to see a water puppetry show, which is exactly what it says on the tin - a pupper show... in water. Who comes up with these things?

The bus journey to Vientiane in Laos was not my favourite part of the trip, but it was well worth the discomfort to see Laos and to meet the other travellers who we stuck with for the rest of our stay. We met some lovely people, including Jayne, Paul and Tasha from the U.K., Otto and Osku from Finland, Kat and Michael from Australia but teaching in Vietnam, Ben on his bike and Steve and Danielle who we met later for rock-climbing.

Vientiane is the nicest capital city I've ever visited, for the sole reason that it's quiet and not at all like a capital city! It's about as busy as Wareham in Dorset, or if you're Cardiff born and bred, think of Abergavenny! You can walk down the middle of the road without getting killed, and the tuk-tuk drivers don't mind too much if you genuinely want to walk somewhere.

Vang Vieng was the last town on our itinerary, and it was the icing on the holiday cake. It's exceptionally touristy, but as of yet it's kept a lot of its small-town appeal. The beautiful mountain scenery certainly helps a lot, and it was in these surroundings that we went tubing, rock-climbing and on our motorbike ride.

Laos seems to have been left behind its big brother next door in terms of rapid development, but not at all to its detriment. The tourism trade will continue to bloom here if it can remain a haven in the midst of the bustle of Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. As every t-shirt there reads, it needs to be the 'Same, Same, but Different!' Obviously that makes no sense, but some of the nicest things in this world don't!

Rachel x

24 OCT 2008

I wish I had more time to write, but my feet have hardly touched the ground in the last few days. It's our last couple of days with Dave, and we've been in Vang Vieng in Laos. We've been floating down a river in tractor tyres, rock climbing (although I didn't get very high...I'm more of a land-lover than a mountain goat!) and this morning we hired out motorbikes for a bit of an exploration. Unfortunately, in the ten minutes I had to teach myself to ride a bike, I realised quite early on that it would be an expensive disaster, so I settled for riding on the back of Dave's instead. Chloe rode on Ben's, one of the travellers we've been with for the last 4 days. He's travelling South East Asia on his bike and you can read about his adventures here: www.benonhisbike.blogspot.com.

We've got to catch ther bus back to Vientienne now, which will take about four hours, and tomorrow we fly back to Kuala Lumpur. Sorry this one's not been very informative, but there's not much time for a good story!

Write properly soon,
Rachel x

In Laos...

Hello!

Our 20 hour bus journey into Laos turned out to be more 23 hours and *what* a journey it was! There were 7 other travellers onboard and they were all squished at the back of the coach, wedged in between boxes and luggage of all sorts. For some reason, unkown to any of us, I had to sit next to an elderly Vietnamese gentleman halfway down the coach. My seat was angled forwards and the seat in front was 2 inches from my face the whole way. Dave got soaked due to a leaking roof and ended up having to sit in the aisle to avoid being drenched before we'd even reached the border. There were stools, engines and boxes all the way down the aisle with people sitting and sleeping on top, and (the best...) a HAMMOCK strung up halfway down the coach!

We arrived at the border at about 5am, to a deserted, cold and misty no-man's land. If it wasn't for one of the Australian lady's speaking a small amount of Vietnamese, I don't know how we would have got on, but the actual process of getting a visa was relatively painless!

Laos itself is stunningly beautiful, and the rest of the drive through mountains, forests and past flowing rivers would have been lovely to see, but by that time I was so exhausted from lack of sleep that I dropped off almost as soon as we got back on the coach! Typical!

The only other biggie was losing my wallet last night. Thankfully, due I think to a lot of praying and keeping fingers crossed, it turned up this morning at the place we ate at last night. It was a small place under a tarpaulin, and we all sat on little cushions on the floor in a circle, with the other travellers. The man who gave my wallet back looked amazed at how happy I was to get it back, but I'd been envisaging trying to find a payphone, ringing the banks and not having any cards for months... I gave him a couple of thousand Kip to say thankyou (before realising he'd already helped himself, but nevermind), and now I can travel happily on to Vang Vieng, up North, with more than two quid in my pocket!

Write soon,
Rach x

Primates and Ha Long Bay

We've been out of the jungle now for ten days, so where did we end up this week? A monkey sanctuary! I'd been having withdrawal symptoms, and as Karen, Naomi, Chloe and Dave were keen on a day trip it seemed like a good plan!

The Endangered Primate Rescue Centre at Cuc Phuong National Park is home to monkeys and gibbons that are dire need of human intervention if they are to continue living in the wild. Vietnam has 24 species of primate, including 12 species of langur (the ones with the cool, punk-like haircut), 5 species of macaques (a stereotypical monkey), 2 species of slow loris (nocturnal bundles of fur with large eyes) and 5 species of gibbon (the acrobatic apes with long arms and legs). A quick tour of the rescue centre introduced us to several of these, including the Cat Ba Langur, of which there are only 60 wild animals remaining, and the beautiful Duoc Langur. (Worth looking up on Google until I get some pictures up!) The centre keeps the animals in captivity before releasing them into one of three semi-wild enclosures in Vietnam. From there they can be released when they're ready to be returned to the wild. Unfortunately for many this isn't possible as hunting is still a massive problem in this country, and our guide wxplained that they were waiting until hunting stops before they can release certain species. I'm not an incredibly skeptical person, but I can see that the future is dim for many monkeys in Vietnam. Having said that, visiting the centre was a very positive experience and it seemed surprisingly well run, so maybe there's still a glimmer of hope.

Yesterday, we went on a group tour to Ha Long Bay. A boat trip took us to see some enormous hunks of rock towering up above the sea. Our grumpy guide pointed out that one particular rock is featured on the back of the 20,000 dong note. There were some interesting people on the tour, including a guy called Bruce from Australia who'd left his job for six months to travel, two Korean girls who got stuck in a kayak (due to lack of steering ability, not literally stuck due to being too round), and two Vietnamese ladies who thought we were so incompetent at using chopsticks that they had to instruct us everytime we tried to eat anything. It was a nice tour, albeit the weather was rubbish, and an enjoyable day. More enjoyable, I suspect, than the 20 hour bus journey we face tonight into Laos...

...stay tuned!

Rachel

Vietnam

I'm in Vietnam!!!!

We sucessfully obtained our visas (after a LOT of running around Kuala Lumpur and trying to persuade grumpy consulate workers), and caught the correct flights into Ho Chi Minh City. We spent a couple of days there before heading north to Hue (Pronounced 'Hway!') and.... met Karen and Naomi! Fantastic! We're now all in Hanoi together and going to see a water puppet show this evening. I don't know what that involves, but aquatic puppets sound interesting.

Also interesting is the traffic here. I can only liken crossing the road to a game we used to have on Dad's old PC. 'Frogger', I think it was called. You had to direct a little green frog-shaped blob safely across a road of maniac drivers. Change the drivers to motorcycles and the frog-shaped blob to the five of us and you get the picture. Either that or imagine us trying to walk along the starting line just after the runners set off on the London Marathon...

Ho Chi Minh was similar, but a little more controlled. Maybe because the streets weren't so narrow? The houses here are narrow too, and they all look very amusing, teetering above the crowded streets. Naomi pointed out that even when you move further out of town you still get the odd, single, tall house in the middle of nowhere, so it must be a design preference as well as a space-saving mechanism.

I'll write more when there's more to tell and more time to tell it in, but for now 'That's All Folks!'

Randomly Assorted Photographs

These are the children at the field centre. Left to Right: Asim, Rachel, Apoi and Amoi. Amoi and Apoi have left now, but it was fun with all three there!!! The sunset over the Kinabatangan River...
Two long-tailed macaques using a bridge to connect the fragmented forest. Intended for orangutan use, none have been seen using it yet, but both macaques and proboscis monkeys have found them useful or entertaining...
Me driving a boat and posing like a wally...
A young crocodile...
This photo made it into the newspapers out here a little while back! It's me releasing a blackbacked kingfisher...

These are elephants crossing the river...
This is me covered in mud... (Cadets note the Malaysian Air Force T-shirt...)
This is Dave climbing a big tree!
And this is Dave, Chloe and I with the children one evening!

07 OCT 08

It’s the day before we set off on our trip, and I’m glad to say that it’s a little less stressful than previously thought. "Don’t Panic Captain Mainwaring!"
Having spoken to Naomi, we now have a meeting point and a backup meeting point, should the first one fail us, and I’m hopeful that we can get our visa in the time we have available. Fingers crossed. I’ve heard from home that there’s flooding in both Vietnam and Laos, and I’m not sure of the severity but we’ll soon find out. Apparently it’s affecting most of Vietnam, and on asking how Laos was, Mum replied "It looks a bit soggy". However, having spent two years in Wales, we’re quite used to soggy now!

It’s Dave’s last week at the field centre, so we’ve been making the most of the forest and the wildlife, as well as doing a bit of handiwork to create some bits and bobs for a tree-house type thingy… I’ll update you on the progress when we get back. Chloe may be turning into Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen….or Delia Smith for that matter, as she’s been cooking non-stop for about a week! My claims to being helpful in both activities are creating a rung for the ladder (which turned out not to be needed, but to prevent disappointment has been nailed in place anyway to create a double-rung halfway up) and the crumble of an apple crumble. I also chopped up a pineapple and multiple onions. Maybe I’ll be more competent in both woodwork and cooking by the time I return?

I’m very excited about going to Vietnam and Laos, and can’t wait to see the others!
Rachel

03 OCT 08

Hey everyone, sorry it’s been so long since you had a proper update, but the jungle still lacks broadband or a wi-fi spot… as one would expect! Most of the time this isn’t the slightest problem – I’m still contactable in an emergency by mobile phone (when standing in certain places at the field centre), but today it’s caused all manner of difficulties. Next Wednesday (08 OCT 08) we fly to Kuala Lumpur. Chloe, Dave and I are travelling to Vietnam, where we’re going to meet with Karen and Naomi from home. Vietnam is one of the few countries in South East Asia that require you to obtain your visa before arrival, so for the past couple of weeks I’ve been ringing the embassy in Kuala Lumpur to find out how we go about this when we get to Peninsular Malaysia. Helpfully, everyone at the embassy tends to be at lunch sometime between 12:00 and 14:00, and it then closes at 15:00. Having spoken to a very nice lady at the British Consulate in KL and been given a handful of other telephone numbers to try, I’ve been waving my phone about trying to find signal and get in touch with the Vietnamese embassy to no avail, until this morning. The gentleman on the other end of the phone-line started off trying his best to explain in English how to get a visa, telling me that they need three working days to process it. I explained that we only had two days, that our flights had already been booked, but that we had the details here we could give over the phone if it would help speed up the process… it wouldn’t. After a quick rendezvous with the others, Chloe gave them a call back and very patiently spoke to every English speaking person in the office, all of whom were adamant that a visa cannot be issued in less than three working days. Oh dear. Our flight leaves KL for Ho Chi Minh City on the evening of the 10th October, and I’m meeting Karen and Naomi three days later, so we really don’t have that much time (or cash) to play with! So we’ve spent the rest of the morning on the phone to a friend in KL who might be able to fill the forms for us and to the embassy who eventually informed us that we could use an express route to get our visa…which would take three working days. It’s been quite hard to stay calm. Chloe then spent twelve minutes on hold waiting to speak to Air Asia to find out if we can either change our flights to allow for an extra day, or buy another flight for me to fly ahead a day early and sort out our visas. After hearing every possible promotion on flights to Bali and Hong Kong, my phone ran out of credit. Currently we’re visa-less, credit-less, and if we’re completely honest, fairly clueless about how we’re getting into Vietnam. I’ve got no way of contacting Karen and Naomi until we go to town to fly to Kuala Lumpur, which is no doubt when this will find its way to you, so if you two are reading this – check your email when you get to Hanoi!!! Although it’s likely to be the 8th October by now, and you’ll have left on the 7th from Heathrow, so I really don’t know how we’re going to get into contact!!! I give up!


Okay, I’m going to make a cup of tea before the generator goes off for the afternoon.
This afternoon we’re doing a spot of trail maintenance before it starts raining, which should be fun. I saw an absolutely massive snake on one trail the other day. I described it to Zainal who manages the centre and he suspects it was a cobra, possibly even a King Cobra!!! That’s pretty cool isn’t it? We also saw an otter whilst walking down to the family’s house the other night, and three giant geckos in the space of five days. Wild Boar, Monkeys and Monitor Lizards are still popping up on a regular basis too, so there’s no shortage of wildlife! On the downside, ants keep invading our hot chocolate supply and mosquitoes are abundant (though a tiny bit less so with each one I remove from existence!)

Next time I write, I’ll hopefully be in Vietnam… fingers crossed!!!
Rachel x

30 SEP 08

So much to write about, but so little time!
We’ve just spent three days in Sukau working with the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project, with whom we’re working on our project. After speaking with Marc and Mislin, who we’ll be working with, we now have a much clearer idea of what we’re studying and have some data to start fiddling with. It’s basically to do with what orangutans eat in degraded forest, which can later be used to see how they adapt to living in forests that have been affected by commercial logging. Obviously, this is quite important stuff when you consider that in the Kinabatangan area alone, there are only 50,000ha of forest left. In the last twenty years, 80% has been converted to oil palm agriculture. There are very few remaining primary forest areas left for the orangutan to inhabit, but as this case shows, it’s possible for them to live in secondary forest and it’s important for us to understand how this changes their lifestyle.

We spent a couple of mornings with Azli and Adyt who have been following an orangutan named ‘Julaina’ and her three year old daughter, to understand the techniques involved in getting the data. We then jumped at the chance when asked whether we wanted to follow for a whole day. We left at 0530 and returned at 1900, noting down her behaviour throughout the day. We also had the chance to work with the nest survey team who monitor the state of orangutan nests over several months. It’s useful to know what types of trees are chosen by orangutans to nest in as well as which trees provide their food supplies in order to create effective conservation plans. Bam and Mislin then kindly took us down the river to see new orangutan bridges in action. There was a group of macaques using one bridge as we passed, sat happily grooming above the water, and I think it may well only be a matter of time before a curious orangutan or two give it a try. In forest that’s fragmented as much as it is in this area, ways of allowing the orangutans to travel and encounter other orangutans are extremely important, especially from a genetic point of view.

It’s also Hari Raya tomorrow – the end of the fasting month, so I’ve got to go and make some decorations to make it a bit more special for the people that have to work here tomorrow. It’s the equivalent of Christmas in the Islamic year, so it’s not very nice to be at work for it. Chloe’s got plans to make a ridiculous amount of cakes, so all should be fairly well!
Rachel

13 Sep 08

The generator provides electricity for several hours a day, during which Chloe and I have been getting on with our orangutan reading, which is stored on the computers. After lunch, the generator goes off, and we take the opportunity to read, walk in the jungle or learn some Malay. The other day I’d opted for a few more of Phileas Fogg’s adventures from ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. I was sat outside the station and had just reached a planned rescue attempt involving an elephant and some angry religious fanatics, when I realised I’d been listening to a crashing noise in the trees for some time. On investigation, it turned out to be an orangutan, so I ran in to get the others and dashed back to my room to get ‘jungled up’, ready to follow it into the forest if that was where it intended to go. It was indeed heading into the trees, so Dave and I followed at a respectable distance. Quite liking the great apes, I get a little excited when we see one, especially so close to the field centre. I don’t know if you can then imagine how it felt to realise that there were in fact three travelling a few trees apart!

Following orangutans in the forest involves a fair amount of scrambling through stubborn undergrowth, a large amount of sitting around whilst they plough through a particular tree’s supply of fruits and a huge amount of swatting at mosquitoes, but we followed them until the sun started to lower itself and we thought it best to head back to a path before darkness fell. Unfortunately, we under-estimated the amount of daylight we had left and it was dark before we knew it.

I’m quite forgetful, and there’s always something I forget to put in my pocket before we set off. Sometimes it’s my penknife or a notepad. This time it was my head torch.
As a teenager running around Wareham Forest on cadet night exercises I’d had a bit of experience navigating around pine-filled obstacle courses in the dark, but that was a piece of proverbial cake in comparison to our walk back to camp. I challenge anyone to follow a trail marked out by green (what a stupid colour for a forest…) dabs of paint on tree trunks in a pitch black forest using the light of a battered old Nokia mobile phone. However, not having another option, this is what Dave and I did, and after losing the trail again we headed north knowing that a yellow trail would fall across our path at some point. Amazingly we spotted a ‘yellow’ tree and followed the trail back to the jetty and from there, the field centre. Four and a half hours after we set off, we arrived back just in time for dinner, which Chloe had been helping to cook all afternoon!

Just to make the evening a little more eventful, on returning to our accommodation, I realised that I no longer seemed to be in possession of my video camera. Overriding the panic, I remembered that the batteries had died shortly after leaving the field centre and I’d hung it on a branch to give my neck a rest whilst we were stood under a tree, dodging bits of falling fruit from the orangutans’ afternoon-tea. I honestly thought I’d never find it, or if I did it would be in the morning after an enormous storm would have rendered it useless. Either that or an inquisitive macaque would have acquired it as a new play-thing. Dave and I each grabbed a torch and headed a little way into the forest and tried to remember which tree we’d been stood by. This was obviously a ridiculously impossible task. We split up and I desperately shone my trusty headlight around muttering ‘Please let me find my camera. Actually, please let me find it this evening. Well really, I’d like to find it quite soon, otherwise I’ll be lost before I know it and then I’ll have an even bigger problem. Please, please can I find my camera so we can go and have dinner?’ And just as I thought those last few words, I walked into my poor video camera, left dangling on the least noticeable tree in the jungle, with an incredible looking moth perched on its case.

Lessons learnt:
1. Always carry a torch.
2. Never hang photographic equipment on a tree, unless there’s only one tree in the area.
3. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

11 Sep 08

I've just had a brainwave that probably should have occurred some time ago - just because there's no internet in the jungle doesn't mean I can’t write a little update in advance of finding an internet café, hence saving time and Ringgits on the occasion that we do find ourselves in town! Don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

So it’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote anything and we’ve been continuing our background research before starting our project. We’ll be working with data from the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project in November, so we still have a little while to get up to speed with everything before we crack on with our project. Between now and then we’ve got some trail maintenance work to get on with, plus a visa renewal trip. It’s all very exciting, as we’ve decided to go to Vietnam, where hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with Karen and Naomi from Dorset. We haven’t quite worked out the logistics yet, but we’re sat around the travel guides each evening slowly forming a plan. Next time we’re in Sandakan (which is probably today if this has found its way onto the internet), we’ll try to find something like ‘Apocalypse Now’ or ‘Platoon’ to watch before we go.

There’s been a group of people studying elephants with the Scientific Exploration Society around off and on for the last week. It’s a very mixed bunch of characters from Australia and Britain, but most of them seem very nice. It felt a bit strange playing the host, but I suppose we’ve been here for long enough now! There were a couple of writers in the group who were interesting to talk to, including a lady called Anna Nicholson who wrote ‘A Lizard in My Luggage’, which rings a bell. She’s exceptionally bubbly and talkative, so it wasn’t all that surprising to find that she works for a billion different publications, but she wasn’t at all patronising and was very complimentary about our field station news letter, the ‘Jungle Times’! Helen and I started it during the field course, commenting on the funniest things to happen during the day, but Benoit (my boss), has asked me to continue with it throughout the year. So although it’s had to become a little more sensible, the Jungle Times has evolved into a fortnightly newsletter for the field centre. As well as that, he’s got me writing press releases for interesting things involving the field centre, so I’m nice and busy at the moment.