30 APR 09

Hello, sorry for the spasmodic nature of my updates; for some reason the internet connection in the jungle won't allow me to use this website and I can't seem to work out why.

I'm currently in Kota Kinabalu once again in preparation to fly out to Cambodia tomorrow evening. We're flying into Siem Reap for a few days as our last trip out of the country to see the temples at Angkor.

Zainal, the centre manager, raced us to the bridge to catch the bus this morning, but it had already left by the time we arrived! He then, very kindly, made like Neil Hamilton to catch up with the damn thing which had travelled about thirty miles before we managed to flag it down!

It sounds about right for one of our journeys...
...I'll let you know if we ever get to the land of forgotten civilisations, coffee and Tomb Raider.

Rachel

18 April 2009 -3

A snap from one of our night walks earlier in the week...

18 April 2009 -2

18 APR 09
The other Rachel is studying nocturnal primates, and as an amateur primate enthusiast (sounds more important and less weird than 'monkey lover'), I join her when she chooses to go out at sensible times. I made the mistake of getting up at 3am once but it was a bit too tiring...
...that's not to say it wasn't worth it though. It was actually that morning that I saw the slow loris. They're little furry animals that live quite high up in the trees and can be spotted by their 'eye-shine', which is how Rachel saw him/her at the end of our walk. It wasn't quite daylight but it was posssible to make out his shape until he closed his eyes and it was no more likely that we were looking at a loris than a leaf.

The night before last we went out at about 11pm and saw all sorts of frogs, spiders and a small-toothed palm civet. We've seen a couple of different civets, which look a little like cats but are more closely related to mongooses. We've also come across sleeping birds and a snake in a tree.

Rachel and Ridzwan are off on a 2am stroll tonight, but I've decided not to join them this time. It's been raining heavily since last night as we hadn't had any real rain for two days before that. The water was covering the path to our rooms so much tonight that I had to go to dinner wearing welly boots after soaking my trainers getting to the room in the first place.

The generator's going off now so I'll leave it at that for tonight.

18 APR 09

The other Rachel and Ridzwan recording data on a night walk

08 APR 09

We're expecting the arrival of a small group from the U.K. at the centre today. There have been a couple of orangutans in close proximity to the buildings in the last few days, so on Monday I followed Phoebe and her tiny daughter Pisang (banana) until they settled down for the night in a comfortable looking nest made either by her the day before or another orangutan, possibly her other daughter Jane who's never far away. I got up after an hour's sleep (possibly too much coffee replacing the tea I've given up for Lent?) at 5am to station myself under her tree in the rain. She was up by six o'clock and I recorded her behaviour as I followed at a respectful distance.

It was a good choice to follow the one with the baby because she wasn't intent on moving particularly quickly. By my breakfast-time Phoebe had already stopped at three different trees for fruits and leaves and I was feeling rather peckish. It was lucky then that she chose to hang around by one of the buildings for four hours, as an SMS to Chloe and Loris (the other Rachel) meant that I gained a banana and peanut butter sandwich delivery service and also some company for the rest of the day. We were close enough to the main buildings to get a take-away lunch too! I would have been able to keep track of her all day, had it not been for the impassable undergrowth she effortlessly swung over later in the afternoon and the uselessness of the dodgy knife from Laos we inherited from Dave. To cut a long story short: we lost them and had to return in the rain feeling quite defeated and orangutan-less. But it's all a matter of perspective... I don't know where the orangs are to show the group when they arrive, but I have spent 13 hours with some beautiful animals in the last couple of days!

(P.S. My blog won't allow me to access it at the field centre - this has gone a long way round to find its way online, so delays are expected!)

02 APR 09

Would you believe it? This morning I went to look up a word in my lovely new Malay-English dictionary: a word that was necessary to translate to do my work and a word which just so happened to begin with the letter T. I turned to the 'T' section in the appropriate half of the book only to discover that not only had they omitted to print the word in question but they'd left out the whole of the letter T! I don't believe it!

We're back at Danau Girang and I've spent the day working on getting the next newsletter finished and cracking on with the data work. It's getting to the point where I could probably do it in my sleep now and the light still isn't particularly bright at the end of the tunnel so it's full steam ahead until I can stop copying and pasting in Excel spreadsheets! It's great to be back in the jungle though. Each time I return I feel even luckier to be here, if that's possible, and can't quite imagine the day when I have to leave it for real.