21 JUN 09

Earlier in the week we had some unexpected visitors. I accompanied a guest on an evening boat ride, in the hopes that I would be able to answer his questions and point out interesting wildlife. Although I've come a long way from similar activities seven months ago, where a "What's that?!" would be answered with "I don't know... a bird?", my job was made an awful lot easier when we encountered a group of elephants. We knew they would be somewhere in the area, making their way down the riverbanks, but since their last visit to 'our jungle' in October, we've not seen them around. We spent a warm sunset watching them chilling out by the edge of the river, their large heads visible above the aptly named elephant grass. Soon it became dark and we made our way back to the field centre.

The following afternoon we set out on a mission to find the elephants again. I kept my fingers crossed, not least because Chloe and Rachel weren't with us yesterday. I'd remembered for once to put on my sunglasses as winged insects seem to have believe that my eyes are in their designated flight-paths, and thrown on my spare pair of flip-flops after the others had spontaneously fallen apart the day before. I was just negotiating my way down from the rickety jetty into the boat when my sunglasses fell off of my face! Salen, our boat-driver for the afternoon, tried his hardest to fish them out, but they were probably already resting on the nose of a crocodile further downriver.
This small niggle aside, we tried to locate the elephants, but our efforts were in vain. We weren't the only people trying to find them, as Datuk Michelle Yeoh was also in the area trying to film them. She'd been staying in Sukau whilst we were there, but even if we'd bumped into each other I wouldn't have realised it as I'm notoriously bad for recognising people. I really should have twigged with this one though as she's played a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies and was also in Memoirs of a Geisha. We returned home slightly disappointed at having missed the elephants, but still chuckling at getting a wave from a filmstar on a jungle river.
No sooner had we arrived back than we received information from a shady character that infact the elephants were now with the film crew. Salen resigned himself to a second attempt and started the engine. I jumped into the boat with such force that I broke another flip-flop. Naturally I'd broken the same one (the left, or the 'flip') so I now have two right shoes and no left ones.
We managed to catch the elephants before it got dark, and despite the presence of film crew and equipment it was a very enjoyable evening. A highlight was watching the camera-man fall down the river bank after jumping at a particularly loud 'trumpeting'. I'll try my hardest to get the video clip on here when I can work out how to remove it from my camera!

Rachel

16 JUN 09

Before heading back to the jungle from Kota Kinabalu we took a slight detour to bid farewell to our friends in Sukau. It was our last visit to the village for the foreseable future, certainly for this stay in Malaysia.
Whilst there we sorted out our data/computer issues with Mislin, visited some old friends in a village further downriver and were able to spend some time with the family at the homestay. We also took another trip to the study site where the orangutan-staff were following Jenny and her baby Mallotus. They were particularly 'un-bovvered', munching on leaves in a particularly tall tree, but it was a nice way to spend a day and say goodbye to the field-staff, for the time-being at least!

Of course, there's still a month to go, and a busy one at that. There are lots of jungle visitors scheduled in for the next four weeks, as well as the 2009 field course coming out from Cardiff... I have a feeling it's going to be a hectic time!

More soon,
Rachel

15 JUN 09

This may seem slightly irrelevant to jungle life, and I promise to write something more jungly soon, but Chloe has just brought this video clip to my attention and I have to share it with you...

Enjoy!

07 JUN 09

It's been a crazy few days in Kota Kinabalu. We left the jungle to go to Farina's wedding which took place today. It was a lovely day and really nice to see Farina in the beautiful wedding outfit, with her new husband in military uniform. We spent a couple of hours there, where we witnessed the couple's arrival and followed them into a house where friends and family were able to take photographs and congratulate them in the traditional way. This involved sprinkling things over the bride and grooms' hands, although I'm yet to research what or why!

Yesterday was the boss' birthday and so we went bowling with him and some mutual friends before going for a meal in town. Again, it was a busy day with some musical activity in the morning and running around trying to do highly exciting things like finding the office for Royal Brunei Airlines and stopping to chat to the driver of a 1927 Austin 7 which took me by surprise by pulling up next to me at the bank!

From here we go to Sukau for a couple of days to work with Mislin and show her what little knowledge we have of using Microsoft Office. Hopefully we'll be of some use...! Then it's back to the jungle for the final leg of jungley goodness before heading home to the U.K..

30 MAY 09

We spent a week doing hardcore, statistical computerisation with our supervisor who flew out from the United Kingdom. It was a busy week at the centre, with our boss, the orangutan man and a friend from Kota Kinabalu also being present, as well as two zoo keepers from America! Despite my fear of numbers I surprised myself by surviving the intensive few days, and came away with what I hope to be an understanding of how to go about working with this orangutan data. I have to keep specifying 'orangutan data' to remind me why I'm doing it! Our supervisor is also 'a bird man', which was rather nice as we could spend two mornings netting and ringing birds. We caught several that had been ringed last year on the field course, so it was satisfying to know that at least some of our feathered friends are just as alive and well (and stupid/blind) as they were last year!

We drove the boat to deposit both our supervisor and Joao at Batu Putih. I can't begin to understand where the last three months have gone, but Joao (aka Spoonface, the Portuguese volunteer) has reached the end of his time here with us and has disappeared back to Portugal. Chloe and I had great intentions to pick up some Portuguese whilst he was here, but this sentence is all I can muster:
'Eu gosto de macacos, de vinho e de queijo'
which translates as 'I like monkeys, wine and cheese'.
Although we haven't exactly mastered the language, I feel this is a good start and am now confident that I could go to Lisbon and not go hungry or thirsty, and if I'm lucky I may find someone who also likes monkeys...

20 MAY 09

TARSIER!!!

I went out on a nightwalk with Rachel and Ridzwan again, doing what we call 'point sampling'. On this type of 'monkey mission' we walk to pre-decided points along a transect (straight trail), turn our head-torches off for five minutes, stand silently in the dark, turn on the lights and try to find nocturnal primates.
On this particular walk I'd fully resigned myself to the fact that we rarely encounter slow lorises or western tarsiers and was holding out hopes of catching a glimpse of a civet or an especially large frog. Up until this point we'd mostly found things whilst walking between points, as opposed to whilst at points, and so I'd spent the first three points trying to think of song titles beginning with each letter of the alphabet.
Amazingly, at our fourth surveying point, Rachel spotted a tarsier! They're peculiar creatures, resembling something caught between a gremlin and a teddy bear. The resulting effect is that of a small, evil-looking bundle of fur that doesn't want to be messed with. Rachel managed to get the data she needed and we left 'Samson' to it. This is the third tarsier spotted at the field centre, but for me it was a first and it's a sighting most people interested in primates would kill for!

16 MAY 09

He came back.

After another night of gnawing I wasn't very impressed, so I set out another trap last night. I caught him on the second night after his original capture, kept him in a cage (with food and water) until the following lunchtime and sent him on a boat down the river. The rat is apparently now happy and looking for a new home far, far away.

Thank goodness for that.