Day Eleven – Day Seventeen

Oh my gosh, I have so much to write!

Where to begin? On Thursday morning (6th Dec), I left Hanoi and flew to Kuala Lumpur with Air Asia (the Asian equivalent to EasyJet or RyanAir). Sally met me at the airport, and took me back to their house. It was pouring with rain (so my plans to lie by the pool and get some sun didn’t materialise!). Instead, we went to Bangsar shopping centre… I ate at Olio Dome, and looked around Cold Storage (memories of Singapore!)… Then in the evening, we ate at a food court, I had Roti Canai, mmmm!

The next morning, I had to leave to the airport at 4am!! I was flying AirAsia to Sandakan (Sabah, Borneo). My flight was slightly delayed because of ‘technical problems’ (great!!), and I landed in Sandakan at 11am. I was meant to be meeting Becky Davie (another Imperial Medic) at 12.45pm (she was flying in from Kota Kinabalu), so I just sat around at the rather sparse Sandakan airport waiting for her. At 12.40pm I went to to check the arrivals board only to discover that her flight was delayed until 3pm! So I had rather a long boring wait!!

When she arrived, we were met by a family friend who happens to be the chief vet at the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, and he informed us that we’d be living on site with one of the vets!! (I had no idea where we were going to be staying beforehand, so it was a rather nice surprise!) When we arrived at the centre, it was already after closing time, but the vets took us to the outdoor feeding platform and nursery to see some of the rehabilitated orang-utans! It was amazing! Tourists never get to go to the nursery, so we felt quite VIP-ish!

That first evening, there was a barbeque because one of the main sponsors of the project was in town! All the UK volunteers (on a 2 month programme in Sandakan) were also at the barbeque. The karaoke machine was blasting away (but I steered well clear after my earlier karaoke experience), and the beer was plentiful! Becky and I managed to make it onto the top table with the main sponsors (Rick, an American, and some other guy who owns a big hotel in Kota Kinabalu). Therefore, our table also had plenty of wine, and a big bottle of whiskey! It was a good drinking environment for me because we were outside in a dark garden, so my red alcohol face was well masked (plus most people in Asia go red when they drink too, so it was no biggie!)… It was quite an amusing, surreal night… We were suddenly in the jungle with lots of orang-utans, and having a loud unexpected party with a bunch of strangers (who were mostly hippie types who’ve ventured out to Asia for a life-changing experience cuddling orang-utans!)

The next morning, we went and did what the tourists do at Sepilok… basically watch a video about the centre, then go to the viewing platform where you watch the 10am feeding time… It was good, but there were lots of people, and the feeding platform was quite far away compared to how close we had been the day before. Will is going to be very disappointed with my photo’s… they were fairly crap! But it was still fun to watch the orang-utans having a good time with their banana’s and sugar-cane sticks! That afternoon we went to the Proboscis Monkey Centre. The vets knew the owners of the Proboscis Monkey centre (because they often have to treat any monkeys that get injured/sick), so again we got treated like VIPs! Here’s a photo of Cecilia, Me, Becky and Sen.

After that, the heavens opened, and we got drenched walking from the car to Agnes Keith’s house (Agnes Keith is a woman who lived in Borneo before and after WWII, and wrote several books including Land Below the Wind. Her lovely house has been turned into a museum). Here is a photo of Becky in front of Agnes Keith’s house.

In the evening, we ate a huge meal at a seafood restaurant… the prawns were enormous, and the oysters were CRAZY big! Check out the Oyster!!

The next morning we got to see some of the baby orang-utans having their baths. The centre rescues orang-utans that are being kept at pets, or who have lost their mothers for some reason. The orang-utans are rehabilitated, taught how to live in the wild, and then released when they are ready (e.g. have shown adequate nest building skills, able to find food by themselves etc). The whole rehabilitation process can take over 10 years. Some orang-utans will never learn how to build nests, and will therefore never be able to be released properly into the wild, yet some pick up all the skills easily and go off happily into the wild. There are numerous stages at the centre… newcomers live indoors, and they are allowed out into training areas (with ropes, tyres to swing on etc) to learn how to swing. The young newcomers are bathed, fed by bottle, and monitored closely by nurses who take the role of a mother. Here is a baby called Churrio having his bath! He’s 1 year old.

Once they get older, they can start to live in a semi-open area, and play on ropes leading out to the jungle (but they’ll still come home each night for dinner and to sleep in the enclosure). Then if they are ready, they can be released (but many of the released orang-utans still pop back to the feeding platforms each day to supplement their diet with some milk and bananas!) The jungle at Sepilok has now reached capacity, and so orang-utans are now being released into another section of jungle called Tabin. It’s a great set-up, and the orang-utans are well cared for. The vets deal with all sorts of problems… one orang-utan was recently electrocuted on a overhead power cable, which just shows how much damage humans are causing by encroaching on the orang-utans habitat. They also see a lot of fractures, diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition. Here is a photo of me with Churrio at bathtime!

The weather hadn’t been too great during our time in Sandakan, but we still wanted to go on a jungle trek… One of the orang-utan rangers agreed to take us. We were originally going to do a 4 hour trek, but the weather was pretty bad, and parts of the jungle were flooded, so we decided to go on a 2 hour trek to the Water Hole instead. We were given leech socks, wellies and also wore raincoats, so we thought we were pretty well protected from leeches. We were wrong! Within 5 minutes on the jungle trail we already had at least 5-10 tiger leeches each on our boots and trousers. The ranger brought a spray bottle of dettol water, which makes the leeches curl up and fall off! We were spraying it non-stop. I think the ranger was also taken aback by the sheer volume of ravenous leeches. We realised that no amount of clothing, boots, socks were going to keep the suckers off us! During the trek, we must have sprayed off at least 100 leeches. I got one on my lip, and up my sleeve, Becky was worse-off, and managed to accumulate a fair number underneath her clothes! One leech bite on her arm bled for a good hour afterwards (they release an anti-coagulant). Here is her bleeding leech wound:

 

The trek was really good despite the devil leeches! The rainstorms had managed to collapse most of the bridges along the way, which meant there was plenty of wading through rivers (and at one point we had to wade across the top of a waterfall, which didn’t seem sensible, but the ranger went across, and we figured we’d better follow him!)… Originally we’d thought we would spend a lot of time looking out for jungle wildlife (hornbills, mousedeer, orang-utans, monkeys), but because of the rain, the animals were all hiding, and we were preoccuopied with leech annihilating and scary river crossings! This bridge behind us in the photo had collapsed in the middle, so it was falling to one side. We had to cross it one-at-a-time walking along the middle beam. We thought he was joking when he first suggested it, but he wasn’t! Lots of fun!

Anyway, on our last night in Borneo, Cecilia cooked up a local feast… really yummy. Becky and I watched copious amounts of TV… I think we watched 3-4 movies or something disturbing like that! It was pouring with rain outside, and so the sofa seemed like a good spot! I spent 9 ringgit during my time in Borneo! Sen (Becky’s cousin) insisted on paying for everything… and all the food at the orang-utan centre was free for us. We even got a free ride back to the airport because the taxi-man was also a part time orang-utan ranger!!

My return flight to KL was a bit frightening… We started taxiing along the little Sandakan runway, built up speed, lifted on the front wheels, then slammed back down on the ground before screeching to a halt (with very little runway left ahead… plane wobbling profusely as the pilot tried to bring the plane to a stop). Everyone’s knuckles were white, and our faces were a similar colour. It was so frightening. Then, without explanation, the plane turned around, built up speed and took off in the other direction. Once in the air, the pilot made the normal announcement ‘Welcome on board… approx flight time is…’ And then just at the end of the announcement said ‘Sorry for the departure’. That was it! No explanation! My only thought was that he was initially about to take off in the wrong direction, (scary thought: maybe into the flight path of an incoming plane?)… and then got shouted at by the tower, and quickly slammed back down and turned around. Anyway, it wasn’t fun… We also had some really shocking turbulance on that flight, where the pilot actually told the stewardess’ to sit down, and told everyone that under no circumstance were any of us to get up to use the toilets! Our confidence was knocked by this stage, and we all sat ashen in our seats!

Anyway, safe in one piece, I was back in KL, and went to the Islamic Museum with Sally, before going out for a fabulous dinner at Indochine with Brian and Sally. The next day, I had a lie-in, then packed my things and headed back to the airport for my return to Hanoi.

Today I was back in the hospital… Decided to go to Antenatal Clinic. The doctor only spoke French and Vietnamese, so I put my rusty French to use, and actually did okay! I met Annett for lunch, this time we went to a bakery (branching out from Quan An Ngon!!)… I leave to Singapore (and then New Zealand) tomorrow evening, and she told me that I’m missing some Xmas Expat parties, which is a real shame. Oh well… Tonight I’m going out for dinner with the Swedish girls. It’s our last night together… Really going to miss their company when I am here on my own after Christmas!

Managed to have a nice chat over Skype to all my family members and Will last night… There’s a fair few drama’s going on back home, and I felt very far away from them all last night. I would have loved to transport back to England for the night to be with everyone. I think I was tired, but I began to feel a bit upset at being so removed from it all. I’m feeling much better today, and am really looking forward to seeing Will in a few days time.