Simon at Sepilok

It has hardly stopped raining for the past 72 hours now and the water levels are rising fast. Overnight the noise of the rain was so loud we could hardly hear each other talk in the room!

Well this morning it was our 2nd induction day at Sepilok. Half of the group had an 8am start and were busy with the cage cleaning and young orangutan bathing by the time my group were to start. We were supposed to be taking some of the orangutans out for exercise but unfortunately with all the rain they had to stay in their cages again today.

We are supposedly at the end of the rainy season now but it is dragging on this year. They expect it to be over before the end of February (worst case).
So instead of exercising the orangutans outside i was asked to help two of the full-time rangers take some food down to feeding Platform A for the 10am tourist viewing. This is where we saw the feeding session on the first day we arrived here - this time of course i had my green Sabah Wildlife Department shirt on and it felt totally different!

Armed with a big bucket of bananas i set off following the other guys who were carrying bundles of sugar cane over a bridge and INTO the flood waters that used to be a footpath to the platform. At this point i wished i'd brought waders with me as the water soon was over the top of my wellies and i had visions of leeches feasting on my toes. A bit further on and we were back onto the wooden walkways used by the tourists to reach the viewing area. Either side of the walkway looked like a muddy light brown lake and it was now perfectly obvious to me why they have these raised walkways in the forest!

Near the platform i was asked to put down my food for the rangers to take up the steps. I was pretty glad about this as the water they had to wade through was dangerously close to crotch height by this time.......!!!
So i watched part of the session with the tourists. But what a difference from the other day!! It was still raining hard and it appears that Orangutans are as reluctant as we are to leave the warmth and comfort of a bed even if there is food on offer. For the first 10 minutes nothing stirred. Then a single orangutan moved through some trees behind the viewing area and then sat high up, sheltering under a rapidly-fashioned "umbrella" of branches. Nothing else stirred. About half the tourists got bored waiting after half an hour, but within minutes of them leaving the remainder were treated to a real close-up as our friend with the umbrella decided the tummy rumbles were too much to ignore. He climbed down the tree and onto the railing of the viewing platform. The 30 or so people left were able to take some amazing close up pictures as the orangutan slowly walked around the platform and climbed another tree on the other side, before confidently swinging through the branches and sliding down the trunk of the main tree of the feeding platform. For me that was an amazing experience, watching all of those skills in action first hand. I had to leave to get back to the work session but heard later that another 10 orangutans joined the feeding session before the 1 hour viewing was over.
It just seems so crazy that some people travelled all this way to watch the orangutans here and then gave up waiting after less than half an hour. Oh well, it's their loss!!!

Pretty soon our little work taster session was over, most of the others in my group had been on towel washing duty so i didn't really miss anything, in fact quite the opposite!

I came back to the resthouse and set about doing some hand washing of clothes in a bucket in the basin/shower/loo/utility room. We are running on generators at the moment (the power goes on and off every few hours) so hot water was very limited. I don't think there's much hope of any of it drying in the next 24 hours but we'll see! I wonder how many people have posted pictures of damp underwear on their blog? Hmmm, probably more than is healthy.... :-)

This afternoon we all headed off into the nearest town to try to find a post office and change some money at the bank. Unfortunately both were closed as it was a Saturdays! Never mind, despite the rain we got to explore a market, eat some fancy cakes, ride the local buses and take a few more pictures of the flooded houses.






Tuna the cat was pleased to see us back home safely...
Maybe because he is bored with attacking Elle's hair extensions now...
















Tonight is our official "Welcome Party" at the resthouse. All of the rangers from Sepilok will be joining us and there are rumours of a karaoke machine. I will of course issue everybody with earplugs when it is my turn to sing. A necessary precaustion that those of you who have heard me on the PS2 Singstar before will understand perfectly.......

What can i say? I've had a great day... started by opening birthday cards and presents that people had got me to bring from home, then we started our Sepilok Induction sessions and had our first contact with the Orangutans in the indoor nursery. It was amazing. We are part of only a very lucky few who will ever get to work this closely with these wonderful animals...
...and i even got see Sogo Sogo today and she is beautiful!!

Tonight the others all surprised me with a birthday cake - it looks like about 5 of our group have birthdays while we are here so should return home looking like a buddah after all.

Night for now and thanks for all your birthday wishes...... :-)

We had the services of John today, a professional tour guide who showed us around the main town of Sandakan. It's about 25km away from our base at Sepilok which was about 30 mins drive in the small, ageing coach we had at our disposal today.

Highlights and lowlights included:
1) Crocodile Farm (didn't go in myself, but some of the others confirmed the appalling conditions they and other animals were being kept in. I don't really see why we would be expected to go there when we are here to do animal conservation work! Thankfully we didn't have to stay to endure the so-called "show"...)
2) War Memorial (a park deidcated to the 2700 allied mainly Australian and British POWs who lost their lives towards the end of WWII either in the camps or during the "Death Marches" of 1945. We only know of the suffering they endured at the hands of the Japanese because 6 out of the whole number managed to escape and survive. Quite a sobering story...
3) Town Centre for supermarket (nuts, crisps, bikkies etc), phone shops (SIM cards and top-up cards), KFC (public toilets!), veggie noodle bar (lunch)
Our coach needed a bump start after this - a pity no-one managed to get a photo of John, me and half a dozen tiny schoolboys trying to get the bus rolling at enough speed to bump it. We managed it on the 3rd go for the record.
4) Chinese Buddhist Temple - very elegant building and some lovely Buddha statues inside. That reminds me Russ, i hope you are doing ok...?!

5) Water Village - these houses are built on stilts right out into the sea. They are actually very comfortable inside, we were able to browse around inside one of them (as long as we perused the trinkets for sale as well of course!). Yvonne, Ruth and Elle fell in love with a little boy while they were there although i'm sure he'll be forgotten once the baby orangutans are cuddling up to them next week! This guy managed to catch a coupl of small fish and a tiny crab while we were there...


6) Chinese Cemetary (not sure why we went here, but apparently Albert really wanted John to take us to see this......)
7) English Tea House (very lovely views over Sandakan and some fancy tea and scones. Ok-yaah!)

After that it was back to the Resthouse to make a few phone calls home and for a bit of relaxation ahead of the 2-day induction at Sepilok which starts tomorrow.
It has hardly stopped raining for the past 24 hours. Outside the Croc farm it absolutely threw it down and i'll never complain about English rain being heavy again and now I can understand why there have been mudslides in the Sandakan area over the past few days. But I guess that's why it is called a RAINforest after all!!

Just had our first powercut since arriving at Sepilok but the generators kicked in ok so i didn't need to crack open the first lightstick yet.

Well, i'm off to dinner in a mo.
Junper Lagi (that's "see you soon" in Malay...)

PS message to Mum, Dad, Paul, James and Raychel - have a great holiday in Tenerife.

Big thanks to Dave W. who kindly uploaded a copy of my camera software cd which i stupidly forgot to bring with me... Luckily the last half hour of my stay at Rasa Ria meant i could download the software on their fast link before heading off for the main centre at Sepilok - AT LAST!!!

A shuttle bus to the airport in KK and a short flight later we were at Sandakan. From there a 20 minute transfer by road and we were finally at Sepilok.

The accomodation is the Sepilok Resthouse - our group has the whole of the upper floor and for those of you who think it's been too much of a holiday so far (no names mentioned here... ) here are some of the highlights of the place...

pic of luxury communal loo/shower/sink combo...






















and the "virginal white princess" style mozzie net covered bed...

















A bit more basic than at Rasa Ria i think you'll agree!!!

But it's comfortable, a 5 minute walk to the centre and the food is good. This will be our permanent home now for the next 2 months (apart from the 9 days we all do back at Rasa Ria in turn). I'm still rooming with Nick who luckily is a really good bloke.

So a quick drop of the bags and after a snack we were soon allowed in "as tourists" to see the Orangutan feeding at 3pm from Platform A. The orangutans living free in the reserve are free to come here twice a day for bananas and milk. The food is deliberately kept the same every day so that it is boring and only acts as a supplement to the food they must still forage for during the rest of the day.

This feeding session is the same as what i saw when i came to Borneo 5 years before and seeing it again was still magical for me. For the majority of the group this was their first experience of the great apes outside of a zoo. Plenty of big grins on peoples faces I can tell you!!!


It also allowed us to take some photographs which is something that will not be possible too often (if at all) while we are working behind the scenes at Sepilok. The staff here are apparently very strict about this as there has been at least one incident in the past of a camera being snatched away from a volunteer by an orangutan and then taken away up a tree. The drama caused a major disruption to activities that day as the rangers then had to organise a climb up after the orangutan to retrieve the camera! If we behave ourselves we were told we might be allowed some special access for photos in the last week of work........

Amazing day - and after seeing the orangutans up close again today i know i've done the right thing coming here to work on the project.

PS - cellphone coverage here at Sepilok is REALLY poor. I will try to get another Malay network SIM card tomorrow so i can switch to the only network with any signal at all...

// posted by storri @ 2:28 pm 0 comments

After a huge buffet breakfast and a generous layer of sun cream, today was all about team building with organisers from the hotel.

We split into 3 groups and were set 4 tasks:
1) Crossing a river with blocks
2) Building a tower out of paper and masking tape to support a book
3) Dropping 3 eggs from a fixed height protected by paper, straws and masking tape
4) A dingbats type quiz

After each round the winning team was able to face paint members of the losing team, which is why i ended up looking like a Little Britain Lady today...


After cleaning up it was time for a steep jungle trek up to the Observation Tower at the top of the rainforest reserve. Great views of the hotel...

...and the surrounding rivers and beaches from the top...

Later in the day we had some free time and tried out a bit of sea kayaking and wave surfing with them. Very refreshing after the sweaty jungle heat earlier!

Early night tonight as we need to head back to Kota Kinabalu airport tomorrow for flights to Sandakan and on to Sepilok for our orientation and induction there for next 4 days. Work "proper" starts the following Monday. At last!

BTW My group is Group 1 and we will be flying back to KK and Rasa Ria for the first 9-day stint at the NIC here. After that I'll be back in Sepilok for the remainder of the 2 months.

Quick pack up and time to leave Tang Dynasty and head to the Rasa Ria Resort for the next 2 days for Induction and Team Building. A 30 minute drive up the coast and a 30 minute check-in later we were in some very nice rooms. For more info visit... http://www.shangri-la.com/kotakinabalu/rasaria/en/

We are going to be guinea pigs for a new part of the Travellers project here - instead of 9 volunteers all working at Sepilok for 2 months there are now 11 of us (supposed to be 12, but sadly one of the volunteers Suzanne had to drop out through ill health 2 days before she was due to fly out).
We will split into groups of 3 as before but now each of the four groups will take it in turns to spend 9 days at Rasa Ria to assist with the Nature Interpretation Centre. Located at the NIC are 6 of the youngest baby orangutans from Sepilok who are on the first stages of their rehabilitation.

The resort is very nice. The food is amazing.
We are all taking this opportunity to load up with some fancy stuff ahead of the daily routine of rice and noodles that is about to begin!

Tonight the group was assembled together for formal induction presentations with Albert and Karen. Karen was a previous volunteer who ended up staying in Borneo for a whole year and is responsible for designing this new Rasa Ria element for the project.

Early on was the delivery and try-ons of our official Sabah Wildlife Department shirts which must be worn at all times in working hours at the two centres.
We were given just 2 shirts each - i have a feeling they are going to be smelling a bit ripe between washes!!

The project team, some in new shirts, others not wanting them to clash with rest of their designer outfits...

Standing LtoR: Albert, Miriam, Rebecca, Vicky, Nick, Yvonne
Seated LtoR: Simon, Catherine, Caroline, Ruth, Elaina, Becky

The final part of the evening was to finalise the groups of three (or two) that we will work in for the rest of the project - not an easy job as these are the people you will spend the whole two months with, day-in day-out, but everyone seemed reasonably happy with the final shape of the groups............time will tell!!!

Firstly - apologies for the intermittent updates to the blog. It's taking a while to work out the internet connections and at the moment with all the team building sessions to find free time to do them. I'm probably being a bit too fussy with all the photos and layout also, so what i'll try to do for a while is go in and give a quick text update for each day and then later on refine with pictures and details when i get a block of time with a faster connection. OK? Good...

Onto the action. Sunday was a bit of a late start (combination of jet lag and last night's visit to a bar that Albert owns - you'll have to ask me about the story with that one!). On that subject, beer, wines and spirits here are very expensive. They seem to be about the same price as the UK which is way OTT for the locals and relative to the cost of food! So the Tiger is being tamed in modest installments...........
We had earlier planned to go to a nearby resort hotel and make use of their pool facilities for the afternoon. The rest of the group had already left an hour before so Nick (my roommate) and i set off walking for the "big white hotel complex with a red roof" as we had been instructed.
An hour later in the midday heat we reached the hotel only to find it was the wrong one. Our one was actually another 10km further on so we jumped in a cab and joined the others.
We had a good afternoon there, Nick and El winning 1st and 2nd in a melon eating contest (pic to follow!).
Returned late afternoon to do some shopping and sort out the SIM card situation. Their are phone shops everywhere in KK, so very soon had a new Malaysian mobi number that lets me call the UK for about 4p/min. People at home can also call us here for 2p/min using a special access number from http://www.bestminutes.co.uk/index2.php
Sunday night was a team meal with all 11 people (the final 3 having arrived during the day) and a chance to get to know everyone a bit better. Later that night watched Chelsea beat Liverpool 2-0 from the comfort of a stool at the Bed Bar (1st half) and the Cock and Bull (2nd half) in town.
Good day!