Southeast Asia: Day Thirteen - The Best Day of My Life!

In the morning we had breakfast at the lodge and went right to the boat to make the most of our day. We headed to a feeding station upriver and went hiking into the jungle. On our way there we saw two different orang-utans swinging way above in the tree tops. Lucky Zaddek was feeling well enough to come. He was quite excited to see them (he was worried we wouldn't see any more of them). Once we arrived at the feeding station there were a bunch of photographers with their huge cameras snapping a ton of photos. We turned the corner and saw another male orang-utan that was even bigger than the one we had seen the night before. We were watching him eat when a female started climbing in from the canopy.

With the binoculars you could spot a super cute baby orang-utan clinging on her fur. She swung in, climbed down to the feeding station and grabbed a bunch of bananas then headed back up a tree. Once she sat down we realized that there wasn't just one baby orang-utan but two!

They were adorable up in the tree and Akim told us that the last time anyone had seen the twins was a year ago. All of the guides and professional photographers were very excited. Everybody assumed that one had died because that is what usually happens with twin orang-utans (there usually isn't enough milk for both of them). But there they were happy and healthy with their mom high up in the tree. The little twins practiced climbing around the mom while she grabbed handful after handful of bananas. We watched all three of them descend and climb again and again and the spotlight was taken away from the large male. After at least an hour the twins and the mom headed off into the jungle. We left the feeding station and had some lunch on the boat as we floated down the river with the beautiful emerald green trees reflecting in the water.

After an hour we reached the camp for orphaned orang-utans. We recognized it from the documentary we watched at the eco lodge.

They brought orphaned orang-utans from poachers and rehabilitated them here to release them back into the wild. This was where Lucy was from - the orang-utan that knew sign language and could draw. There was a small museum which was about the wildlife in Borneo - the wildcats, birds, proboscis monkeys, and especially the orang-utans. We checked out the museum before heading down the trail towards the feeding station. We walked without seeing much when Mom looked above her because something dropped on her shoulder and saw a small orang-utan coming down the tree right behind us. We had walked right under her. She descended the tree and stood almost ten feet away from us. She was quite curious about us and looked at us for at least five minutes before jumping up into the tree swinging into the jungle.

We continued walking and Akim spotted a rare golden langur a beautiful golden monkey and our other guide who had come to help us had spotted a really rare bird called the Bornean Bristlehead. Kaden got the right angle to see the Bornean Bristlehead and then we all ran over to see the Golden Langur jump into the bramble out of sight. After all of the excitement it started to rain and we put on ponchos before heading out of the rainforest and into the open. We continued walking and I spotted an orang-utan under a tree branch full of leaves hiding from the rain like an umbrella. I ran up to tell the others and they told me to run over to the left side of the path. I couldn't really hear them with the rain and I was still trying to tell them about the orang-utan in the tree when Kaden grabbed my arm and pulled me over to the left side of the path. Now I was really confused until they pointed out that the Alpha male was sitting in a bush on the ground that ten seconds ago I was three feet away from. Akim told me that if it was the last alpha male (the one from the documentary that was poached and hated humans) he would have grabbed me by the neck and flung me around like a rag doll. Which was an unsettling thought. Alpha males have ten times the strength of humans and could have picked me up easy with one arm.

 (Can you see him?)

Once the rain settled down to a drizzle the Alpha male left the bush and pulled down a small tree to eat from. We watched him eat when a female emerged from a tree right behind us and started down the path. Since it was the Alpha male he saw anything between him and his females as a threat. So he let go of the tree and ran right at us. We ran down the path and jumped down a side path in retreat and the humongous Alpha male charged right past us to the female.

Once we were at a safe distance we followed down the path where the Alpha male was feeding off of a small tree and the small female who we just realized had a cute baby orang-utan was up a tree. We watched the Alpha male feeding again (he has to eat a lot to stay his size to keep his title as Alpha male) when I went to take my poncho off since it wasn't raining anymore and made just enough sound that the Alpha male turned around. He saw the female who had inconveniently climbed down from the tree and saw us between them. He charged us again and we jumped off the trail out of the way. He then tried to impress the female by climbing up a decent sized tree and knocking it down onto the path. There was a huge crack and just like that the tree came tumbling down. The female was not impressed and headed off into the jungle. The Alpha male who was now quite mad started to climb down a tree back to the path. Akim suggested that we should leave now so we headed down the path back towards the boat. We didn't need the feeding station after what we had seen!

On the way back we saw a few trogons through the trees like the ones we saw in Costa Rica before heading down a boardwalk over a mangrove forest. On the boardwalk was a grey macaque monkey and as I got closer I expected him to jump into a tree like the other ones had but instead he bared his teeth and jumped at me before retreating off the boardwalk. It doesn't sound scary but it really was. I almost fell off the boardwalk out of shock and it would have been a twelve foot drop into crocodile infested waters for me.

We got back on the boat where Zaddek was sleeping. (He was feeling sick again after the twins hike and had to stay on the boat the rest of the day.) As we started to leave the dock I spotted a small black and grey spotted water snake by the boardwalk.

On the way home I was watching the trees for hornbills. Apparently I missed it because the wildlife spotting guide pointed out a beautiful great hornbill way up high drying his feathers. It was amazing. I had been looking forward to seeing it the whole trip. We watched him drying his feathers from the rain before flying off across the river into the horizon. I was so happy to have seen it and was flipping  through the photos when out of the corner of my I saw another great hornbill soaring through the canopy with wings of black, yellow, and white white his huge bill. Only Kaden, Zaddek, and I saw it because after a few seconds he flew out of view.

We cruised down the river with the fading sun when I was scanning the tree tops for more hornbills and I saw some kind of stork I didn't recognize. I told Akim and he said it was an endangered species and the last remaining 300 lived in Borneo. Once I pointed out the Storm Stork to Akim he instantly spotted a second one in the tree beside it. Everybody got a good look before we took off in the sunset light cruising upriver.

Once we were nearly back there was another river boat taking pictures of Silver Langurs - another rare monkey with beautiful silver fur. While Zaddek had his turn with the camera I used my binoculars and accidentally spotted a third Silver Langur in the tree beside the other two. Zaddek didn't believe me but I showed Akim and he was able to point it out to everyone else.

Once the sun finally set we headed back to the Eco lodge and somebody was on the deck looking at the tiniest snake I had ever seen. It was almost the size of a pine needle ten feet away on a tiny twig. It was incredible that he had seen it. We went back and had dinner before Kaden, Dad, and I went for a night hike. We had decided to go after we had such great luck on our night hike when we were at Arenal, Costa Rica and saw five different species of snakes. This time we didn't see any snakes but some species of tree frog, a tarantula, and some sleeping kingfishers that looked kind of dead perched up on a branch. It turns out that they go into a kind of trance and they can't be woken by our flashlights. This is how snakes usually catch birds while they sleep.

We headed back to the Eco lodge after a long day and thanked Akim before going to bed after what was easily the best day of my life!

Total boats: 1 awesome one

Total miles walked: 4.9 miles

Southeast Asia: Day Twelve - Borneo Orang-utan Adventure

We got out of our taxi at a house on the edge of a large river. We met our guide Akim and were served coconut water (they cut the tops off coconuts with machetes) while we waited for the house boat to be ready. The couple that was leaving the boat said they only saw one orang-utan and it was really far into the bramble. We got a little worried that we might have come all this way for nothing.

Once we boarded the boat there were a bunch of wicker chairs and a mattress on the middle of the boat for Zaddek to lay on while we cruised down the river into the Tanjung Puting National Park. There was even a table and chairs where they served us lunch. On our way into the jungle I spotted some river dolphins (not the pink ones) in the water around the boat. We only got a quick glimpse but they were pretty cool. We left the main river and entered the jungle.

Akim told us about the park and the beautiful orang-utans, hornbills, snakes, river dolphins, and the proboscis monkeys that only live in Borneo. We cruised along the river and saw a few kingfishers on our two hour ride winding through the beautiful jungle. Once we arrived at the Eco lodge we checked into our room. The whole lodge was up on stilts over the jungle floor. It wasn't big and it was like all the ones in the movies with palm fronds and wood posts through the whole thing. We dropped off our backpacks to look around the Eco lodge and immediately saw some of the funny looking proboscis monkeys swinging through the trees outside our room. We got some good photos of their crazy looking noses before continuing our tour around the Eco lodge. Before long we went out to look for orang-utans.

We got on the boat (Zaddek stayed behind at the lodge and slept trying to get better) and went ten minutes up stream before starting our hike into the jungle. Akim told us about the project to help orang-utans with feeding stations with plenty of food because their habitats are dwindling and there is less food for all the orang-utans. I was really excited to see one, and there was a really good chance that we might not see one at all in our one and a half day trip so I was really hoping. Once we arrived at the feeding station there on the feeding platform was a giant orang-utan. We watched in awe for a few minutes when a small female swung in to grab some bananas before swinging back into the tree to eat away from the male letting him have the feeding platform.

We grabbed a seat at the bench and watched the huge male orang-utan eating banana after banana. We all took turns with the big camera and took hundreds of photos of the beautiful animal that was in front of us. Akim told us that it was a relatively small male and that the alpha was much larger which was hard to believe because this guy was humongous. It was amazing sitting there watching him with his beautiful orange coat.

The small female would stay in the tree and swing down to the platform again and again taking handfuls of bananas and then went right back up to the tree branch. We watched in awe for forty five minutes not even caring about the mosquitoes biting us. Then all of the sudden the male stood up and stomped into the bramble and after a few minutes the female grabbed some bananas to go and swung into the jungle.

We all got up and headed back to the boat. Before going back to the Eco lodge for the night we went farther down stream and saw a ton of proboscis monkeys roosting in the trees near the river in big troops. Akim said that they sleep by the water so that if they are in danger they can jump into the water and swim across the river bank. We saw a ton of the big troops with their huge cartoony noses before heading to the Eco lodge.

We told Zaddek all about the orang-utans and hoped he would be better by the next day so he could see some of the beautiful orang-utans for himself. We walked the stilted platforms around to the dining hall and made sure the doors quickly shut so no animals could sneak in. We had some really good noodles for dinner and some sweet mango for dessert before going to bed ready for the next day of adventures.

Total boats: 1

Total miles walked: 4.5 miles