After two nights in the jungle we have now arrived in Sempora, a typical local town with a few dive resorts and cafes in it catering for those preparing themselves, like us, to visit Sipadan, one of the best dive-sights in the world, apparently. We'll see. I am hardly an expert so anything will do! The town is fairly nice and bustling. We splashed out on the best hotel in town: about 18 pounds for a room including breakfast and a swimming pool. Bargain. Also get a good view over the harbour, and a nice shower.
Our minibus ride from the jungle was very pretty and i think i got sunburnt through the open window during the 4 hour ride, however we still arrived at the hotel remarkably clean. There are a few reasons for this: we wore wellington boots in the mud, we did not walk more than a couple of kilometers -instead mostly taking boat rides up the river, and we did not really go into the jungle. I mean it is, or was, jungle -real jungle. But a lot of Borneo's original (aka primary) jungle was cut down a while ago, and continues to be cut down. There is some left, there is also new (secondary) jungle around, which is where we were, so most of the trees were less than 150 years old. None-the-less, there was a lot of nature, a lot of insects, a lot of monkeys and plenty of birds and other wildlife on our doorstep. Literally on our doorstep, as our huts were on stilts in a swamp. That was the highlight of the trip.
The reason for there being so much to see (though still limited to insects, birds, and some lizards etc) was that most of the jungle is gone, replaced by plantations of palms. I knew this was an issue before i came here, but after driving over 300km today and seeing palm trees (for palm oils) on both sides of the road almost the entire time, and stretching as far as the eye can see, now i can get a better sense of the scale of how much Borneo must have changed. For us it was good, the animals still surviving are all packed into a small sliver of jungle along a river, so making it easier for us to see them. A real shame though. The best the environmentalists have done is convince some of the plantation owners to leave between 10m-30m of jungle lining the river so animals can continue to move between the few patches of jungle, using those channels.
It was pretty cool seeing orangutans in their natural habitat, as well as the other creatures mentioned above, including some pretty birds during night river trips and night hikes. One highlight must have been drifting down the river with the engines of our tiny wooden boats off, at dusk, as the flying foxes, a kind of bird that looks like a bat, flew overhead, under the moonlight, across the river. Hundreds and hundreds of them -it was very surreal and quite an experience after some of our earlier rather poor attempts to find much else in the jungle -maybe our expectations were too high. But the overall experience was pretty cool, the 'camp' where we stayed was great and so were many of the fellow backpackers and the local staff. Unfortunately to go further into the jungle requires a lot of money and time: certain 'eco-lodges' have a monopoly and charge accordingly -extortionately in fact!
A couple of days of diving are up next, and then it is 2010. Already. Holy ****. Merry Christmas everyone, as i believe i forgot to mention it before. Not really a big deal here in Malaysia, as you can imagine. Now I am off to eat a chocolate pudding we found in a bakery nearby. It looks really good, but it would be too good to be true if it actually was!
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