In the morning of July 31st I packed my backpack again and headed to the bus station which I knew was somewhere "to the right from pizza hut". Luckily it wasn't too hard to find and the first river I asked was going to Ranau so I could get a ride to the national park with his minibus for 20RM. Deal. He told me we need to wait until the bus is full so I went to get some chicken and rice for breakfast. When I came back there were only two seats empty and we didn't have to wait for long until a Chinese couple climbed on board and off we went. This tiny minibus didn't have aircon but we just opened all the windows and let the air mess our hair up. There was a group of American 20-something-year-olds, an old Spanish guy with a guitar the Chinese couple and a German girl traveling with a British girl on board. The German and the Brit were sitting behind me and they were bitching about some girl (named Emma) for almost an hour, meaning almost half way to the national park. Girls...
The air started to get colder at some point and we closed the windows a little bit and started to pull on more clothes. The view was fantastic! Mountains after mountains and the greatest of them all Mount Kinabalu. I asked the driver to leave me on the side of the street when he sees the sign for Mountain Lodge where I'd be spending the night. So he did. I was standing there on the side of the road with all my stuff and staring up a road that was so steep that a regular family car wouldn't stand a chance climbing it. So I put my backpack on again and swing my handbag on my shoulder and start climbing. After what feels like forever I see a sign "700 meters to Mountain Lodge". What the hell? I've come 300m and it feels like forever! So I stop for a bit to take a few photos, the scenery is like from a post card, and continue climbing with my approx. 20kg of stuff. Finally I get to the lodge and climb the lat ridiculously steep stairs up to the cabin. It looks empty, no-one nowhere. Except for hundreds of moths! Huge moths and butterflies everywhere! Creepy, kind of cool though. Finally a girl comes out of the reception and gives me my keys and I get to climb down to the dorm that's in the basement. I must say, this must be one of the creepiest places I've ever stayed in my life and on the other hand one of the coolest too. The only problem was that as the evening came I realized it's going to get freezing cold. Oh my. No heating, no closable windows, just a few old blankets to keep you warm. I was freezing for the first few hours but then realized I probably have fever again and took some medicine. After that it got better and I slept like a baby until the morning. Oh yeah, I also visited the Kimabalu national park, but didn't do an actual climb because my big toe is still pretty achy and I've been a bit sick the past few days. Also heard from the other climbers that the weather has been really bad up there and temperature getting down to -6 degrees up there.doesn't sound like too much fun to me. So actually I'm ok with not climbing.
This morning I took a bus to Sepilok, near Sandakan, to go see the Orang Utans in the sanctuary. I was being told the bus leaves from the park at 8 so that's when I arrived to the parking lot... In the end the bus came at 10. Well, at least it came after all(: The trip was supposed to take 3,5h to Sepilok but it need up taking 4,5 hours because we got pulled over by the police. A huge guy in a uniform and carrying an assault rifle and wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses climbed on the bus and demanded passports from everyone. A couple of people apparently had something suspicious going on with their papers so they took them in and we had to wait for ages for them to get out so we could continue our journey.
The way from Kinabalu national park to Sepilok and Sandakan is heart breaking. It's only palm oil plantations, as far as you can see. No more rainforest, just geometrically planted palm trees to produce oil and make the company owners rich. No more Orang Utans and elephants wandering in the forest and thousands of species of birds, insects and other animals living their lives in the soothing coolness of the Borneo rainforest. It makes me very angry and makes me want to be even more careful with the products I buy so I won't supprt these monsters that are destroying everything out of their way to make money. The Borneo Orang Utans are in big big trouble because of palm oil. The palm oil companies treat them as rats, they want them out of the way so they burn them alive, run them over with tractors and do all kinds of unhumane things to them to destroy every single one of them that get's in the way.
Studies suggest that Orang Utan is the closest relative to human being, instead of Chimpanzee. We share at least 97% of our gene pool with these ginger cousins that live exclusively in Malaysian Boneo and in Sumatra, Indonesia. Studies have shown that Orang Utans have human- like memory and they have amazing learning abilities. They use tools and have different cultures within their communities. I'm going to an Orang Utans sanctuary tomorrow where they're trying to help the hurt and orphanaged Orang Utang babies and rehabilitate them back to the nature. They're also trying to educate the public and help in researching and conserving. I'm excited to go there and see how they're trying to help our little cousins, but tomorrow after the rehabilitation center I'm heading to Kinabatangan river area for a couple of days. I'm going to go on a boat ride along the river and hopefully will spot Pygmy elephants and maybe even an wild Orang Utan!
The air started to get colder at some point and we closed the windows a little bit and started to pull on more clothes. The view was fantastic! Mountains after mountains and the greatest of them all Mount Kinabalu. I asked the driver to leave me on the side of the street when he sees the sign for Mountain Lodge where I'd be spending the night. So he did. I was standing there on the side of the road with all my stuff and staring up a road that was so steep that a regular family car wouldn't stand a chance climbing it. So I put my backpack on again and swing my handbag on my shoulder and start climbing. After what feels like forever I see a sign "700 meters to Mountain Lodge". What the hell? I've come 300m and it feels like forever! So I stop for a bit to take a few photos, the scenery is like from a post card, and continue climbing with my approx. 20kg of stuff. Finally I get to the lodge and climb the lat ridiculously steep stairs up to the cabin. It looks empty, no-one nowhere. Except for hundreds of moths! Huge moths and butterflies everywhere! Creepy, kind of cool though. Finally a girl comes out of the reception and gives me my keys and I get to climb down to the dorm that's in the basement. I must say, this must be one of the creepiest places I've ever stayed in my life and on the other hand one of the coolest too. The only problem was that as the evening came I realized it's going to get freezing cold. Oh my. No heating, no closable windows, just a few old blankets to keep you warm. I was freezing for the first few hours but then realized I probably have fever again and took some medicine. After that it got better and I slept like a baby until the morning. Oh yeah, I also visited the Kimabalu national park, but didn't do an actual climb because my big toe is still pretty achy and I've been a bit sick the past few days. Also heard from the other climbers that the weather has been really bad up there and temperature getting down to -6 degrees up there.doesn't sound like too much fun to me. So actually I'm ok with not climbing.
This morning I took a bus to Sepilok, near Sandakan, to go see the Orang Utans in the sanctuary. I was being told the bus leaves from the park at 8 so that's when I arrived to the parking lot... In the end the bus came at 10. Well, at least it came after all(: The trip was supposed to take 3,5h to Sepilok but it need up taking 4,5 hours because we got pulled over by the police. A huge guy in a uniform and carrying an assault rifle and wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses climbed on the bus and demanded passports from everyone. A couple of people apparently had something suspicious going on with their papers so they took them in and we had to wait for ages for them to get out so we could continue our journey.
The way from Kinabalu national park to Sepilok and Sandakan is heart breaking. It's only palm oil plantations, as far as you can see. No more rainforest, just geometrically planted palm trees to produce oil and make the company owners rich. No more Orang Utans and elephants wandering in the forest and thousands of species of birds, insects and other animals living their lives in the soothing coolness of the Borneo rainforest. It makes me very angry and makes me want to be even more careful with the products I buy so I won't supprt these monsters that are destroying everything out of their way to make money. The Borneo Orang Utans are in big big trouble because of palm oil. The palm oil companies treat them as rats, they want them out of the way so they burn them alive, run them over with tractors and do all kinds of unhumane things to them to destroy every single one of them that get's in the way.
Studies suggest that Orang Utan is the closest relative to human being, instead of Chimpanzee. We share at least 97% of our gene pool with these ginger cousins that live exclusively in Malaysian Boneo and in Sumatra, Indonesia. Studies have shown that Orang Utans have human- like memory and they have amazing learning abilities. They use tools and have different cultures within their communities. I'm going to an Orang Utans sanctuary tomorrow where they're trying to help the hurt and orphanaged Orang Utang babies and rehabilitate them back to the nature. They're also trying to educate the public and help in researching and conserving. I'm excited to go there and see how they're trying to help our little cousins, but tomorrow after the rehabilitation center I'm heading to Kinabatangan river area for a couple of days. I'm going to go on a boat ride along the river and hopefully will spot Pygmy elephants and maybe even an wild Orang Utan!
No comments:
Post a Comment