Ginger is the new black
I’m writing this blog post from a chair sitting at the front of a ‘klotok’, a river houseboat, as we gently motor our way up the Sekonyer River in Tanjung Puting National Park, South Borneo. Jungle teems at both sides of the river the entire way down and there are constant birds and cicadas calling; it’s about as far removed from city life as you can get, other than the fact we have a comfy bed and a chef to cook us incredible meals. I’ve decided that I want to reincarnate as an orangutan.
After a fairly uneventful 17 hour journey via Dubai in which I ingested four movies, we arrived in Jakarta, Indonesia and made it to our hotel which looked like easyjet probably owned it from the colour scheme and general demeanour. We got 5 hours kip and then were back on a flight, this time to Palankanbun airport, in Southern Borneo, near the town of Kumai which sits astride the estuary of the Sekonyer River. We were met at the airport, chucked into a taxi and 30 minutes later we were sitting on the front of our klotok as it unmoored and set off up the river for a 3 day / 2 night tour of Tanjung Puting National Park, where Orangutans dwell.
Day 1 – Afloat in Borneo
Our klotok is not the fanciest klotok we’ve seen, indeed the plastic chairs a significant downgrade from the sun loungers most klotoks have, but our crew, including ‘El’ our young guide, the funny captain, the amazing cook and ‘the assistant’ more than made up for the chairs by being sweet, thoughtful and chill. We wouldn’t have swapped for the world.
The Sekonyer River’s width varies between about 20 and 60 feet wide (total guess) and is totally full of jungle on either side, sometimes changing from a mangrove style to a more tree based affair from time to time. At the front are two chairs for me and Bill to sit on and you just simply sit there looking at the jungle and wildlife as it passes.
Within 20 mins of entering the river, we saw 2 wild orangutans chilling in mangroves but they relatively quickly buggered off. Then, within the hour we saw another two, separately on the other side of the river. We thought at this point that orangutans everywhere were pretty standard, but those were the only 4 we saw from the klotok itself on the journey (we did see more though… read on).
The other animals worth seeing are probiscus monkeys, crocodiles and grey macaques. After a lunch of deviously delicious standards, we immediately stumbled upon a couple of probiscus monkey groups and sat around taking snaps. I mentioned to El that I thought they had bigger droopier noses and he said it was only the Alpha males who had those. As if on cue a big rustle in the trees below caught our attention and out popped the alpha with his completely ridiculous nose.
After the probiscus monkey fun, we stopped at a small old quay-like structure for our first ‘feeding station’. A 20 minute walk took us to the platform itself, where a ranger was calling out to the orangutans and left an enormous pile of several hundred bananas on the platform. A few orangutans appeared immediately and started munching away, and a few others took up positions on the trees surrounding, waiting for their moment perhaps. A mother and small child stopped right above us and, for fun, had a huge old wee that landed right next to us. Showing her distain, I reckon. We watched and pictured the orangutans for a good hour, there were loads of babies and teenagers attached to mums, and when they’d grabbed some food they’d wonder up a nearby tree and play, learn to climb and groom each otger, it was totally adorable. I particularly liked a mum and teenager – the baby was hanging upside down above mum and playing with her face and generally annoying her. Dreamy!
I should mention that these feeding stations are conservation and research sites run by Indonesians and that tourism helps fund them hugely. Orangutans are endangered so it was great to see SO many babies and all the guides were super respectful of the orangutans, so it seems like a good setup they have going.
After the orangutans had stuffed their faces (literally), urinated all over us and posed for me for about 300 pictures, of which about 5 were any good, they started to disperse and so did we (along with about 20 other tourists who also arrived via klotok – the only way to access the area). Billie and I were flagging at this stage with jet lag setting in so I had a nap in the hammock and awoke 15 mins later to Billie taking pictures of probiscus monkeys and eating sweet potato fries the chef had cooked so I threw myself out of the hammock in a fit of jealousy to rejoin the fun.
It was starting to get dark, but luckily we had the ‘night hike’ to look forward to. It was an experience. We had a new guide for this, a ranger called Gigli (or something like that) who is clearly a weirdo cos he likes snakes and spiders and bugs. Night time in the rainforest is a prettttty terrifying place but we were wearing trousers and shoes (as well as other clothes) and had our trusty creepy crawly guide ahead of us. He found us some weird and wonderful things pictured below (on my phone as I didn’t take camera, stupidly). In addition to those we also saw a tarantula and snake that I didn’t have time to picture, and a sleeping bird which was cute (slash I don’t know how it hadn’t been eaten by a passing snake).
After all this, we had a dinner PLAGUED by insects due to the candles in the dark (by the end our food was pretty much swimming with flying ants but we were eating it anyway cos it was soooo goooood). There were enormous insects landing on us constantly, it was… horrific. After food, we left the light (and blessedly the insects) and chatted. Eventually we reflected at what an incredible experience this was and how we were so out of our comfort zones. We both patted ourselves on the back for being so adventurous when two of the crew came up to build a mosquito net for our bed and said “hello, we are building you a hotel”; we realised that having a crew of four to cook us delicious food, do everything for us and make our bed… means we’re PROBABLY not as adventurous as we thought we were. Still, we don’t have aircon, so we’re pretty wild…
Sleep was an interesting affair, I had no issue sleeping through the amusing captain’s animalistic, dramatic snoring, but unfortunately Billie did, and woke me up to let me know on several occasions… thanks babe.
Day 2 – Orangutan-tastic
Day 2 consisted of 2x feeding stations for the orangutans and many more for us (the deep fried banana snacks were a highlight).
Rising to sunset was lovely. I made a coffee and sat at the front of the boat and watched the sun rise till it hid behind the clouds, which we figured we’d be stuck with for another day. After a perfectly cold shower for us both, we had some eggs and toast then hit the river, so to speak, and by that I mean boating, not swimming. Swimming is forbidden due to the crocs, apparently a Brit called Richard was eaten by them 7 years ago. Eek!
We were at feeding station 1 by 9am to find two orangutans playing /showing off on the boardwalk on the way there. These fellas were semi-wild so as long as you didn’t get in their way or make eye contact (or do anything stupid like try to touch them or run away) you’d be fine and we got as close as a foot away when they passed us on the boardwalk. I took this opportunity to get my best orangutan pic, which is apparently of ‘Atlas’ the largest male in the camp. Result.
Another dazzling feeding display: it’s so interesting to watch which ones run away from others and which are comfortable eating together. There were loads of little storylines to follow and it all felt like a bit of a theatre production, as us tourists are all sat on rows of seats facing the stage.
I also watched a fly (whatever it is) murder a grasshopper, dig a hole then take it inside to eat it in there. Nice one, nature.
The sun came out properly for the first time since we arrived and it was lovely and warm and astonishingly sweat inducing. Soaked in our own fluids, we arrived back at the klotok to cold towels and human feeding station 2 – some choccie snacks and weird fishy crackers which we OK. We then motored on towards the legendary Camp Leakey, largest of them all and OG of the camps here – home to Tom the orangutan who is mega big and handsome but not seen since 2017 (most likely retired from being alpha and gone to the forest to be old and alone, bless him) and Princess, who can row a boat (but not for tourists on demand…). Apparently they have to hide the canoes from her now because she’ll get in them, row around, get bored and abandon them. Not sure if we saw her or not but there was a section about her in the information shack and we fell in love, of course.
Camp Leakey was orangutan feeding station 2 (I forgot to mention we’d had human feeding station 4, lunch, before then – chef nailed it again) and the walk up to it was quite dramatic, first via boardwalk and then on a wide path with many giant ants. El picked one up on his hand so I could picture it, the daredevil.
At Camp Leakey there was a bit of a pre-feeding display as a gibbon appeared and started mucking around in the trees. An orangutan teenager went to chase it off but the gibbon was much faster and would taunt the poor fella. At one point the orangutan was shaking a massive branch at it and then finally built up the courage to jump at the gibbon who ended up just swatting him away. The teen then watched distrustfully from a distance.
The gibbon ended up playing hilarious villain during the feeding display itself, always jumping down to steal food and having to run away from certain orangutans, but interestingly sat and ate with some others – who knows what’s going on there. Camp Leakey was the biggest display with probably about 15 orangutans involved and loads to watch, at the end some little wild boars even popped out to snuffle around and say hello.
Dazed by the heat, dripping in sweat and with Billie in dire need of a nap (the lack of sleep the previous night combo’d with jet lag not being ideal) we headed back to the klotok. As if reading our minds we were greeted with cold wet towels to wipe away the thick sweat and some banana fritters which were extraordinarily good. Camp Leakey was the last time we saw orangutans (sad) and our last activity for the day, so now it was a case of getting to a good point to moor up and dine, ready for day 3.
Day 3 – Still not bored of Borneo
We awoke and Billie had fared much better in the night, although I woke up with a strange fear that I was playing Bon Iver incredibly loudly through the boats speakers in the middle of the night. Of course, I wasn’t, and the boat didn’t have speakers. We got up as soon as it was light (about 5am)and watched the sunrise, which was beauuuutiful.
We only had one activity for the day, so we headed towards the reforestation site for about 9am after a hearty breakfast of egg, toast and banana pancakes (yum).
The walk was fairly short along a boardwalk, but we reached the reforestation camp sweating buckets – it was a hot day! The man explained there we two big fires in the late 90’s here and that 200 acres of rainforest had been burnt to a crisp. At the 46 acre section they were reforesting, there were already some v large trees, so their work is on the way to being done for this camp.
We were shown all the trees they had ready to plant and what they did (orangutans eat most of them, one of them was kidney stones medicine) and we chose one we liked, made a little plaque and off we went to plant it.
We were shown all the trees they had ready to plant and what they did (orangutans eat most of them, one of them was kidney stones medicine) and we chose one we liked, made a little plaque and off we went to plant it. e were shown all the trees they had ready to plant and what they did (orangutans eat most of them, one of them was kidney stones medicine) and we chose one we liked, made a little plaque and off we went to plant it.
On the way back Billie and I opted for the longer walk back through the jungle and we glimpsed an Eagle flying in the distance through the trees (we both saw it at the same time and shouted “Eagle!”) but it was gone in a flash. We then returned to our trusty klotok and sat for our last 2 hour ride back to port, enjoying the hot sun (a bit too much, now slightly burnt) and had a delish lunch from good old chef. When we reached the estuary, Billie saw a dolphin and I just saw it disappear, we asked El and he said, yeah “there are dolphins round here” like it was nothing. We saw a couple more before we reached port… They should really sell that as part of the tour…
This is incredibly long, sorry, but so much happened and stuff happened I haven’t mentioned because this would just go on forever if I did. We didn’t see any crocs, they’re quite rare, we did see a couple of macaques but didn’t bother taking pics as we’ll see LOADS at the monkey temple in Ubud… Our next stop.
Now we leave Borneo and head to the one and only Bali, land of a thousand treasures (I just made that up, but I’m expecting at least a week’s worth of treasures).
