Welcome to the Jungle

Kinabatangan Forest Reserve, Malaysia

For this experience I actually have to thank Mattias and Kirsty. They had been here before climbing Mount Kinabalu and had told me of all the wildlife they had seen. Most notably, the forest reserve in the southeast of Sabah is home to wild orang utans. I had been in Thailand and never ridden an elephant, one of my major regrets, so I thought it would be stupid to come to Borneo and pass up the chance at seeing orang utans. They are something of the trademark animal of Sabah (very similar to the attention the greater panda gets in China). You can buy orang utan souvenirs, posters, soft toys, etc. everywhere. The hostel organised three-day trips here and since I had no other plans until I had to fly back to Johor Bahru I decided to go for it.
At the same time, I tried to keep my expectations low. I had been disappointed in the much more famous Taman Negara and the weather forecast didn't look too positive.
This trip took off on a much more optimistic note, however. On the transfer from the main road to the hotel in the park we already spotted monkeys, a large monitor lizard and a crocodile napping on the bank of the river. And it went on like this. The weather was fair, it only rained a bit at night. The MO here is also a very different one. There is fairly little trekking. The Kinabatangan is a river that runs through the reserve, so most of the time you get taken for boat trips up and down the river. A bit more for the lazy-minded maybe but I was quite glad. My legs were still killing me from the Mount Kinabalu hike. Walking up and especially down the stairs to my chalet was torture. So, I didn't complain about sitting around in a boat. The schedule was as follows: start with an evening boat ride, a night walk after dinner (more leeches - how I had missed them, and this time I only had shorts!), an early morning boat ride, day time jungle trekking (more leeches), another evening boat ride followed by another night walk (guess what) and a final morning boat trip.
Here there was really a lot of wildlife. The really impressive thing about Kinabatangan was the number and variety of monkeys. On the first boat ride alone we saw species from small hectic macaques up to the characteristic proboscis monkey (I'm proud I remember that English name, it's so complicated - why not call it "nose monkey" as in other languages?). The latter we saw quite often and in large numbers. Our guide explained that the screeching sounds we heard were the females while the males only make a soothing nasal honking sound, which sounds a lot like a resigned "be quiet". How they resemble humans! The first night walk was then crowned by a huge empress scorpion. Not as dangerous as it looks, explained our guide, since its sting is only as poisonous as a wasp's. With scorpions it's "the smaller the more venom". We also saw lots of birds (which I'm not so interested in) including several species of kingfishers, hornbills and some other huge insects. The next day went on like this. Taman Negara seemed like a wasteland compared to this place. More birds, lizards, monkeys and finally, during our evening boat ride, the big climax of the trip: Orang utans. An old male lazing around in a tree and a younger female teaching her baby how to move around the branches. I'm sure we stayed an hour at the two spots watching them. Technically, they don't do much except sit - while little monkeys are always active. Still, there's something mysteriously captivating about these big apes that have so much in common with us. You feel them leisurely looking back at you. It was hard to move on. On the last day, when leaving the reserve we still saw a wild boar with her young crossing the road. We might have even seen pygmy elephants (and actually did find some poo) but it's not elephant season now.
At the same time I also realised some of the dangers to this reserve. Aside from the boats that may or may not disturb the animals (I'm sure it's entertainment for the monkeys) more and more wild forest outside the 26,000 hectare reserve gets eaten up by oil palm plantations. And modern methods and technology allow development of even the more difficult terrain on hill sides. Of course, the plantations are also home to wildlife but I wonder if there are as many species as in the natural forest. Looking out over the endless rows of oil palms I hope to God that this is regulated somehow. It would be so sad to come back here and find all the animals gone. I also still wonder what the difference between a national park and a reserve is. Care to enlighten me?