Borneo!!!

For me, even just the word "Borneo" sounds so exotic and remote that it seemed strange and impossible to me, when R and K suggested it as a weekend trip we could take together, that such a thing was even possible. But when you're in Jakarta, it's possible. So off we flew to Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo), and headed straight to the riverside town of Kumai. These huge concrete buildings are actually bird factories of sorts--they house little swifter birds, which are birds that make nests out of their own saliva, and these nests are then used to make a soup that is considered a delicacy in China. Seriously, look up "bird's nest soup." I had no idea. But there are thousands if not millions of tiny, very loud swifter flying all over the place in Southern Borneo towns because of all these concrete buildings where they raise them. Crazy.

From Kumai, the three of us boarded a river boat looking roughly (well, okay, less fancy than but still kind of) like this:

...and happily settled in to start our three-day river trip into Tanjung Puting National Park.

For three days and two nights we slept and ate and talked and played cards on the boat, with big chunks of time devoted to scanning the riverbanks for wildlife and just appreciating the steamy jungle beauty of Borneo, and the subtly changing flora around us as we got deeper into different parts of the park.

The food was so yummy...

But the primary reason for the trip was to see orangutans, which exist in the wild on only two islands in the world: Borneo, and neighboring Sumatra. It was an INCREDIBLE experience to get so close to these amazing primates.

As you can tell from how close that picture actually is, most of the orangutans we saw were only semi-wild; they are used to humans because they visit one or more of three daily feeding stations set up in the park. When they feel like it they come to feed; when they are finding plenty of food elsewhere in the park, sometimes they keep their distance. In the meantime, the feedings help to support growing populations of this highly endangered animal, and the revenue brought in by tourists who come to observe the orangutans at the feeding stations helps keep them protected.

The orangutan above was an adolescent who was already out on his own in the forest. This guy is a beast of a dominant male that the local guides have named "King." And he sure acted like it.

We also saw several mothers with their babies. Orangutans have a gestational period similar to humans, but once they have a baby, it stays with mom for up to EIGHT YEARS before going off on its own, during which time mom will not be receptive to mating. So there is a huge investment in each mature orangutan's life, and the poaching of babies as pet or for sale to zoos is completely devastating to the frighteningly small population of them left on earth.

While the orangutans were definitely the stars of the show, we saw all kinds of other cool stuff like glowing mushrooms, proboscis monkeys, a carnivorous pitcher plant (ironic since I'd just seen these at the Sydney Botanical Gardens and now I was seeing them in the wild)...

...and even a Bornean Short Python crossing the path we were walking on to one of the orangutan feeding sessions!

After three hot, muggy, buggy, blissful days on the river, we got one final night in an air-conditioned hotel in the Bornean town/city of Pangkalanbuun, which had this awesomely colorful river boardwalk area.

Plus there was a palace there, and so many other amazing sights and experiences, the call to prayer echoing through the streets multiple times/day, and so much more...but this was already a lot of pictures. So I'll let you go now till the next post, from a totally different part of Indonesia.