After Thailand we headed to Danau Girang for the night, it
was lovely to have another catch up with the other PTY’s and her about what
they had been doing and what they had decided to do for their placement
projects. The next day we met Mark from the field centre who was going to test
our driving in Sabah on the lovely, civilised roads!! Naomi went first and
drove us safely on the two-hour trip to Sandakan although here sense of direction was entertaining, once there we had a few bits
and pieces we needed to collect before lunch. For lunch Mark took us to a little
English tea garden, where they had a croquet set laid out on the lawn and
English country decorations, we didn’t have any tea but we had amazing pink lemonade, gooey chocolate
brownies and cheese cake. On the way home it was my turn to drive, despite the
roads looking lethal with cars over taking and under taking everywhere and big
holes in the road, it was quite nice to be driving again and I got my sleeping passenger back to Batu Puti safely!
The next few days we spent at the house in Lahad Datu
sorting photographs and seeing how many of my itunes songs we could play, I
think we made to 140 songs in one day. After a few days Naomi and I headed back into the forest. Whilst in the
forest we went to clear some vegetation by one of the salt licks, I went ahead in the car with one of the boys to clear vegetation at the end of the road. As
we got to the end of the road, I looked up and disappearing into the vegetation
at the other side of the clearing was 3 banteng! A male, a female and a
juvenile! It was amazing and my first sighting of banteng in day light but my
second sighting of these very elusive creatures, am I the Banteng whisperer?!
The beginning of November meant that it was time to take on
Dad in the Plank Challenge! You can’t put a challenge in front of Naomi and I
and not expect us to complete it, so starting with a very easy 20 seconds of
plank and building through the month. We finally managed 4 minutes 33seconds on
day 30, I think you won dad. As rainy season is now upon us, torrential rain and spectacular thunder and lightning are a daily occurrence, sometimes so close that the floors in the house shake and the night sky lights up just like day time. When we were not working, and in the evenings when we were escaping from the lightening, we had time to get on with our project
proposals. I have decided to look at the foraging behaviour and the diet of the
banteng. In order to do this I am going to use the camera trap pictures of
banteng eating that we have collected. From these pictures I will look at when and
where banteng forage ad then try and identify what they are eating!
In the
evenings between work I also had time to do some running, which was a nice
change from walking around in smelly jungle clothes and a great chance to see the wildlife, which one night included Bobby the resident one eyed pig that
lives around the house and a snake which was crossing the track.
A photograph of a misty sunrise in the jungle.
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