January, I'm half way already!

As nothing ever runs to plan, especially on New Year’s Eve I was silly expecting to have an uneventful journey into the Jungle house on the evening of December31^st!

We were picked up by forestry staff as Jo was still on Holiday and headed for our jungle house. It was about 8pm by the time we got near the house and the afternoons rain had caused the river to swell.. this is where we were faced with the choice.

      1.Walk the remaining mile to the house and risk encountering Mr Elephant the lone bull elephant with long tusks that had been around the house for the past week.

2    2. Sit in the car and wait for the river to go down.. ie sleep in the car until morning and hope Mr Ele doesn’t come!

3    3.Drive back out to the check point house where there is electric, gas and beds?!

I think it was an obvious winner, so we drove an hour back out to the gate where there was a house for the gate staff. The 3 Malaysian guys in the house were very welcoming and gave Naomi and I their room to sleep in and they laid out their mattresses on the floor in the main room. After Mi Goreng (fried noodles) for dinner we sat in the main room and watched tv... yes an actual TV with signal!.. and tucked into our box of cookies! As it was already late it seemed silly not to see the new year in, the New Years countdown was quite funny as the screen countdown reached zero before the presenters counting... ooops and after some interesting dancing and lots of fireworks we’d had enough of tv and headed to bed. A very memorable new years eve!

Naomi and I were in the jungle until the middle of January and we spent our time trying to avoid being soaked, trying to avoid the lightening and trying to avoid the elephant. Failing to avoid both the rain and the elephant! On one evening the weather was quite cool so we decided to go for a run, we were about 2 minute into our run when we spotted Mr Elephant standing right next to the track. This put a very rapid end to our run, making the run a total of 5 minutes long!

The elephant decided that it liked that area around the forest house and was around for the whole time we were in the forest, we encountered him again one afternoon when we were walking, again putting an end to our walk and sending us rapidly back to the house. Next he decided he’d pay us a visit, I was sat on the sofa with headphones on watching a film and Naomi comes running into the room to tell me that about 6ft away from me by the steps to the house was Mr Ele!!.. he obviously wanted to be our friend!

Lots of Rain resulted in a full, brown river to cross

Along with Mr. Elephant we also saw an Orangutan feeding on the fruits in the trees behind the house.

So after seeing the elephant for 2 days in a row and then seeing the orangutan feeding in the trees for two days I jokingly said that  the following day  would be a day of seeing banteng!... So when Naomi went for our morning walk the next day and Naomi suddenly stopped I thought she was messing about. But as I looked to where she had pointed I could see a small group of Banteng were foraging in the middle of the pathway about 50 meters away. This was super exciting and we had been quiet enough that they had not seen us, so we managed to sit where we were and get some photographs and watch them graze. This is what our placement has been about, saving the Banteng populations in Sabah so to actually see them in the middle of the forest happily grazing was magnificent.   

My first Banteng Pics

At the middle of January we headed to Danau Girang Field centre (DG) for the annual meeting and to catch up with the other PTYs. Unlike our other quick visits to DG we were there for 3 nights this time. It was great to learn about all the projects that everyone else is doing and to hear about all the events in the jam-packed schedule for the coming year, welcoming volunteers and students from all over the world for placements, visits and field trips. It was also great to learn about the PTY’s who will be filling our boots, when us current PTYs head back to the UK ready to take on the final year of our courses, time is going so quickly. The three days at DG flew by, but I have promised the guys there that we will be back before we head for home in July.

Naomi and I in the rain on the Boat to DG

We left DG and headed for our house in Lahad Datu for the final week of January. There was lots of sorting to be done at the house, broken cameras needed testing and a general tidying up of equipment after January’s expedition needed to be done, of course apple pie had to be baked to help the process along!

The end of January sees our next Visa run and the halfway point of our placement... already!