Orang-utans! :-) (9th March 2010)

This morning I planned to visit Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre. So after breakfast Anton, the hostel owner, started shuttling people back and forth. The orang-utan centre is a joint UK funded programme which helps rehabilitate young orphaned orang-utans as well as help injured and rescued ‘pets’ with a final plan to releasing them back into the wild. The main reason for orang-utans coming to the centre is as a direct result of loss of habitat in Borneo to make way for palm oil plantations, which of course is an ongoing and increasing problem.

When the orang-utans arrive at the centre they’re given thorough medical checks and then their training for life back in the jungle begins. Baby orang-utans can stay with their mothers for 7 or 8 years during which time they are taught all of lives necessary skills, from how to climb trees to how to find food to how to interact with the other animals of the rainforest. And just like human babies the rate at which they can and do learn varies considerably resulting in some staying within the centre care for longer. Orang-utans quite a way through their training are released into the Sepilok forest and in order to be able to keep an eye on them, check their progress and supplement their diet the staff feed them twice a day. Feeding is at 10am and 3pm and takes place on a little platform 10 mins walk from where you queue up with everyone else to pay your entrance and camera fee. Considering its one of the best places to see orang-utans I didn’t think the entrance fee was excessive really. What was perhaps excessive was the amount of people also visiting the centre and instead of being quite and unobtrusive to let the orang-utans feed in peace they were pretty noisy and again the cameras.......wow ,there’s a lot of equipment travelling around this island.

The morning feeding saw 3 orang-utans arrive and around 30 macack monkeys! The macacks are a little like our seagulls, nice to look at but a bit of a pest in places and pretty aggressive, at least as far as food is concerned. As soon as the food was put out for the orang-utans the macacks were up on the platform tucking into it all while we’re still waiting for the little orange haired chaps to come along! Eventually in the distance we see some orange hairy arms swinging from tree to tree towards us and all of a sudden right there in front of us were two quite young female orang-utans. They are very very cute and it’s amazing to see them in pretty much natural habitat, they’re actually very graceful as they travel hand over hand through the forest. Once on the feeding platform they tucked into breakfast, yet remained, understandably, quite timid and despite being bigger and cleverer than the macacks they seemed to be quite scared of them.

We hung around and watched the orang-utans feeding and moving through the trees for about an hour before heading back to the main entrance to watch a video explaining all about the centre and what they try to do there. The centre then shuts for a couple of hours over lunch and Anton had suggested getting a bite to eat there then heading off to visit the Rainforest Discovery Centre 2km down the road.

The rainforest discovery centre

The discovery centre was very interesting and apart from a very loud very large Chinese school party (it seemed) I was the only one there. Unfortunately I was just behind the school party on the trails and heading to the canopy walk so as far as seeing any wildlife was concerned you can forget it! :-( I’m not sure why people think they’re going to see anything making so much noise, perhaps they think that really they’re actually in a zoo and all the animals are behind glass, unfortunately here in the wild the slightest unfamiliar noise and they’re long gone. The centre had some lovely trails though and a really nice tropical garden, far nicer than the one at Kinabalu Park.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to spend as much time there as I would have liked cause the next feeding for the orang-utans was at 3pm so it was a very quick visit and a dash round the visitor centre which again looked very interesting and I headed back.

Back at the Orang-utan centre it was another stroll to the feeding platform for feeding number 2! This afternoons feeding was more prolonged, this time dinner was sugar cane or something that looked like it and they loved it. Two young females arrived and spent a good hour tucking into dinner and watching the world go by, seemingly fairly unfazed by us being there. It is a touristy thing and lots of people seem to complain about this but hey we are tourists so let’s not try and make out we’re not!

By the way I should really point out that it was around this time that I, of course, decided I really really wanted to climb the mountain, more than anything ever!! Well ok the last bit is a bit of an exaggeration but, it’s not more than ever but I do now want to do it. It’s funny really, I don’t know why I tried to tell myself I didn’t, of course my biggest fear was and still is that I’m not going to be strong enough but how hard can it be??? Really?!

So I called the park HQ to be told there is no availability for two weeks, boy was I not happy. Just as soon as I decided I wanted to do it I couldn’t get a booking, next time I think I’ll just book it in advance.......yeah right! That would involve planning and we all know that’s not my forte.

While I was on the phone calling different people I thought perhaps I had better get sorted for diving at Sipadan seeing as you’re supposed to book that up several months in advance as well, need I tell you the result?

In answer to the bad planning I was suffering from I had a beer and slept on it, that’s the bad planning not the beer! :-)

Dreaming of orang-utans in the wild......perhaps!