Borneo part 10- Kudat, the Tip of Borneo, 11 beds, 1 overnight coach journey and 6 flights.

Tip of Borneo

Off the 7 of us headed to the very tip of Borneo. A bit rugged and wild by all accounts.
We booked to stay in an Eco Jungle Camp. So a 3 hr drive from KK. Lots of maths questioning for the Minis courtesy of John.

Eco Jungle Camp was indeed very Eco. Lets start with the toilet arrangements:- Environmentally friendly so you sit on a box with a hole cut out of it, do whatever you need to do, then tip a handful of sawdust on top down the hole and that’s it. Weirdly, and thankfully, there was no smell. Magic. The showers were communal and, of course, cold but that’s no hardship. 4 in a row with no roof. Fine as long as you don’t forget your towel! Sleeping was either in a traditional long house – so 30m long bamboo house on stilts with bamboo partitions and 2 beds per bit. Don’t make any noise as plenty of gaps everywhere so everyone knows what you are up to and the insect life come and go at their leisure. The alternative to the long house were bamboo tents. That was what we had been allocated. Some may have called them bijou, we called them absolutely minuscule. The door was only about 4′ high and one double mattress was all that fitted in. Made solely from bamboo, so had plenty of insect gaps, it was also a little shy on the sound proofing, so no farting, snoring, chatting or anything else. On the up side Paul and I had one to ourselves. Louise and John (on their 2 week annual holiday) didn’t look over impressed and a move was on the cards, initially into the longhouse where they could at least stand up, but by the end of the afternoon had managed to find somewhere on the beach that had A/C and an en-suite bathroom to go with walls, a roof and a bed (oh how the other half live). The guy running the camp was British, had been there for 7 yrs and is trying to get the area a bit more tourist friendly and attempting to get the local tribes involved in projects to improve their lives. Has done lots of work with a local childrens home to give them something other than poverty to look forward to, and has set up a restaurant on the beach ( all the cooks are local) as well as as tribal museum and guided treks. He has his work cut out to be honest. We wish him the best of luck and hope he can keep up his enthusiasm.

Home sweet home, well we did manage one night!

With this in mind we stayed a whole night at the Eco Camp and then, sadly for the Minis, we moved in with Louise and John. ( Not literally of course). Bad backs you know. Getting too old for that thin matrasse and not being able to stand up lark. Luxury! (relatively speaking). We had another 7 days so beds necessary.

A great part of the country. The beaches were the best we have ever seen. The main beach must have been about one mile long and completely empty for the most part. We took full advantage and had a fab time competing in our own Olympics. The main events were sand sprinting, long jump, coconut shot putt and stick javelin. Sideline events were wave diving and body boarding. Photo finishes on more than one occasion but we all got a medal in the end. (And a few bad backs, pulled muscles and twisted ankles).

I was in the form of my life! You can see Sam watching in amazement at the sheer athletic prowess of his mum.

What a sunset.

The greatest day of this trip was of course Sam’s 9th birthday. He was so excited about not being 8. After pressies and breakfast we headed to the beach. Lovely big waves so ideal for diving into and being thrown about in. Went down to Tip Top for birthday, and Louise and John leaving, lunch. Managed to get hold of a birthday cake too. Louise and John had to leave to fly back to Blighty. Booo Hoo. Hope they enjoyed their fortnight. We absolutely loved them coming out to meet us. Traveling is great for meeting new people but nothing beats meeting up with your old pals.

Sam’s birthday.

Later on Paul and the minis built a beach hut out of driftwood. I decided to have a supervisory roll. As Paul was the gaffer on site the hut will undoubtedly still be standing in 5yrs time. A great job! Sam loved loved it. Next was birthday beach fire making. A firm favourite with us all. We had practiced the day before so no excuses. Everyone did fantastically well. Lots of dry conifers and driftwood around. Kept the sand flies off too which was a treat.
They are really awful, tiny buggars that like to bite. The bites stay itchy for 2-3 weeks and don’t we know it (Scarlett and I do at least) It was a great afternoon and Sam thought his birthday had been ” epic”. You can’t beat having a couple of beers, sitting on the beach in a little hut by the side of a fire watching the sun setting. I don’t care who you are!

You could do what ever you wanted on the beach and we did.

We had about a 20 min walk each evening to go and have dinner down at Tip Top (Howard’s) restaurant. Lovely food. Torches needed as no street lights. One night Paul saw a couple of lights reflecting into his torch light from a tree about 50 metres away. He said it reminded him of a London street lamp, and for a moment he thought it was a light shining through the trees. It wasn’t. We all raced throughout the scrub, forgetting about snakes, spiders, scorpions and the like, to the tree to see what it was. A pair of beady eyes. Exciting! Yes! A Slow Loris, at last. Beautiful little creature up high in the tree. Very rare now so we were lucky to see one, though not through the lack of trying, Paul had been looking for one since we got to Borneo 7 weeks ago. Slow by name and slow by nature, it turned round and made its way right to the highest point of the tree to hide from us.

This reflection was from 50 metres !!!

A local man asked what we were looking at as we must have looked a bit strange rampaging through the undergrowth in the darkness. We told him but immediately wished we hadn’t as unfortunately some local people still try and catch protected species of animal to sell. We hoped we hadn’t just signed that poor, gorgeous animals, death warrant. No beady eye reflection the next next, or the night after. Then, there it was again, but in a different tree, bright lights glaring down at us. This time stealth not rampage was the approach we adopted. So up we crept to the base of the tree and shone just one torch, on low, to see the slow loris. Amazing looking little mammal. Striped head, massive eyes, and really tactile hands. Wicked! All went away feeling good. Well done top spotter Paul.

This was our best photo.

Due to the moon becoming full and strange weather in the Philippines the sea was rough almost every day which was fab for jumping about and getting splatted in the water but no good for snorkelling. The day before we left we had that opportunity so took it. We walked along a sand bank to a tiny island and in we went. 2 hrs later we surfaced again after having seen some new corals and fish like this box fish and file fish. It was great although I burned the back of my legs as per usual.
We also managed to do a bit of kayaking the next day as the sea was really calm. The minis really enjoyed it. It’s great not to be bogged down with safety rules.

This Short Nose Box fish was a first for us.

Another first, a Bristle tailed file fish.

Not even one cross word !!!!!!!!

One morning we ventured further and went on a boat ride in the mangroves. We picked up the boat at a small village on the riverbank. It was a traditional, wooden stilted house village that even had a little school in it. Was closed as was a Saturday unfortunately. So, anyway, we got in the boat after walking along a part submerged jetty??! The mangroves were thick and seemed never ending, we had to duck or shift our heads quickly on quite a few occasions so as not to be beheaded or whipped by the branches. It looked picture perfect. Only one thing missing. Wildlife! Not a bit, anywhere. It was actually quite spooky as there was no sound or movements coming from the trees or water. The estuary appeared to be prime environment for snakes, salt water crocs, birds but there was nothing. All been hunted out. Shame.

The cute village school.

A typical village house.

Louise and John had 4 days there and we had 8, and as per usual we didn’t want to leave. Recurring theme. The Tip of Borneo is quite undiscovered, wild and fabulous.Borneo

It was great having Louise and John with us, we missed them dearly.

BORNEO OVERVIEW

Pauls-

Well what can I say, ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by the natural world. Over the past few decades I have lost count of the number of wildlife documentaries (Attenborough being in most of them) I have watched. A large percentage of them have been filmed on ‘The Island In The Clouds” BORNEO. And there we were, on it for 2 months. Bako, Gunung Gading, Kubah, Mulu and the Kinabatangan River. We traveled from the south (Kuching, Sarawak) to the north (Kudat, Sabah) in total we spent 20 days trekking/walking through the rainforests looking at, and photographing more plant and animal life than I have ever seen in the wild before. Words cannot describe what this experience has been like, obviously apart from being humid/hot, wet and very sweaty it was, for me, UTOPIA! I really didn’t want to leave. Everyday spent in the rainforest was a complete joy, you never knew what you were going to find flying, crawling or growing next, I can only equate the experience to being a child and going to the zoo for the first time. All of us getting ready at night, torches in hand, ready to go exploring the jungle. It was being like a kid at Christmas (I know I have used that analogy before but that is how I really felt). You could feel the excitement amongst us. Having said that it was a bit of a pain in the backside sometimes as I had to make sure all our batteries were fully charged, 4 cameras and 3 torches, easy you would think not when you only have 2 power points in your room. Midway through the night I would have to get up to change the batteries over but I suppose it was a small price to pay!!!!!!!!
This is a MUST GO BACK DESTINATION FOR ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More of our favourites.

And more.

Sam says-

Borneo has been out of this world , I’ve seen more than I ever though I would see! My favorite animal of Borneo is the Pygmy elephant . It was so exciting and scary at the same time getting off the boat and spying on them on foot in the jungle I new it was dangerous because the guide didn’t want us to get off but we did and it was unbelievable. ONEDAY I WILL GO BACK.

Scarlett says-

Amazing Borneo. I have seen everything I wanted to. The rainforests there were absolutely out of this world because they have so much wildlife inside them. I didn’t have a favourite animal as everything we saw was fantastic!!!! Also some of the villages we drove past and went to were very traditional and basic. I think Borneo was Amazing!! The people there are soooo friendly. I LOVE BORNEO!!!!!!!!

Joe says:-

Borneo is amazing. If you have the chance to go just go.

clare says:-

Seen it on the telly, seen it in the flesh. Fabulous! The people are lovely, the food is yummy, the culture is fascinating and then theres the wildlife! Love it all. Sometimes It was like being in a dream world being in the middle of the Borneo rainforest.