|
Click on "Day X" above to go to another
day. Click on most small pictures for a larger picture
|
Pictures on this page
|
|
Coming soon!
|
To boldly go where the Lonely Planet hasn't even gone
After Sepilok Orang-utan Sanctuary, our next stop was
the Kinabatangan Jungle. Eschewing the fancy Kinabatangan Resorts and
the long-standing backpackers alternative: Uncle Tan's, we had opted for a place
that I had found on the Internet called The Jungle Sanctuary (Cost RM
900). It was not mentioned in Lonely Planet (at least not the 2001
guide to Malaysia and Singapore), though it was mentioned in the Rough
Guide (2001 Malaysia and Singapore).
The Jungle Sanctuary people turned up in a small van at
12:30. The van already seemed quite full, but they knew there was
five of us. (Actually, I think once they saw how large the five of us
were, someone who was just catching a ride was sent to catch a bus!)
We left most of our luggage in the boot of our rental car we had arranged
to leave in the car park of Sepilok Jungle Resort. The rest we
squeezed into Jungle Sanctuary's little van and set off at 1:05pm for the
jungle.
There was the five of us, the driver, a man in the front
who was catching a ride back to his village, and a woman called Heidi with
her mother and son of about six. It turned out that the woman and her
mother were coming along to cook for us. It also turned out that they
were from the Philippines and the Jungle Sanctuary business was owned by a
Filipino. The conversation from then on was more often in Tagalog
than English.
First Stop: Supplies
Our first stop was 15 minutes up the road at the
supermarket at Gum-gum for the Jungle Sanctuary folk to buy the groceries
to feed us for the next couple of days. We also took the chance to
buy some cold drinks and eat some ice-creams.
Then we set off to the river. It is about a
three-hour long ride. The first half is on pretty good metalled roads
and then turns into a wide but poorly surfaced and maintained route through
the vast palm oil plantations that have replaced most of the jungle in
Sabah.
Towards the end of the journey, we reached a stretch of
road that was flooded. "This is much less than last week,"
we were told. A couple of guys got out of the van and walked ahead of
it to check that we were following the road and guided us through.
On the other side, one of them got into his car that was
parked there. I don't know for sure, but I strongly suspect that he
and the car were there as a back-up measure in case the van couldn't make
it through the flood. AT least we could walk through and still make
it to the river.
We got to the river about 4:30pm and someone went off to
get the boatman who would take us up the river. We waited for the
boatman … and we waited some more. About 5:45pm, much to Peter and
Michael's delight someone starting making us some instant noodles. As
soon as that was underway, the boatman arrived!
We gulped down the noodles, boarded the boat and set
off. We had lost the driver and the man who was catching a lift to
his village, but we still had Heidi, her Mum and her son, as well as
someone she referred to as her uncle Chris.
It was about 6pm and beginning to get dark. But
before it did, we were able to see some proboscis monkeys in the
trees. Chris and the boatman also kept shining their torches at the
river bank in the hope of catching the eyes of the crocodiles -- but we saw
none.
What the Chris and the boatman did see were prawns --
giant freshwater prawns. We had a couple of steps to catch
some. They seemed to be stopped half-dazed beside the bank at the
side of the river. It seemed to be quite easy to catch them with a
small net or even with just a quick hand. We soon had several
wriggling in the bottom of the boat.
After an hour or so, we turned off the main river and
into a small tributary on the right. This was to lead us to The
Jungle Sanctuary and Crocodile Lake. However, the stream was blocked
by a fallen tree. "When we last came, the water was high enough
that we could go over the top of it" we were told. It looked as
though we might have to wait while they got tools to chop our way through,
but in the event, the boatman found that we could squeeze through under on
end. We got to the hut about 7:15pm.
We climbed off the boat and hung around while Heidi and
her Mum got organized and started cooking, and Chris went to look for Mum
prawns. It took a while (and we were glad of the noodles), but by
9:25pm we had a delicious meal of freshly cooked king-sized freshwater
prawns. Then we went to sleep.
|
.jpg)