After recovering from a severe and debilitating bout of food poisoning for the last 24 hours (shout out to Julia for helping me navigate the airport and 9 hours of travel while in a weak and deathly ill fugue state), we began our Sukau Rainforest Lodge tour. They picked us up from our artsy, Berkeley co-op-esque hostel and we joined 4 couples and one older Canadian man. Julia and I splurged on this part of our 2.5 weeks together, and we were feeling extremely pleased with ourselves, and we couldn't stop exclaiming how this experience was worth every much more than what we paid for it. It is this gorgeous place that looks like it is out of National Geographic (possibly because we picked it because it is a Nat Geo lodge), with twinkly lights running along the deck at night, and orangutans who swing down from the vines right next to the villas. It feels like I’m living my dream, and watching Julia live her childhood dreams of seeing the Bornean rainforest has convinced me that we REALLY are living our dreams. As the youngest, least financially secure people at the lodge, we were just overjoyed and completely stoked on every single experience. Knowing that these were the best possible accommodations that I am going to have on my entire trip added to this joy significantly.
We were upgraded to the boat ride to the lodge rather than the bumpy bus ride, and this was extraordinarily fortuitous. After 24 hours of severe food poisoning, I finally started feeling better as we were boarding the boat. As we sped into the jungle, we could see the chocolate milk water of the river mixing with the turquoise of the sea. And just as we were commenting on how beautiful it was and we didn’t even need to see any wildlife, we say a pygmy elephant SWIMMING across the river in front of us. It was an emotional sight—there are only a little more than 1000 pygmy elephants left in Borneo, and they travel hundreds of kilometers and never spend more than a couple days in the same place. I just have never imagined I would ever see an elephant in the wild, let alone an endangered pygmy elephant.
Borneo has the “Big 5,” which are the 5 animals that people fly to Borneo to see– AND we saw 4/5 in the first day. The rhinoceros hornbill, the proboscis monkey, pygmy elephant, and salt-water crocodile, and the orangutan. Our guide, Mason, greeted us at 8 am on the first day with more energy than caffeinated mouse deer with electricity coursing through its’ veins. He clearly loved the animals dearly, and loved his job, and had this kind of nervous, kindly, camp counselor energy about him that made everyone in the tour love him immediately. Mason took his role to find us the Borneo “Big 5” extremely seriously. He had the eyes of an AI-enhanced hawk, and he found us tiny frogs and miniature birds from hundreds of meters away. We quickly learned that he held a very poorly hidden deep hatred for the long-tailed macaques, the monkeys that breed like rabbits and are aggressive pests in the jungle. I relished in watching him roll his eyes and say “Bye-bye” to the macaques when we didn’t have time to stop and watch them. We asked him whether he would rather see 10 pygmy elephants crossing the river at once (elephants were his favorite animal), or a crocodile eating a monkey. We are fairly certain that even though he very politely declined to answer the question, he would pay big money to see the crocodile chomping his furry enemy. He was extraordinarily knowledgeable about the animals—I now know more about Bornean wildlife than I ever thought I would. My new favorite fun fact is that the slow loris, a rare nocturnal primate, is the only venomous primate and can kill people by sending them into anaphylaxis. I also love that saltwater crocodiles often stay with their mothers until a couple weeks of age, so whenever we would see a tiny croc on the side of the river, we would know that there was a massive 400+ lb crocodile swimming around beneath the boat in the muddy water somewhere.
We had two sunrise river cruises where the staff ensured we were out of our beds at 5:30 (I know, I know, it was a luxury resort). I was just constantly marveling at the mangroves and the QUANTITY OF ANIMALS?? I’ve never seen so many animals, animals at every twist and turn of my head. So many animals it was impossible to keep track of all the ones we saw. In addition to the Big 5, we saw civets, penter birds, crocodiles, flying foxes, fish owls, other kinds of owls (not sure which), kingfishers, several different kinds of hornbills, red and black broadbills, snake birds, egrets, frogs, etc, etc, in an ever-expanding nest of vines and bark and birds. I always have been terrified of the wild animals in the jungle, but I feel almost at home there (like the mountain forests of Utah). I think I grew up being terrified of the spiders and the pythons and the crocodiles, but now seeing them and knowing how rarely they attack humans (especially humans in a boat with a guide), it’s so immensely lovely and peaceful—and I found myself putting my head up to a jungle bee’s hive, touching a termite nest, walking up to a spider’s web—I would have thought I would be afraid, but I actually felt quite at peace in the jungle. I felt like I have always known this kind of rainforest, even if it is so vastly different from the forests I know and love in the US mountain west. Watching the sun rise on the river and staring out at the jungle canopy around us, with birds screeching and frogs chirping and cicadas making a disturbingly accurate car-in-reverse sound, I felt like I was part of that living, breathing ecosystem. I felt enveloped in the trees, in the river, in the wildlife. It felt like I was David Attenborough, but if he had become a jungle man and learned to live with the orangutans. I know strange that sounds, but it also feels true.
Things learned:
· Once I face things that I am afraid of, once I just accept that it is happening and do them (crossing the street in Bangkok, walking near the aggressive monkeys in Borneo), I become comfortable with these things. Ordering food, for example, is always stressful for me (no matter what), but if I just commit to doing it and I have no other option, it becomes easy and comfortable quickly.
· Clouded leopards are native to Borneo! And my favorite animal. And I didn’t get to see them, but it was very cool to be in the same place. They also hunt proboscis monkeys and orangutans.
· I have very quickly become a 70 year-old wildlife enthusiast. I’m so excited to book my vacations as pilgrimages to go see the animals that I want to see.
· Traveling solo is wonderful and reflective and challenging, but traveling with friends makes me so happy in a very different way. Challenges feel like a game we can conquer together. Stressful illnesses and difficult life events become bonding moments that I get to share for the rest of my life.
· Being in a different place hasn’t magically solved all my problems. (I know, shocking!) As the Romano Tours SNL video very clearly states, “If you’re sad at home, you’ll be sad in Rome.” Traveling is wonderful in so many ways, but it “doesn’t fix deeper issues,” as the Romano Tours video so helpfully adds.
· I’ve been reflecting on how to stay in touch with friends, and how to communicate with people I love during this time. I don’t want to be constantly telling them about my travels, but it is also just what is happening in my life right now. I’m just continuing to try to send people messages when there are things that remind me of them.
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