Back from Borneo

Back from Borneo, it seems like ages ago already. As usual, my intentions to keep my blog up-to-date have not materialized. In Sarawak I had the excuse of not having access to Internet. Since then, it has been the old, old story of too much else to do...
Anyway, Borneo was fantastic, and very different from Peninsular (or West) Malaysia. The Malay population is much less dominant, so Sarawak feels less Muslim than W Malaysia. There is a lot of offshore oil and gas here, so it is supposedly a pretty rich place, although one of our taxi drivers said that rather a lot of money disappears into the usual corrupt pockets.
After spending a day in Kuching, we headed off to Bako National Park. You get there by bum-boat, which is an adventure in itself. But more to the point, it means that many people don't get there. It is a pretty tough undertaking to go there just for the day, and overnighting has the reputation of being rather basic (which is true), so I got the impression that many don't bother. Anywhere, it is an amazing place, with stunning scenery. Hills and cliffs covered with rainforest jungle, and a little higher up (just a few 100 meters above s.l.) the vegetation gets very sparse. Lots of macaque monkeys (we saw some of them being pretty mischievious with guests outside the visitor lodge cafeteria). Wild boar as well, and it took some getting used to feeling that it was OK with these animals nosing around just in front of our hut. W were also fortunate to see the Proboscis (long-nosed) monkeys, but I didn't manage to get a shot with my phone. Hopefully Ceci will post something worth seeing on Facebook soon. Also lots of fly-eating flowers. Below are some of the pix I did manage to take. I must confess to not being much of a photographer.
We also made it to the Orang-Utang rehabilitation centre. They have feeding times twice a day, and there were lots of people. There were also signs stating that the likelihood of seeing an orang-utang were "approximately zero" since the fruiting season had started in the forest and the orang-utangs prefer natural fruits to what the rangers supply. After a long wait we were suddenly instructed to walk quickly to a different place and there we were lucky to see just one orang-utang feeding high up in the tree canopy. Lucky us!
Then on to visit a long-house, the traditional houses of the "river people", also traditionally head-hunters.
Here come a few pix