In August we went to the island of Borneo (Malaysian state of Sabah in the north) for a much anticipated ABA birding tour with Rockjumper Tours.
“At some point, everything’s gonna go south and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now, you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.” – The Martian
Or as the case may be with international travel… you get to go on your trip and come home.
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We’ve been pretty lucky for the most part on our travels, with only a few major stresses (running to make a connection in Chicago to Delhi was one; failing to make a connection in Dulles another; and Aerolineas Argentinas royally screwing us in Santiago, Chile). This trip started going downhill the morning we were leaving from Phoenix, as we were notified early in the day that the 18:35 flight would be delayed 45 minutes. Predictably our 2.5 hour layover – really only 2 hours when you factor in the gate closing 30 min before takeoff – dwindled to nothing and we missed the connection in Vancouver. Luckily we had built in a couple extra days before our tour start, so while it was kind of stressful (with Liza working through all the possible adjustments in her head), Air Canada personnel (who are actually helpful in Canada) rebooked the flights, put us up in a very nice hotel, and gave us food and taxi vouchers. So instead of a direct flight from Vancouver to Singapore, we flew via Seoul and arrived the next day about midnight instead of early morning. The hand-off from Air Canada to Korean Air for the Seoul to Singapore flight messed up in that we didn’t have our business class upgraded seats on that plane, but bottom line we got on the plane and made it to Singapore after midnight, and to our airport hotel about 1:00. A mere 8 hours later we were back in the airport, looking for breakfast (spicy ramen anyone?) before our cramped Air Asia flight to Kota Kinabalu. Quite the involved journey over four calendar days (losing a day when we crossed the international date line), but we made it.
Next day was the actual first day of the Rockjumper tour when folks were due to arrive, although some came in earlier as we did. We spent the morning at Kota Kinabalu Wetlands, using Grab (the local version of Uber) to get there and back. Lots of mud and mangroves, heat and humidity, and a pretty decent boardwalk. There was a group of kids there doing cleanup as a community service, which was great as there were lots of plastic bottles that had washed in.
A welcome dinner was held for the tour participants in the hotel that first evening, a large group of about 20. Accordingly we had three guides – Keith Valentine, Erik Forsyth, and Forrest Rowland. Keith is from South Africa, Erik from Scotland but now living in New Zealand, and Forrest now from Montana. (Forrest also knows Ryan Chenery, our Lesser Antilles guide; sounds like Ryan will be doing some tours for Rockjumper.)
The first four full days of the tour were spent in the Kota Kinabalu area, with two days spent at elevation in Kota Kinabalu Park (about 5000+ feet, cloud forest), one day a little lower in the Crocker Range, and a day at the hot and humid Klias Peat Marsh. We were split into three groups, and while some days two groups would be in the same area, mostly we all still had a “small group” experience. Very enjoyable birding, especially in the cooler weather in the mountains. We were thoroughly rained out one morning in Kinabalu Park, but it cleared by about midday. A highlight on Mt Kinabalu was a clean sweep of Whitehead’s species: We had great views and photo opportunities with Whitehead’s Trogon, Whitehead’s Broadbill at a nest and Whitehead’s Spiderhunter near the upper trailhead for the Silau Silau trail. The gaudy Bornean Green-Magpie was another highlight. Meanwhile, Klias Peat Marsh had a pretty good boardwalk, great for keeping you out of the mud, but was very slippery in places and some of the wood rotted – Robert actually had one leg punch through, nearly to his hip, that was a bit of a shock. No broken skin (or hip!) luckily, just a very large bruise.
From Kota Kinabalu the group took a 45 minute flight to Lahad Datu, where we were met by staff of the Borneo Rainforest Lodge in the Danum Valley and had a quick briefing before setting out in a caravan of 4WDs to the lodge. The drive took about 2.5 hours, the first part paved, the rest a fairly good dirt road.
The lodge is an amazing compound in the heart of the rainforest. The main building housed the restaurant, reception, and a clinic; individual cabins were arrayed out from the main building and were connected by an elevated boardwalk.
We had three full days of birding there, plus the first afternoon, last morning, and night drives and walks. Beautiful primary rainforest complete with orangutans, langurs, gibbons, macaques, other primates, and a never ending sound track of bird calls. An amusing feature of our cabin was the group of macaque youngsters playing on the roof. Orangutans also inhabited the forest around the lodge and cabins. On the elevated boardwalk between them we encountered several curious young macaques. Thankfully they were better behaved than the monkeys at the Skukuza rest camp in Kruger National Park, South Africa (where our driver employed a rubber snake to ward them off). Once again we were split into three groups with the activities arranged so we all did everything. Liza unfortunately got an intestinal bug of some kind and basically missed a day (and the morning was rained out anyway) but once she availed herself of the services of the lodge clinic, was able to bounce back. (Pro tip: expired meds don’t work, lol.) Still even when feeling lousy she was able to bird from the room balcony.
Leeches were a possibility in the rainforest but while we saw a few (or marks they left behind) on others, we didn’t “get leeched” ourselves. One of those things where thinking about it is a lot worse than the reality. Still we were good about wearing our borrowed leech socks. Mosquitoes etc were not an issue either.
A highlight of our stay was getting to use the canopy walkway, a set of suspended and slightly bouncy footbridges high up through the forest canopy. (The day our group was supposed to go there earlier was the rain morning so it was closed then.) The morning mist had burned off by the time our group got onto it, it was hot and pretty steamy. But it was worth it for eye-level views of some canopy birds, all the time the loud calls of the Great Argus pheasant (“wow wow”) echoing below us.
Most of us returned to Kota Kinabalu on the last day, while a few others went on a post trip extension. The following morning we flew back to Singapore, our trip to the airport being a quick 15 minute drive.
We only had two nights / one full day in Singapore, enough to scope a few things out and decide if we want to return for a longer stay sometime. The first afternoon after arriving we basically just got ourselves to the hotel, the Disut Thani Laguna Singapore, and rested and reorganized – Liza still somewhat in recovery mode, but both of us were tired. We checked out the pool area, the weather was like Hawaii in the late afternoon, very pleasant, and we perused the various restaurants, eventually having dinner at their Legends bar.
(Minor nitpick… the hotel is lovely… but the info in the room says as a guest you get a welcome drink and a discount at the restaurants, but they conveniently forgot at check in to give us the required vouchers. We went back to reception twice to sort that out. We thought it might be you had to be a loyalty member or have booked via their web site, could understand if that were the case, but that little detail was never stated, and they gave us the vouchers when we asked for them.)
The next morning we went out to the Botanic Garden, our big chance to enjoy a public garden and see some local birds. Although we went early it warmed up and got steamy very quickly, so in no time we were soaked again. Still, a lovely garden to walk through for a few hours, enjoying the plants and birds. We thought we would take the MRT metro back to near the hotel, but they weren’t selling single tickets, and seemed like no point in getting a refillable card for one ride. But on a future visit, the system looks to be great for getting around. We came back up from the station to the street to find it raining hard… which it wasn’t only 5 minutes earlier! We used the local Uber (Grab) to get back to Jewel Changi shopping center at the airport.
Jewel Changi is really something… with an enormous indoor waterfall and lots of trees and greenery. We grabbed some decadent drinks at the Shake Shack then took the hotel shuttle back to the hotel.
Happily for the 16 hour flight from Singapore to Vancouver there was no connection to miss before it, and we again succeeded on our upgrade bid (yay, lie flat seats!). (Business class it seems is like an e-bike… once you try it you wonder why you resisted for so long.) The flight was delayed two hours, but we went to the airport at the original time (0500, ugh) because we could not fully check in online. We were able to use the Singapore Airlines lounge to relax and have breakfast before going to the gate.
We had a long layover in Vancouver, so even with the delay we still made that connection into Phoenix arriving early evening. We stayed overnight there and continued home the next day.
All in all a successful trip, but tiring. Or is it age? 😱 Although mostly hot and steamy still wasn’t as bad as one trip to Amazonas in Brazil, which remains the gold standard for our personal heat index, lol. The suitcases may yet need fumigation though. eBird tells Liza 197 species in Sabah, Malaysia and 4 in Singapore (hotel birds), but not sure how many lifers… certainly the endemics would be. A great time overall!
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