Travels with Jon and Kate!: Snorkeling, Trekking with Monkey & More

The pier to the dive center

Friday we had an all day excursion planned- we were super excited. In the morning we were going snorkeling on an island off the coast of Borneo, then they would feed us lunch, and then in the afternoon we would go hiking around the island.

Yummy Veggie lunch!

The boat ride to the island was pretty exciting in itself. The water was pretty choppy, and driver did not mind in the least taking them at full speed :) Turned out, we were the the only ones snorkeling that day. Everyone else who came to the island with us was scuba diving, either learning how to scuba dive, diving for fun, or learning how to be a scuba instructor. So, we had our own personal guide, which was cool. We tried to tell them we didn't need wetsuits with water that warm, but they insisted. I think they thought the water was cool, pansies. So we suited up and headed out. It was a pretty cool snorkeling experience! Unfortunately no pictures, but imagine snorkeling in a school of fish! Apparently you used to be able to feed the fish crackers and cookies and stuff, but they recently changed the law so now you can't (so the fish will be self-sufficient and won't rely on us for food). But, it's recent enough that they still remember something about food from humans, either the smell or the motions or something. Our guide had some crackers in his pocket which I think they smelled, and he would make a motion with his hand like he had something to offer them and would lead them around. Kinda mean teasing them, but it was pretty cool having tons of fish all around us, so close and friendly we could touch them and they would nip a bit at us.

We took a short break and then headed back out for our second round of snorkeling at a different spot. Not as many fish this time, but more unusual fish. We saw tiger fish, angel fish, lots of neon tetras, a family of clown fish living in some coral, and my personal favorite was the porcupine fish. There were tons of different kinds of coral too, which was cool. We headed back and had a delicious lunch and then headed off on our hike. They showed us the trail, told us what we might see (lizards, monitor lizards, boars, monkeys, vipers, etc.), handed us a radio and told us to be back in about an hour and half, and we were off.

The trekkers

We hiked on a small trail through a mangrove forest which followed the coast. The mangrove trees and their roots were crazy looking! Our wildlife spotting included about 10 lizards, one squirrel, birds, and the highlight was a family of four monkeys at the end!

Sorry the picture is a little blurry, but I promise you that is a monkey, and there were three more, and we spotted them all by ourselves in the wild! We heard this strange noise, like an exotic bird or something, so we looked around expecting to see some colorful flying creature, and instead excitedly spotted the monkeys! That pretty much made the trip right there. We stared at them as long as we could, despite their angry protests, before heading back to the dive center and finally to the mainland. Cheap and delicious Indian food for dinner and reading James Harriot on the pier as the sun was setting was the lovely end to our last full day in Borneo.

Malaysian Mosque

Our last day in Borneo we decided to check out the local wildlife preserve. It was basically a zoo, but it was pretty cool because it had only animals that are native to Borneo. Sorry for the photo dump, I'm too lazy to be any more selective than this, so I'll give some brief highlights, and then feel free to look at as many pictures as you have time for. So the highlights are:

-Feeding time. We came just in time to see them feed the bears, tigers, macaques, otters, and probiscus monkeys. The tigers were cool because their food was hooked up to a pulley system and they had to jump 5-6 feet to get the meat. Also, the otters were SUPER noisy about their food. They sounded really whiny, but in a cute way. The bears were funny because they knew it was getting close to feeding time and they suddenly became quite the showmen, standing up on their hind legs begging from us

-Pygmy Elephants were awesome
- The aviary was spectacular. We were the only ones in there at first, so the birds were quite nonchalant when we entered, and one giant bird was there on the walkway right in front of the door as we came in, as if to say in a grand way "Welcome to the Aviary, this way please". There were all kinds of crazy looking birds that I'd never seen before, and even this weird rat/deer animal, and you could get pretty close to them and they were all acting quite natural. The funny thing was that in a normal zoo, when you go into an aviary, it's artificially super humid to replicate the birds natural environment and you're anxious to leave. But there in Borneo, it's humid everywhere, naturally, so you're in no hurry to leave since the weather is the same everywhere.

After the zoo, we headed to the airport and back to our lives in Korea for our last term of teaching. What a wonderful 2 year anniversary!