Borneo’s Environmental Tragedy

It’s been a long trip. About three months in, we probably would have decided to come home had it not been for the prospect of visiting Borneo. We had this fantastical idea of what it would be like. For Rebecca, she wanted to go to see orangutans in the wild. For my part, I thought that going to Borneo would be like the movie Congo, where we would meet a gorilla named Amy who would talk to us and protect us from the other bad gorillas. (Clearly, my brain confuses gorillas with orangutans.) In any case, we dreamt of an island wild and unspoiled. Thanks to the palm products industry and lack of awareness about wildlife conservation, the reality is quite different.

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Langurs and Crocodiles and Orangutans… Oh My!

If you had told me a year ago that I would be sleeping in a bungalow in the middle of the jungle in Borneo next April, I would have laughed at your foolishness. I am not a jungle person. Jungles have big bugs, poisonous plants, and dangerous animals; why on earth would I want to go visit?

Well as it turns out, jungles have lots of wildlife that you cannot see anywhere else. So despite my strong misgivings, we decided to do a nature tour in Malaysian Borneo in search of orangutans. And we were not disappointed.