Day 163. Kyle & Leanne joint blog.

Today we are heading out to see the wildlife jungle side of Borneo.  We’ve hired a taxi driver who doubles as a guide to take us to   e’re going to see today?” and the kids all respond with “orangutans.”  “Ummm..not necessarily,” our taxi guide says. “What do you mean?” Kyle asks. “You hopefully see orangutans, not guaranteed,” he replied.  “Wait a second, the brochure and signs all said see the orangutan feeding, they didn’t say maybe or possibly see the orangutan feeding,” Kyle tells him.  “Oh you must be very lucky to see orangutan in the wild he says.  Maybe today will be your lucky day, huh?” he says.

We arrive and walk down through a path to the visitor center where we read about the orangutans.  While we are waiting for the feeding to begin, we wander over to view a crocodile pen with a 5 meter ginormous crocodile.  Kyle gets a picture of the crocodile without the fence that looks like he walked right into it. The wildlife center employee calls everyone over for a talk before we start.

The talk turns into an extensive disclaimer about how we may or may not see the orangutans.  He explains how the center is not a zoo, so if the orangutans decide not to show up, we can’t blame the center.  Of course these disclaimers were conveniently nowhere to be found when we paid our fee to get into the Centre.  He says no orangutan’s showed up yesterday morning for the feeding and that some people come twice a day for five days and still don’t see them.  I am busy texting back and forth with my sister back in California and when I tune back in, the guy is still droning on about not seeing the orangutans.  

Now he is saying the goal of the centre is to have the orangutans be totally self-sufficient in the wild.  This means that they can find enough food in the wild to sustain themselves and that they won’t even need to come to the center’s feedings because it means they are being successful in the wild.  He goes on, “see, tourists no see orangutan, they disappointed.  Center employees see disappointed tourists, they very happy.  See, its simple, we want different things.” Hmmm, Kyle is wondering if we can ask for a refund before we go to the feeding place in the jungle and officially pay to see nothing.

With his speech finally concluded, we head off onto a trail into the jungle.  It’s a very cool walk with the jungle expanding around us in all directions as far the eye can see.  Leanne is way of the venomous snakes but facing the choice of braving the path and risking a snake bite or turning and fleeing and missing the apparently now (after the speech) a 1 in a 100 chance of seeing a wild Bornean orangutan, she toughs it out and shoulders on.

As we approach the feeding area, a commotion is already in progress.  People are abuzz as the tourist in front of us turns around and excitedly points and proclaims, “we’ve found one! We’ve found one!” Sure enough, there is a full blown orangutan swinging from tree to tree with a baby / youth quickly following behind. The feeling that you’ve just hit the jackpot lottery washes over us as we can’t believe how lucky we are.  

Except, wait, Kyle smells something fishy going on. “Didn’t the guy go just a little too out of his way with the 15 minute speech about how our chances of seeing one were about zero to none? And that no one has seen one in 5 days,” he points out.  “And low and behold, we show up and there is one in the first 30 seconds?  His TripAdvisor satisfaction scores are going through the roof right now!” 

Another employee later confirms that orangutans showed up yesterday as normal to feed thus confirming Kyle’s theory that this was a brilliant marketing scheme to set expectations so low that as soon as you actually saw an orangutan, you couldn’t wait to give them a 5 star rating on TripAdvisor. “Exposed” as our kids would say. 

Now back to the orangutans.  With the marketing ploy out of the way, it actually was a phenomenal experience.   They were swinging from tree to tree and rode zipline like ropes down to the stand where the handler had laid our bananas. They were bellowing and jumping around. It was quite a sight to behold. We got a ton of great pictures.  At one point, the orangutans were climbing up a tree approaching our viewing area.  Of course, as luck would have it, Kyle picked that moment to sneeze.  50 angry tourists turned to him and hissed a “ssssshhhhhh!!!!!” at him. “Geez, it’s not like I can magically control a sneeze and make it start and stop,” he grumbles back at them.

Having checked the box for seeing wild Bornean orangutans in their wild environment, we head back to the hotel for a quick lunch before heading out for our afternoon adventure to the Sarawak Cultural Village.  

The Sarawak Cultural Village is a living museum offering an introduction to local cultures and lifestyles of the local ethnic peoples. Nine authentic replica buildings represent every major ethnic group in Sarawak.  Each is staffed with members of their respective ethnic groups, in traditional costumes, carrying out traditional actives of their people.  Each house has a “storyteller” who is an expert in describing and interpreting traditional cultures and lifestyles.

The kids favorite one was a house where the “storyteller” is selling blow dart guns.  He allows the kids to practice and a half hour later, we leave the house with 3 brand new blow dart guns.  Kyle muses that perhaps we will need them to shoot the venomous snakes in the jungle who Leanne is convinced are out to get her.

We explore all the houses of the Cultural Village and try our hand at chopping coconuts with a machete and watch dancing and singing.  The visit ends with a cultural show represented by all the ethnic groups.  The highlight was when a warrior pulls a woman on stage and has her blow into a dart gun shooting an arrow aimed at a balloon across the stage and she nails it with a pop on the second try. 

That night Kyle and Leanne go out on a date night at place down on the riverfront.  The highlight is a water and light show that happens at 8:30pm every night.  Meanwhile, the kids stay back at the hotel room and order pizza and have a blow dart competition with pizza boxes as the targets.  The boys later tell us that shooting accurately is a lot harder than it looks and that they suspect that the woman on stage did not actually hit the balloon but that there was someone backstage who popped the balloon in the dark. With that mystery solved we head to bed.