New bear and crocs at Kinabatangan

Alright, I've been lazy but sitting at my computer after a full day of work actually doing something else with it than just surfing hasn't really been a tempting idea. But now so much has happened that I finally had to force myself to actually do the long due update.

Debbie slowly waking up.

A few days ago was probably the most interesting day I have had in the bear house. I was allowed to take part on Debbies first medical check. My job was to take pictures and I also sneaked into a few myself. Debbie is the youngest little cub in the bear house. She was found in a palm oil plantation and brought to BSBCC about a month ago. Read more.

Today we got the first results which showed she looks to be healthy. I hope the rest of the results turn out to be just as good. She's amazing! It's also remarkable to follow how fast a small bear can develope in just a few weeks time. The next time I come here she'll be a big girl already. Unless I decide to skip Indonesia and stay here :)

I also had a day off last week. The plan was to go climbing at Pulau Berhala with a local climber who lives in Sandakan but well, it's kind of raining season still so we had no luck. It rained the whole night and basically also the whole day.

Instead I decided to go to Rainforest Discovery Center which is an excellent place to get to know primary rainforest with lots of paths and also a canopy walkway and a few towers. I spent about 4 hours over there walking around (in rain...), enjoying the peace and rainforest sounds. I didn't see any mammals but hanging around in a misty rainforest without seeing any other people was still an amazing experience.

On Sunday I took 2 nights off and went to Kinabatangan river to see some wildlife. I started the trip with a small hang over, had maybe one glass too much rice wine the night before. I went to Kinabatangan coz wanted to see as much wildlife as possible and especially proboscis monkeys, but it still was a bit difficult to be separated from the bears for SO LONG. I dunno how I can ever leave this place, snif. Especially as so much happened while I was away.

First surprise was that Bermuda came out and was running around in the forest enclosure when I came back, already after one week which is really fast for a bear being kept inside for 10 years. Read more.

The second surprise was a new cub, who still hasn't got a name. She's been captive for a while as she's quite used to humans, not like Debbie who's still got the wild instinct and is running around most of the time. More updates of the newbie when she's got a name!

Kingfisher

So, back to Kinabatangan. I stayed at Uncle Tan camp on the river bank, a quite spartan place but very nice staff and I also met really nice other travelers. We saw f.ex. lots of proboscis, other monkeys, a few crocodiles, lots of birds, especially kingfishers and a civet cat. No elephants and orang utans but at least we had a good party in the evening.

The manager of the place had birthday which meant lots of rice wine was involved. Nice nice!

Civet cat eating figs.

With Iva from Czech Republic.