Borneo

During the half-term break in October, Ethan and I took advantage of an Eco trip to Borneo offered by the Regent's school. Dustin was working at a basketball/soccer camp over the week holiday and Mark was happy to see us go as he was sooo busy with his project at work.

It was exciting to be heading to Borneo, I can remember years ago at Bayshore Baptist when Mark and I directed a children's choir musical and one of the songs talked about Borneo, thinking that sounded so exotic! Now we had the chance to go there!

Our purpose was to help replant trees into the Borneo rainforest, a reforestation project. Along the way we would be able to visit an orangutan refuge, a bat cave that is infamous with many bird nests that are harvested for the very, expensive, rare bird nest soup and the bird nest herbal concoctions. A homestay with a family in the village we were planting trees in. Staying at an Eco camp-open roofed huts with no electricity. Lots of opportunities to see many, colorful, rare, birds and the highlight had to be seeing the orangutans in the wild along with the Probiscus monkey-the ugliest monkey EVER. We also saw many rare, exotic, tropical, birds, owls, crocodiles, a herd of wild pigs, wild elephants' prints in the jungle...just a great trip.

One of the best aspects of the entire trip was the people. There were lots of new friends made on this trip, bonded through lots of sweat and hard work! I so appreciated all the bird watchers, that could see and identify most of the rare species of birds. Fun card games and interesting conversations with people from all over the world. I loved our homestay, because I just love seeing how the local people live.

Ethan had such a great attitude. Poor guy doesn't like seafood at all. You can imagine what we ate staying right by rivers in the forest-fish and rice. Our hosts were so kind and gracious to share their food and hut with us. Their extended family lived in the 6 room hut. The entire family had no front teeth, I wish I could have asked if this was a family tradition, deformity...I'm so sad that we had no camera batteries for several days of the trip, sad,sad! Some interesting things about our hosts-they were muslim but allowed us to pray over our meals with them, they kept rabbits in their kitchen and it was really so stinky. All our showers were with rainwater and a bucket, the toilet a hole in the floor, one meal we had a whole fish and rice, we had mosquito nets at night, the husband of our main host drives a truck for the palm oil industy, the industry destroying the rainforest they live in. They had 4 small children in the home and they watched Tom and Jerry cartoons non-stop on their small tv, a previous guest had sent them the videos as an appreciation gift. The main host is always eager to host visitors to better her English skills and expose her children to people from other parts of the world.

Just fyi-Borneo is the third largest island, and is made up of 3 countries-Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei. We visited the Malaysia part of Borneo, I hope that we can make a return trip before leaving this part of the world to dive on the Sipadan Islands. So much to see and so little time!

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