Plastic Bottles, Moonlight Cruises and Indiana Jones

It's almost been a month since I've returned from my trip to Borneo and I still am thinking about what an adventure my sister and I had. In addition to the adventure we also learned a great deal about how many dedicated people there are throughtout the world who devote their lives to the conservation of animals and the flora and fauna. For example, one of the scientists working along the Kinabatangan River noticed that the local shrimpers were cutting bark off of trees to hook their shrimp traps to so they could locate them. Well, that meant that the tree would eventually die and there would be more deforestation. This scientist got together with some the local influential shrimpers and suggested that instead of using the bark, why not use "used" plastic water bottles. Read more...

Desperate Housewives, Big Love and President Obama: Borneo Part Two

So, with my wodka, all was right with the world again. As I stated in my May 31st blog, most of our time was spent doing water safaris.

But on two occasions we went trekking looking for a group doing research for Hutan, an orang-utan conservation project. They have a study area and watch the orang-utans throughtout the day. These folks have got to be dedicated to hang out all day writing down mother turned left, ate leaf, baby clung to mama, mama turned right etc etc... Why? Simple answer. The better they understand their behavior, the better they can help them survive. They provide much needed info to the government of Malaysia, who can then implement programs to help the big apes survive. Alright. On with the story. Read more...

Borneo Adventure

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It's been a while since I last posted but my sister and I were on an adventure. We were on an ecotour on the island of Borneo. For the uninitiated, Borneo is the 3rd largest island in the world and is made up of 3 nations, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Borneo, for me, conjured up visions of head hunters and pythons ready to have me for dinner. Well, not so. Indonesia has the world's largest population of Muslims. Betcha didn't know that... Why did we chose a trip to Borneo? Well, my sister does contract work for the Houston Zoo and the Zoo is a major benefactor with the Malaysian government in working to save three threatened species, the Pygmy Elephant, the Orangu-tan, and the Proboscis monkey. Even though my sister has traveled extensively , it was the type of trip she had never experienced before (I had been on two African safaris) and we said "what the hell. Why not". Luckily for us, we saw all three species thanks to Red Ape Encounters. Our guide, Mincho, 29 and a father of three, was superb and his english was terrific. I'll get to the "why" his english is so good later. Here are just some musings, factoids and experiences: Read more...