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I had been looking forward to seeing the orangutans in Borneo since before coming to Indonesia. I bought the kids rain boots last year in Cairns, Australia to protect against fire ants and leeches in the rainforest. By the time we got to Borneo, I had to buy them new boots as they had outgrown those ones.

The timing worked out so I could celebrate my birthday with the family, Igna, Kili, our tour guide Anggid, the other staff of the tour boat, many Orangutans, a troop of Long-tailed Macaques, and one Agile Gibbon! What a perfect day.

We started the new school year on a rainy day in Kumai, Borneo. Tomu is starting 6th grade, Jade 4th grade, and Luz 2nd grade.

It was quite rainy while we were in Kumai. We noticed these big tall cement buildings with no windows in the town. I asked about them, and found out that they are buildings built for swallows to build nests inside. The swallows’ nests are then exported to China to make bird’s nest soup. They are very expensive because it takes a lot of work to clean them. Much of the real estate on the main street in town was occupied by these buildings.

After resting up from our passage, we embarked on a klotok — a local river boat — for a three day and two night tour into Tanjung Puting National Park. The boat was quite comfortable. We slept on mattresses under mosquitos nets at night. We could sit on the bow and look for animals, or go up to the top deck for a closer view of the trees. All of our meals were delicious. The highlight of the trip for the kids was the Coca-Cola (as in that was even better than seeing orangutans!). Here are some pictures.

One highlight of the trip was the night hike. We saw several tarantulas, a scorpion, 2 types of carnivorous pitcher plants, a Kingfisher, some Bulbul birds, Giant Rainforest Ants (2 inches long!), fireflies, and glow in the dark mushrooms.

There are three feeding platforms in the National Park. Each has wooden benches set up for tourists to sit and watch the orangutans eating. These orangutans (most of them) were formerly in captivity, often kept as pets. The National Park staff feed them once a day in order to help supplement their nutrition and ease their transition to the wild. The food is especially important when it isn’t fruiting season. Some wild orangutans also come for the food (bananas and sweet potatoes). There were 35 boats on the river with us — most had only 2 guests on them! In the high season, July and August, there are as many as 50 boats.

At each of the three feeding stations, the alpha male of the group would come to the platform, sit down, and proceed to eat until all the food was gone. Other orangutans had different strategies: stuffing many bananas in their mouths and retreating to somewhere close to eat them; grabbing some bananas and climbing a nearby tree to eat; staying on the platform away from the alpha male. Orangutans are solitary (males) or semi-solitary (females with offspring). They build a new nest in the trees each night to sleep in. Orangutans don’t jump from tree to tree like the Long-tailed Macaques or Agile Gibbons. Instead, they lean to the side in order to make their slender tree sway back and forth, until they can reach over to the next tree. It seems like they are almost walking through the trees. They are good at climbing trees. Biruté Galdikas, Canadian anthropologist and primatologist, wrote the book Reflections of Eden about her time studying the orangutans at Camp Leakey (the third feeding station). Unfortunately it’s not available as an e-book from my library! These photos were all taken & edited by Riki.

We continued our tradition of birthday chess tournaments — 2 rounds of 8 minute timed games. This time Igna was victorious. 🙂

I received sweet cards from everyone (except Tomu, whose present was a spoken “I’ll cook for myself for 3 days”.), fancy wooden Japanese chopstick holders from Riki, and handmade bracelets, a hand-knit scarf, and hand-sewn purse from Jade. The staff emerged from the lower floor singing and bearing a platter with a cone of special yellow rice. What a surprise! Apparently, this yellow rice is eaten on special days like anniversaries or weddings or birthdays.