Here is our first look at Borneo – beautiful islands off the coast of Kota Kinabalu in Sebah. Kota Kinabalu is an attractive new looking city, quite clean with a lot of new buildings and new construction going on. Below is a new mosque that we drove by. The primary religions in Sebah seems to be a mix of Islam and Catholicism, quite different from Bali and Thailand.
We leave the city of Kota Kinabalu (KK) behind and head out to our next destination, Mt. Kinabalu.- the highest mountain in SE Asia and the highest peak between the Himalayas and Papua New Guinea, 4095 m (13435 ft) high. It’s a large granitic pluton, about a 2 hour leisurely drive east of KK.
In Borneo, we discover a new fruit – the rambut. It is sweet and has the consistency of a large grape.
This is our favorite fruit – the Mangosteen.
White fruit inside and very sweet.
This is the Aristo Hotel near Mt Kinabalu where we stayed. Had a great view, but as the other couple from Italy staying there said – “Quite Basic”.
But the views, awe-inspiring!
And nice sunsets, too – but not as good as Saipan sunsets.
We got up early morning and started climbing the mountain, not to the peak, just wandering and birdwatching! of course.
We saw many beautiful sights along the way.
These are just a few of the beautiful birds we saw around Mt. Kinabalu:
Indigo Flycatcher
and the Oriental Magpie-Robin.
Borneo Whistling-Thrush
Black-sided Flowerpecker
After exploring the area around Mt Kinabalu for 2 days, we take off for Lahad Datu, on our way to Danum Valley – areas on the east side of Sabah.
Lahad Datu was a nice little town where we waited for a minibus to take us to the Danum Valley field station. Although very quaint, there were many cellphone stores way out here in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. Everyone, everywhere, seems to have a cell phone. A family gathered around a laptop computer on the patio of their little restaurant, with the youngest daughter at the keyboard, another example of the mixing of new and old cultures in Borneo. Not sure what they might have been internet surfing for!
Below is the wi-fi spot we used -
the local bakery!
This is the central market in Lahad Datu, very colorful with lots of fresh vegies and good food. Open markets are typical and found in every town we visited in SE Asia. Many women dress in Muslim attire with covered heads. Some of the younger women dress in western clothes, but with the addition of the Muslim head cover.
Around 3:00pm we take off for the Danum Valley Field Station with a bus full of Danum Valley workers and their cute kids. The driver has the radio blasting, so we are rocking out down the bumpy dirt roads to the valley. There are cows roaming in small herds thru the streets and yards as we pass by.
As we draw nearer to the field station, we actually get to see our first Borneo Pygmy Asian Elephants. We are so excited to see elephants in the wild. For the next few miles, we notice a lot of the Very Evident Scat left by these pachyderms, indicating their heavy use of the roads.
We finally arrive at the Field station. By the time we get settled and are able to go for a walk it’s quite dark, but we roam around anyway listening to the night time jungle chorus!
This is what the field station looked like in the morning. A lush, tropical area with a river running right next to it, and lots of trails to explore.
Exploring the jungle we ran across some interesting things like this clinging or crawling plant found on the trunks of the trees.
The roots of the large Dipterocarp trees are very impressive, as are the “canopy topper” trees you find sticking high above the general canopy top. Very hard to identify any birds at the top of these trees.
Because of the thick native dipterocarp jungle, birding takes effort in Danum Valley – it reminded me of birding in the forests of the east coast where I took my first ornithology class, an effort which creates sore necks! We called it Warbler Neck! So, easier to locate than the treetop birds, we saw wonderful, unique and some endemic ground or near ground foraging species – the Pitta’s.
The blue-banded Pitta
and the Black and Crimson Pitta.
The female Giant Pitta. A good 3 Pitta day for Cheri and I!
A few other birds we saw were:
The Jambu Fruit Dove
And the Red-bearded Bee Eater 
White-crowned Shama
