Borneo 2011: Wednesday, June 15, 2011; 11:42am :

Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Center

Don eating on Samsudin's deck.

Yesterday, for dinner we were served prawns, fried in palm oil (ironic, isn’t it), hot and sweet beef, greens, cucumbers and a bucket of rice. Bedtime came at pm with a little apprehension because there was a small ant colony living on my bed and there were no screens on the window and there were bugs flying around and there was a chicken roosting outside the window right next to my left ears. In spite of all of that, I slept quite well on the small, rock solid mattress.

Our bedroom at Samsudin's house in Sukau

Morning started early with two different types of pastries which were dripping with palm oil and tasted like a small slice of heaven!

Many of our meals were cooked in palm oil, which would make sense because it is readily available and cheap. And while I found it a little ironic that I had come half way around the world to explore whether or not palm oil was an ecological disaster, I couldn’t help but loving the flavor of it. I always knew when Hariza was frying something up for us because it smelled just like “junk food alley” at the fair: sweet, oily, yumminess wafting through the air

Leech socks protect the ankles by not allowing leeches to attach our legs and ankles

The group loaded in boats, all sporting our leech socks which are brightly colored fabrick, shaped like XMas stockings. The point of them being that the leeches dangling from leaves on the forest cannot attach to the skin on our legs because the leech socks provide a barrier.

Giving "RigleyRock" a good luck kiss, hoping it will grow big and tall so Orangutan will have a nesting place along the river.

The boats took us downriver where we each got to plant a tree in a Tree Rehabilitation Unit (TRU). One of the TRU workers told me it was a “Night Tree” and the Malay name was too difficult for me to understand. I named the tree “RigleyRock”, that way the kids will always know that they have a tree in the Bornean Rainforest of Sabah Malaysia. In 20 years there will probably be an Orangutan nest atop RigleyRock overlooking the Kinabatangan River!