When human becomes inhuman

This story comes from Borneo, which ashamed me more…

A TERRIFIED orangutan protects her baby after hunters desperate to slaughter them were stopped with just minutes to spare.

Locals watched the helpless mother and daughter saved by British rescuers in Borneo.  A knife-wielding gang hoped to collect a bounty for killing the endangered apes.  But a team from charity Four Paws swooped to pluck the gentle creatures to safety. Four Paws expert Dr Signe Preuschoft said: "It is extremely fortunate we arrived when we did."

Palm oil plantation owners offer up to £70 for each orangutan killed as they see them as pests. There were 250,000 orangutans in the wild a few decades ago but only 50,000 are left. The rescued pair were released in a remote rainforest. The mother was fitted with a radio transmitter to monitor their movements.

Safe..orangutan mum wraps arms around baby daughter

Patrified... orangutan, circled, clutches baby after rescue drama

Source from The Sun

Massive spider web

Have you ever seen trees cocooned in spider webs?  If you have not, here they are…Millions of spiders into the trees to spin their webs, after 2010′s massive floods surge on Pakistan. Trees shrouded in ghostly cocoons the phenomenon spider webs are not unprecedented before the floods hit Pakistan. The giant spider webs in Sindh, Pakistan, sometimes stretched from tree to tree, as the picture below

Bakun@Belaga Part 3: The final trilogy(bleahhh!..)

Day 3

I was the last person to wake up(having sleepless night, too many mosquito!tiny mosquito that can penetrate your shirt!gross!). The weather was cold and quite. The sounds of the jungle seem to greet us with open arms.

Looking at the kitchen, I don’t even feel hungry…why?

Because of these bees! underneath the kitchen…

There was a swamp of bees, (searching for minerals I assumed) flying on the ground. I had to get used to it so I brave myself. It turn out that the bees didn’t even bother our presence and so we did whatever works in the kitchen without a sting.

Early morning…

The fish were there when I woke up…

I realized it from yesterday, at first it was strange but this morning I find it interesting…trees without trunks!hahaha..partially submerge under the water(common sight here)…

Just checking the hunting gear…

We went out, checking the fishing net…it wasn’t a surprise, no fish in the net. We were really disappointed. My brother in law said normally he’d get at least 5 Tapah in one net but we got none... My brother in law had to resort to plan B, attempting to catch the fish with cast net. He manages to catch a few, casting the net from the boat while we navigate the boat. After that, we went to the floating hut (where we got our rations from the first day and it’s actually belongs to my brother in laws relatives). There, we took some rice, and a small Tabah (that we brought back to our hut…).

This was why we came all the way here, to catch this fish, Tapah.

Wasn’t much but this was all that we got from our cast net…

My humble meal…

And also ‘salai ikan’…delicious!

At noon we decided to deer hunting and fishing…so we split into two groups. My brother in laws would went deer/wild boar hunting with his friend while me and other brother in laws went to set up another fishing net.

We dropped them on another island, and then went to another lagoon to set up fishing net…

It’s noon already but look at the weather, so cold and nice…as if it’s late evening already…

If you have no idea how to set up fishing net, let me show you (or rather my brother in law shows you…)

First up, tie one end of the net to a sturdy tree, then stretch it fully and tie the other end on the other tree.

Yes, tie the other end of the net to the next tree…

Then, tie some weight at the bottom part of the net to make it submerge downwards, meter by meter (if your net is longer, you gotta need lots of weight. Well, that’s it! It’s easy right? Haha

Next, we moved on to the other part of the island (to fetch my brother in laws…). This was when I noticed two Sarawak hornbills flying freely on top of the trees…What a magnificent sight! It was truly an amazing experience to see them here…Yes, you could found a lot of them here, in a remote area where natural habitat still very much intact! As we crossed the river junction, I took this video…watch how huge the river is…

We moved from a huge river to a narrow stream of river, and there was cold running water from the upper stream…Yeay! Casting the fishing net…

Wow!lots of fish…

Casting twice and it’s already half bucket full…

Me with my silly google on my forehead, excited to dive…

Cold stream and our source of clean water…rivers here don’t flow because of the dam so the water unsuitable for drinks…whenever you found this kind of water, store as much as you can…

Looking at my hand..getting worse from yesterday…*sigh

We left with two baskets of fish…went back and rested for the evening.

I tried to take a short nap but didn’t really got it…

So I decided to stroll around the hut…

This is said to be a good medicine for diabetes…

As I walked around the camp site, the surrounding gets darker and I stopped taking pictures. We were talking in the hut when we heard incoming engines from the river. As it gets nearer, we saw my brother in laws relatives coming…I didn’t understand what they said but when I checked their boat, this was what I found…

Yeah, a deer! He managed to kill one…

This was the process of removing the fur, by using cooking gas! It burnt the fur in a blink of an eye…This was my first time and to see the skin shrinking in a second was phenomenal.

The deer ended up in four parts, of which three quarters were us! Thanks to them, we didn’t went back empty handed…The night went so fast and we found ourselves sleeping soundly inside the hut…Zzzzzzz

Day 4

As usual, I was the last person to wake up and it’s still raining…

It was our last day here. We had breakfast, my brothers in laws went out one last time fishing and hunting. They came back an hour later empty handed, no surprise there. We were talking about our bad luck while I snapped one last creature near our hut…

Look at this gigantic caterpillar! It’s as long as my palm! I had seen this before but I didn’t expect to see it again…

It wasn’t a smooth journey, we didn’t caught many Tapah but we didn’t went back empty handed either…This has been a memorable trip (unplanned trip…), so we didn’t expected much as well. We came in rainy seasons, the water was a little bit muddy so the all the big fish run away to other places…We leaved around 10.30 a.m to send another boat to the floating hut only to find my brother in laws relatives were on their way sending logs…

For your information, they were sending these logs to Bakun, which took 2 days and 1 night journey. As I said before, the river current didn’t flow because of the dam, so it got slower when transporting these. So how did they move all these logs?    

Look at those two long boats on the left side, they were left running without any driver. They were tied to the log and left running by themselves. There was one long boat on the right side. They steered the logs in this way…for two days alright!

Gas stoves and barrels with gasoline…

A simple hut, barely enough for all of them…looks fun too…

This was how they tied the logs altogether…

I had fun walking around the floating logs..hahaha

Next up, we continued our journey back to Bakun dam…Determined not to be a moron once again, I had prepared my sweater and long pants for the journey. It was a smooth 40 minutes ride and as expected the engines suddenly stalled… (it was almost 12 noon and the sun started to come out!great!) The journey continued with so many stops (I lost count how many times the engines stalled as I got angry and couldn’t be bothered to count it again…) One facts that you should know, despite our long boat  enough to accommodate us and the luggage, it has its own problem…the boat was leaking from day 1!

The boat was leaking from the front, with water coming out non-stop! Ughhh!

Halfway through out our journey, I was sitting at the back and scooping out the water nonstop before my brother in law took over my place…

We were so busy packing our things earlier on and not realizing that we didn’t even have water to drink in the boat! Wow! 5 of us and none of us were thinking of that! We just add another recipe for disaster. My brother in law took some ice cubes from the storage container and put some of it inside a bottle...even that wasn’t enough for all of us. It’s 3 hours plus in the boat under intense heat with no water…*sigh…

They were eating this (deer head’s soup..)in the boat except me…

We leaved the hut at 10.40 a.m. Then we leaved the floating logs at 11.05 a.m. Look at the time, it’s 1.10 p.m and we were only halfway to Bakun Dam (the engines stalled every 10 minutes!!…). Even when we almost reached the offloads bay, the engines spare us no mercy!

Despite all the setbacks, to me it was worth it. Spending 4 days in wilderness, away from television, handphones, internet and my comfort zone, I was able to test my endurance and patient. Once there (23/1/2012 - 26/1/2012), I lost contact with the outside world, all the troubles were gone and it kept my mind free.

For those who wish to visit Bakun and Belaga, please find a local to help you. It’s heaven for hunters and fishing…Till then, c ya!  

 

  

Bakun@Belaga Part 2

Fast Facts of Bakun Dam

• The Bakun Hydroelectric Dam is the second highest concrete faced rockfill dam in the world.
• Bakun dam is 207 metres high with a reservoir surface area of nearly 70,000 hectares, about the size of Singapore.
• The main civil works began in 2002 by Malaysia-China Hydro Joint Venture.
• Workforces of just over 3000 are on site at the peak of construction activity.
• Experts, engineers, specialists and consultants worldwide are involved in this mega-project.
• Upon completion, the Bakun Dam will generate 2400MW of clean electricity.
• Bakun Dam is emission-free and has a 0% impact on global warming.

Bakun dam before…

Bakun dam before and after…

Bakun Dam

[continue from Part 1…]

The night didn’t end there, around 8.30 p.m we went out to set up the fishing net despite the rain and it nearly cost us our life….you wouldn’t believe this…since we had nothing to do, me and my bro in laws proceed with the plan. My bro in law driving the engines, wearing only underwear(yes, don’t try to imagine…) while his brother sitting in front of the boat as guide and me sitting in the middle. It was raining so I couldn’t bring my camera.

 It took about 20 minutes and finally we reach a small lagoon. It was said to be a perfect place to catch Tapah. As we begun to tie the net, the rain started to rain heavily. As soon as we done, we went back shaking in wet and cold wind. That’s when my bro in laws decided to switch role and the younger one took the engines. The drama started here when we couldn’t see a thing. It was like a vast ocean with waves smashing our boat.

I had no idea where were we going and my bro in law started to argue with his brother over the direction that we should follow. His brother was convinced that we were going the right path…he steered left across the river and keep driving. All we could see is just dead tree (with the help of our torch light…). There were no stars and moon light in the sky..

Dead tree that we saw at night…

As my brothers in laws were arguing, I sit calmly trying to spot any light source. The gasoline was running low and we all fear that we might end up sleeping in the boat the whole night (the rain didn’t stop until morning…). We had to stop at the top of the tree to figure out our bearing but my brothers in laws kept arguing…

We had to stop on top of the tree like this…pretty scary…haha

We switched all our torch light and try to identify the terrain but without moonlight and the star, there’s no way we could identify our location…We kept going slowly and the gasoline tank has almost empty(back in my mind, I started to replay the Man vs Wild episodes and how to survive in this situation..*grinning)…The 20 minutes ride turn out to be our most suspense encounter and it took 1 hour before we had to pull off on the next dead tree…My brother in laws, wearing only underwear, shaking and mumbling to himself and so was his younger brother, mumbling at the engines…it was an awkward moment in the boat, a moment of silent…while I look around, left and right, I saw a tiny, red light far right that’s almost unnoticeable…

The red light was so dimmed…barely seen..

I shouted while pointing right, “isn’t that our light!?” to which my brother in laws said “Yes! That’s our light! Keep looking at the light…” He started the engines and steered right across the river. We were so relieved and it was right, it came from our tent. I came out of the boat, sitting next to the camp fire to get the heat. Even at that point, my brothers in laws kept arguing till next morning...really funny. If you want to know, it was candle light that saves the three of us that night and not the camp fire…Thank God!

Never experience this bad luck before, one after another, within one day…but to be honest, it’s just the beginning of our bad luck…

To be continue…