Well, the reality isn’t quite like that. The cities in Borneo are pretty developed, and the infrastructure is better than most places in Africa. For example, there was a Starbucks in all three airports we went to in Borneo (that counts as infrastructure, right?).
We first flew into Miri, which is in east Malaysia. Miri is an oil boomtown, and the entire place is seemingly sponsored by Shell and Petronas, including the shiny new petroleum museum. There’s also a very strong Chinese influence in eastern Malaysian Borneo, which we saw in all 3 cities we visited.
From Miri we flew to Gunung Mulu national park, the site of Deer Cave, the largest cave passage in the world and star of the Caves episode of Planet Earth. It was cool. There are 2-3 million bats living there, and almost every night they leave the cave to go hunting, a process that takes almost an hour because there are so many of them.
After a few days in the rainforest of Gunung Mulu, we headed to Kota Kinabalu, up in the northern part of the island. From there we took a bus across Borneo to the Sulu sea, then drove 2 hours into what used to be jungle, but is now palm oil plantation. Unfortunately, about 50% of Malaysian Borneo has been deforested to grow palm oil trees.
But there was a wildlife reserve along the Kinabatangan river, where we spent 2 days cruising the river spotting Proboscus monkeys, lots of birds, and even a wild Orang-Utan. We got close to pygmy elephants, but only heard them. The wildlife and the river there are beautiful, though the proximity to palm plantations was a grim reminder of how endangered many of the species are.
Once we left the jungle, we finished up our honeymoon with an upgrade from our normal budget hotel and backpacker accommodations. We went to a small island 90 minutes off the coast of Borneo, and stayed in a hut at a beach resort for 2 nights before beginning the long journey home.
Check out some of the amazing photos from our time in Borneo.
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| Borneo |
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