Following Ann's brave lead, I visited Borneo with my family for a week. While Ann (queen of Sabah!) went to the north of the island, we explored Sarawak on the western side. Our plan was to get at taste of the jungle in Mulu national park and to see animals near Kuching, especially at Bako National Park.
I am definitely not equipped for safari and was not ready to invest in a long lens that I would not use otherwise, so I had to do with what was available:
- Fuji X-T1
- Samyang 12mm f/2
- Fuji XF 18-55 f2.8-4
- Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 for really low light situations and portrait
- Nikkor 75-150 f/3.5 Series E: my safari lens!
- A small Jobo flexible tripod that proved useful in many situations
We were actually lucky enough to see a lot a wildlife from really close and while a longer lens (Fuji 100-400?) would have been nice in some situations, my macro lens (Tamron 90mm) would have been even better as we saw a lot of facinating small wildlife such as stick insects. Fortunately the Fuji kit lens has some OK close-up capabilities.
I have no complaints about the X-T1 as ISO 6400 is still very decent and proved enough in most cases, except in caves where my small tripod saved the day.
We landed in Miri, coming from Singapore. Miri was completely destroyed during WW2 and rebuilt in a functional and cheap, tasteless manner that makes the city look quite unattrative. Fortunately people of Borneo easily make up with a warm and welcoming smile. Anyway miri was just a one night stop, with great seafood, before catching a morning flight to Mulu National park, just behind Brunei. Mulu is accessible by air or with a 3 days longboat trip on many curving rivers. While this sounds really attractive we did not have enough time for such an adventure and picked the quick option... 30 minutes in the air over what is left of the coastal jungle and what replaced most of it (huge palm trees plantations) and you are in another world (picture 1). Mulu is mostly renowned for its magnificent caves hosting millions of bats, for spectacular rocks shaped as needles (the Pinnacles) and for its botanic diversity.
We spent two days there and opted out the Pinnacles as it takes three days in the jungle to go there and come back.
The jungle is full of wildlife but it is actually very hard to see any without the help of a knowledgeable guide. Fortunately Mulu's rangers and guides were hired from the local village made of sedenterized Bantan people. They have spent thousands of years in the jungle and know everything about it, and have developed admirable social skills: there is no history of conflict, they share everything they have with the group, there is no private property, and they never predate on other human groups. The worse insult in this civilization is to be accused of not sharing...
Our first guide took us to Deer and Lang caves, about 4 km away from the headquarters. The man knows everything about plants and their ability to heal, kill or feed you. We walked on a wooden path (Picture 2) and actually saw a lot from there (pictures 3 to 5).
Pictures of the caves are in the next post.
