A land of paradoxes

Laid-back king of his jungle, orangutan Richie enjoys a hand-out of fruit in Semenggoh Nature...
Laid-back king of his jungle, orangutan Richie enjoys a hand-out of fruit in Semenggoh Nature Reserve, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo.
An orangutan mother and week-old baby at the Semenggoh Nature Reserve.
An orangutan mother and week-old baby at the Semenggoh Nature Reserve.
The Kuching waterfront from a water taxi on the Sarawak River.
The Kuching waterfront from a water taxi on the Sarawak River.
Creating the famous, egg-rich Sarawak kek lapis (layer cake) is hard work.
Creating the famous, egg-rich Sarawak kek lapis (layer cake) is hard work.
A proboscis monkey hangs out in a bachelor tribe while waiting for his nose to grow. Bako...
A proboscis monkey hangs out in a bachelor tribe while waiting for his nose to grow. Bako National Park, Sarawak.

If you want to meet the wild men of Borneo, you do it on their terms, writes Heather Hapeta.

Borneo - land of hornbills, orangutans and ''where adventure lives'', according to travel brochures: it could also be called the land of paradoxes.

Kuching, capital of Sarawak, East Malaysia, means cat, but the city was not named after a cat; it has a Sunday market that is open every day, and an India St that has very few Indian shops.

The city, named after a fruit, also has two mayors with equal powers, equal salaries, and even the same-sized office, I'm told.

One looks after the Muslim area, the other the Chinese part: they have the same rules but interpret them differently, a bus driver tells me.

Easy to love, this walkable city has a racial mix of 23% Malay, 25% Chinese and about 49% Dayaks, the collective name for the indigenous tribes.

No doubt about it, Sarawak epitomises the tourism tagline: Malaysia, truly Asia.

While walking down English-sounding Bishopgate St to Carpenter St, I talk to a Chinese man whose family have been ''special makers of fancy coffins'' for three generations; across the road, a man is making cake tins on the footpath; around the corner, Malay women are making their famous Sarawak kek lapis, the intricate and colourful layer cake the area is known for.

And next door to my waterfront accommodation, a traditionally heavily tattooed Iban woman, Winnie of Winnie's Cafe, creates delicious vegetarian meals to order in her simple shop.

Like all travellers to this National Geographic showpiece, I want to see the world's oldest tropical rainforest, home to the endangered orangutan.

At the Semenggoh Nature Reserve about 70 people attend the twice-daily feeding and I join them.

There's no guarantee these wild men of the forest will come to the feeding stations as they are free to range the 300-hectare green belt.

We are warned to obey staff instructions: they have no control over their charges and photos show injured workers as proof.

After walking quietly to one of the two feeding stations, we wait, and wait, until a mother with a week-old baby eventually appears.

It's hard to ooh and aah quietly!

It seems we're all loving being in the presence of such a symbol of Borneo while knowing the tentative hold they have on this earth.

The mother uses all four limbs and sometimes it's hard to tell if it's her feet or hands she's hanging from.

She eats numerous ''hotel-bananas'' as the little lady-finger bananas are called by locals, as ''all hotels serve them'', and a ripple of muted laughter spreads through the group of enthralled, camera-clicking tourists when the very cute baby tries to take one or uses his hand to create five holding-on points.

A radio message comes to the man feeding the primates.

He passes it on to us: Richie, the huge dominant male in the reserve, has made one of his monthly appearances at the other feeding station and one by one we return down the track to where he is being fed.

He is huge!

This ''man of the jungle'' has large cheek-flaps that show he is the king of his jungle and, apparently, he has already dispatched one young pretender to the throne.

A young male arrives for a hand-out but keeps well away from Richie.

As he crosses the rope that allows them to travel high above us, he stops to stare down at us, hanging in midair like a child on a school jungle gym.

I have to laugh; he looks as though he is showing off to us, his DNA relatives, who are not so agile.

Continuing on, he shimmies down a vine and rope beside the small bridge we had just crossed, where he is given fruit.

Richie just continues eating; a solid lump of muscle sitting on his man-made wooden picnic table.

Finally replete, he climbs down from the raised platform.

He walks upright, his long hair swaying like a shampoo commercial with each step of his short-looking body.

Two young women are warned to come back from the end of the viewing platform ''until Richie leaves''.

He stops, stares at us and I send a mental message of hope that the heart of Borneo will always be secure for him, and after one more stop and stare, he strides off without a backward glance.

He knows he's safe from us physically but most travellers here are aware of his need of our protection and, despite international concerns, it seems Sarawak is trying to secure the orangutans' future, which is not an easy task.

As the adverts say, ''but wait, there's more'' in this fabulous area of East Malaysia: add a kayak trip from one Bidayuh village to the next; spend time at an Iban longhouse; eat delicious local food; explore the many excellent and free museums, and, if travelling in July as I did, go to the annual three-day Rainforest World Music Festival.

Set in the Cultural Village at Damai, it is a must-attend for great local and international performers.

Borneo has something else that's unique to this third-largest island in the world, the endangered proboscis monkeys.

Bako National Park and Kuching Wetlands is where I saw them.

With a long straight pale tail, they leap almost clumsily from tree to tree eating the young shoots of normally indigestible foliage that they then break down in their two stomachs.

Male vanity and the need to dominate means their nose can grow to such pendulous lengths they need to hold it up to eat.

Males lower in rank have almost human or Pinocchio-shaped noses and hang out in male groups until they grow bigger and they have the chance to challenge the leader and become the head of the harem.

Borneo conjures images of exotic adventures, an eccentric history, including a dynasty of white rajahs, wild animals, mystery and romance: my first travels have delivered, and I suspect it won't be my last journey to this, the land of the headhunters!

Heather Hapeta is a Wellington-based travel writer.

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