Sabah – The Land Below The Wind

Sabah is the northern state of the island of Borneo, and ancient mariners sailing in the surrounding waters once described all the lands south of the typhoon belt as the “land below the wind”. I am now reading the book of that title, written by an American lady, Agnes Newton Keith, who lived in Sandaken from 1935-39. She captures a time that is gone, destroyed by war and the politics that followed. I too was fortunate to have lived in Kota Kinabalu in the early 1980s, a golden time in my life and where Natasha was born. It was good to go back. I was a little afraid it would all be changed and of course it is, but as the Asians say…same same but different!

John and I walked along the beach at Tanjong Aru and sat under the casuarina trees of the Yacht club where once I played mah-jong with my baby tucked under the table in her bassinette, with some bride’s veil secured over the top to protect her from mosquitos. It was where Gerry and Nick spent their child hoods, on the great play ground of the beach, and where we sat with friends and drank as the sun set.

This time, John and I also watched the sun set, but further along, in the Shangri La, and drank margueritas with a charming Australian couple. He was a gold miner. I’ve never met a gold miner before.

We drove for 2 hours up to see Mount Kinabalu… we did see it for a while, rising dramatically out of the clouds to its grand height of 14.000 ft until the clouds gathered again and the strange serrated top with its rabbit ear formations were hidden.


Our guide talked and talked till I was ready to climb the mountain and jump. He enthused madly about the tiniest orchid in the world that was smaller than a baby’s finger nail. Actually it left me cold, but apparently the botanists from Kew spend about 3 hours just staring at it. For all his verbosity we did learn that the Borneo rainforest was 130 million years old, compared to the Amazon that is just a mere 70 million, and he showed us the Rothschild orchid that crazy people pay $10,000 for (US) It was kept behind bars…wicked people may have had bad intentions. And hanging proudly next to the orchid jail were the King Edward monkey cups… so named after the king’s private parts.

Our guide just went off on a fit of laughing about that. Once he started to laugh, he relaxed and it was as though his brain stopped being a computer and he told us about his marriage instead. Much more interesting. He had to buy 2 water buffalo to present to his father in law, in order to secure his wife. He was as proud as punch when he told us he got a really good bargain and only paid 500 ringgit each, instead of 1200ringit for one. He was doubled up laughing. We began to like him.
The mountain is full of superstition and each month a shaman or holy person goes up and slaughters 7 white chickens and spreads the blood. She didn’t do it in January this year, and a German girl fell to her death from the summit.
Also you must never take any stones from the mountain. Only bad things will happen. Worth knowing.
And so we left Kota Kinabalu, with our driver, Charlie. He had absorbed all his lessons at English school, he greeted us with, ‘how are you? Tickety Boo?’ ‘I’m just a proper Charlie, ha ha ha! And I’m as sound as a pound!’
We flew to Sandakan.
First stop for all travellers to Sandakan is Sepilok, the orang utan sanctuary.

It is a wonderful home for orphans, injured or sick animals. If you don’t see these amazing monkeys in the wild, you are almost 100% sure of seeing them here. They are fed milk and bananas at 10 am and 3pm, every day until they are so sick of it, they hopefully return to the wild. The babies are taught skills like swinging on ropes etc that their mothers would have taught them, and we were so lucky to see five come to the feeding table. About 12 years ago Natasha visited Sepilok on her world travels, and a ranger named a baby after her. I asked about ‘Natasha’ and they knew her well. She was the daughter of Mariko, but sadly she died about 2 years ago. Mariko has had about 4 babies, but none have survived. We did see her with her current ‘toddler’.
And then … it was the highlight of the whole adventure.
The trip up the Kinabatangan River, Borneo’s second longest river, at 560km. It coils like the serpents that swim its length far into the Borneo interior. Forests line its sides, swarming with wild life that flee the ever-encroaching palm-oil plantations.

We stayed in an idyllic, luxurious (!) lodge with polished wooden floors, crisp white sheets and hot shower, we went out for early morning and sunset cruises to look for wild monkeys and birds, and we were not disappointed.
Rhinoceros hornbills, Brahmin kites, giant wood peckers, storm storks that are so endangered there are only 43 left in the world. We saw 5.

As the sun was rising we saw the stark bare branches of a tree that rose higher than the canopy, and birds sat like notes on a musical stave.
In the evening as we nosed our way up a tributary we caught sight of a 5m long dead python which had died in a fisherman’s net. A monitor lizard was hauling it up the bank into a hole. It was enough to give you the shivers. Abbas our guide showed us a picture that he took of a python eating a wild pig.

He also told us that pythons often sleep in the bird’s nest ferns high up in the tree branches…I felt just a little afraid when walking beneath them. It has been known they will slither down and wrap themselves around a sleeping farmer. Best to choose your tree with care, if you feel like a rest.

But it was the monkeys that were the stars of the show. Red tail and silver langors,
the cheeky macaques, and best of all the proboscis, leaping from branches in death defying jumps, and the Big Daddy male sitting back on his branch with his huge pregnant-like belly and his large sexually attractive nose (to some) and his strange fur that looks like he is wearing a bomber jacket over ballet tights.

It was sad to leave the paradise of swallow tail moths, and butterflies that stopped to sip the trails of the salty urine of passing animals. I felt as though I was in a Disney film when all the butterflies rose and fluttered around me.

I already miss the exotic blooms, the wide brown river and even the huge salt water crocodiles.

They live side by side with humans, who seemed to have no fears as they lathered up with Head and Shoulders, whilst only 100m down river a 5 m croc was sunning itself on the bank. We even saw a pygmy elephant, and heard the honking of his friends urging him to hurry and catch up. I think Abbas our guide must have a job made in heaven.
When we left Sandakan I was quite bemused by the security guy putting our luggage through the scanner…he was wearing bright orange nail polish. Hmmm. I wonder if it was medicinal, maybe he had ring worm or something. And so we arrived back in KL, revisited Marie, and then went to see Petaling Street in China Town, and ended up in a dark massage parlour, where John was pulled and stretched and pummelled and I was oiled and kneaded and all the aches and pains in both our bodies just vanished.
We returned to our hotel and drank white fizzy wine and admired the stunning art that we bought as a memory of our trip to the beautiful Far East.