Winter Escape (Chapter 3)
Indonesia
& Malaysia
Black and white, night and day, apples and oranges—that’s how
different our impressions are of these two countries. Traveling through the towns, cities and
countryside of Indonesia reveals a landscape littered with trash, trash and
more trash with no respect for the environment whatsoever. Even the waterways, rivers, bays and ocean
are awash in trash. It seems that people
are the only organisms possibly thriving in this country, as millions of them
inhabit the cities, and large families of many children still are the
norm.
The highlight of our visit to Indonesia was a sojourn into
the rainforest to Genung Leuser National Park, on the island of Sumatra to see
orangutans in their natural habitat.
Sumatra was once the home of a large number of orangutans as well as the
Sumatran tiger, rhinoceros and numerous other birds and animals. They’ve largely been displaced by the
planting of huge plantations of palm oil.
Forests have been clear cut, the animals killed or fled, and now palm
oil rules the day. It is a cheap cash
crop used widely today in the world, especially in processed foods.
So, about the orangutans. We left the ship at 4:00AM for a 3-4 hour
drive to the National Park, even though it was only about 40 miles from the
ship’s docked location. Maybe you can
get a sense of the road conditions from that tidbit of information. After breakfast at a local hotel, we set out
on a hike to see and photograph the primates.
After a steep uphill climb and about 2 kilometers of walking in the
forest, we came upon a mother and baby.
Baby orangutans stay with their mothers for about 7 years, after which
time they strike out on their own. This
time period is the longest that any animal stays with its mother, except for
humans. As a result, during a female
adult’s lifespan of about 35 years, she only has about 3 babies. After watching this family, we moved on and
found another mother and baby. While in
the park, we were able to see a couple of beautiful leaf monkeys and some
long-tailed macaques.
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| Long-Tailed Macaque |
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| Thomas Leaf Monkey |
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| Orangutan |
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| Orangutan Young |
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| Orangutan |
As much as we enjoyed seeing these animals in the wild, it
was a bit disturbing to notice that there was seemingly no limit on the number
of human visitors to the park, and the guides were feeding the orangutans
bananas and carrots to encourage them to get closer to people. This experience was so different from our
mountain gorilla trek in Africa where everything was highly regulated for the
benefit of the gorillas. Although these
orangutans are safely installed in a national park, I feel that they are still
being exploited. The question becomes, “does
the exploitation aspect outweigh the benefit of a learning opportunity for
people to see and become aware of these gentle animals along with the
opportunity to protect and preserve them and their habitats?” Or is it the
opposite? There’s not an easy answer.
After our brief experience in Indonesia, we set off east
across the straits of Malacca for some ports of call in Malaysia. As we drove from the port of Klang to the
city of Kuala Lumpur, the first thing we noticed was that the trash was gone,
the roads were good, and the country appeared to be productive and thriving
with many international companies and businesses based here. The standard of living was much higher in
Malaysia than in Indonesia. Although
both countries have natural resources, the way they are handled makes the
difference. In Malaysia, health care and
education are available and good. Not so
in Indonesia. And, Malaysians
take pride in being a culturally diverse country with tolerance for all. (At least, that’s what we were told.)
Kuala Lumpur is a very modern city that could almost be
anywhere, world. A visit to the Sky
Tower revealed a city that’s expanding and growing; construction was going on
almost everywhere there was an empty block.
The Petronas Towers are 1,483 ft. high.
Until 2004, they were the tallest towers in the world. “Petronas” is the name of the national oil
company of Malaysia, and they are the owners of these towers. Quite impressive to see!
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| KL Tower |
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| Partial View of Kuala Lumpur from KL Tower |
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| Petronas Towers |
We finished our time in Malaysia with a day at a beach on Sibu
Island. It was a nice white sandy beach
with warm sea water for swimming. We had
been told there would be snorkeling opportunities, but they didn’t materialize
until late in our day when we were ready to return to the ship.
Now, just a few words about this ship voyage. We always book small expedition ships for a
reason. First, the number of passengers
is always less than 100. Second, the
ships are small enough to reach ports that have something unusual or
interesting to see and do such as rainforest walks, trips through the mangroves
to see birds and monkeys or visits to local tribal areas. Because of the hassles the ship’s staff has
encountered with new(?) government regulations in Southeast Asian countries,
our itinerary has been altered considerably, and many of the ports of call are places
that ordinary large ships can visit. A
hue and cry arose from all of the passengers on the day we visited Kuala
Lumpur. Enough was enough; we hadn’t
signed up to visit hot, humid cities, which happened for 3 days in a row. As a result, we are all now getting half of
our cruise fare refunded as well as a hefty discount on a future expedition. Question is—how many will actually book a
future cruise?
So, now we’ll see how things go as we ply the waters going to
Cambodia and Vietnam.
