Wednesday, November 16, 2016

That Time I Went There: That Time I went to Borneo


In July of 2016 I went to Borneo.

If you don’t know where that is it’s hanging out being the 3rd largest island in the world, located right in Malaysia.

It’s a magical land of orangutans, elephants, birds for days, trees that never end, bio-luminescent mushrooms, a large dusting of mysterious invertebrates, and the most passionate people I have ever met.

Those are the ingredients for the perfect cake of a world.

In the end, it half tasted like the best thing I ever ate and the other half was the sad last piece that nobody wanted.

So how fast until you call me ungrateful?

I just went half way around the world (P.S. I live in the United States), witnessed multiple baby orangutans bond with their mother, planted trees, listened to gibbons as I woke up, got kissed in the face by moths, and did a dance in front of an entire village and I still don’t know what it meant.

I also watched a kid who couldn’t have been more than 12 using a scythe to get an oil palm bushel down from the top of a tree while basic human safety was being violated.

10 days before we left the Bornean Orangutan (Pongo Pygmaeus) was moved from “endangered” to “critically endangered” on the IUCN red list.

I looked at miles and miles of deforestation, and did not swim in the Kinabatangan river that was clear in the 1960’s but now doesn’t have an inch of visibility due to pollution and run-off.

Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: That Time I Went There: That Time I went to Borneo
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