One of my most favorite experiences of traveling around Indonesia is the trip I took to Kalimantan.

It was scary but exhilarating and fabulous at the same time.

(Kalimantan is on the island of Borneo)

My trip to Kalimantan was to visit Camp Leakey, an orang utan rehabilitation center in Tanjung Puting.

After I was released from jail, (it's a looooong story) I went down to the river to find a boat that would take me to Tanjung Puting.  It was a 10 hour journey by boat through the jungle and I needed to hire one for a week.

I found this one and after much haggling and negotiating, I secured this boat, a skipper and a guide for 7 days.

The boat itself had no amenities at all. It’s uncomfortable as you only get a pillow to sit on and mats on the floor. This was going to be my sleeping, traveling, and eating compartment for the next few days.

Bathroom? Nope!!    You hang your butt over the side of the boat or ask the skipper to pull into a bank and treading carefully  in the jungle, looking out for snakes and dangerous critters.

Bathing is also creepy as the only thing you can do to clean yourself and get refreshed from the steamy heat of the jungle is to jump in the river.   It is murky from silt and you cant see the bottom and you just have to pray there’s nothing in there that would grab certain parts of your anatomy …lol.

The scenery is okay if you like jungles, once in a while you come across another boat here and there but for the most part I remember telling myself to bring a good book next time…..like War And Peace…lol.

 

Finally we arrive at the camp and here’s just a few of the pics I took of my beautiful orangs…..you’re lucky I’m not uploading all of them…..you’d be here for hours…lol.

These orangs are semi rehabilitated. They were confiscated from poachers and the illegal wildlife trade and rehabilitated to live back in the jungle.  Most of them were 99% but still needed supplementary feeding so every afternoon around 3pm we would go into the jungle with a cart full of fruit and they would come out of the jungle and down from the trees and grab as much fruit as they could.

One day, a huge boar came out of the jungle and the commotion was very, very scary and deafening. One of the male orangs decided to take it upon himself to be the hero and chase the boar back into the jungle.  He just wanted to make sure everybody heard  how brave he was…lol.

I spent a  few wonderful days with them and even had my own baby to take care of….Alexandra…who was 9 months old and an orphan.  It was very difficult to say goodbye to her.

The orangs were totally incredible. The feeling of just hanging out with them is indescribable.

This was my last day there and saying goodbye to these guys was also sad, even though I was scared of them at first, they turned out to be really lovely guys and they took very good care of me.