And we are off! It is such an odd feeling heading off on this trip after thinking about it every day since Dawn told me she was in the process of developing the program. Ever since I was young watching nature programs or documentaries, Borneo would always have the craziest wildlife and even though it is obviously a real place I never felt like it actually existed since it was this far away dream-like place in my head. The fact that I am actually traveling there is mind boggling. Once I found out it had been approved and the application open I applied for it that very day. I have been trying to imagine what this trip will be like for so long but now that it is actually here it is a very odd feeling. I normally am a little anxious mess before going on trips but this morning I was strangely calm and telling myself that I have to take everyday with an open mind and try to push all my expectations out of my mind. I got dropped off at the airport by my roommate then of course got a little lost trying to meet at group check in. I had traveled to Belize with two of the people on the trip and knew others from my major. I didn’t expect to know so many people going on this trip but it was really comforting that I did. Don’t get me wrong I think it is so important to travel not really knowing anyone because it makes you really develop connections with people you otherwise wouldn’t and you grow in ways you couldn’t imagine but still it is awesome to have friendly faces.
Holy sh*t that flight is looong. We went from Minneapolis to Seattle, then Seattle to Hong Kong where we stayed overnight at hotel attached to the airport. In the morning i woke up with a pretty bad headache since the time change is like 12 hours ahead so my body was really confused but nothing a little ibuprofen couldn’t fix. At the Regal Hotel in Hong Kong we had a huge buffet breakfast and then headed on an AirAsia flight to Kota Kinabalu. As we were about to land in Kota Kinabalu I opened the window and saw the turquoise waters scattered with islands and surrounded in lush green mountains. Once we landed we all headed to the bathroom. A Malaysian women came out of the stall looked at me with a smirky-smile before walking away. I open the bathroom door and to my surprise saw just a hole in the ground, silly me expecting to see a toilet. I stared at it for like 30 seconds deciding how to best approach it and not pee all over myself as I have never been very good at squatting. I then opened the door and was like “hey guys what's the best way to go about this?”. Turns out all the other stalls were normal toilets so I opted for one of them. Little did I know most of the bathrooms we would go to would be squatters so I would later get very used to it. Was that TMI? Maybe. Anyway, we then went to exchange some money into Malaysian Ringgits. We then loaded all of our stuff onto this cute bus with frilly curtains and headed into downtown KK to our hotel. The hotel was really nice and it had AC!!!!! Halleluja! I haven’t mentioned this yet but it is so unbelievably hot. You walk outside and are just profusely sweating. And not just a little sweat you are dripping. It is so hot it took my breath away like nothing I have ever experienced before. I thought Florida was hot in the summer but it doesn’t even began to compare to this. We had a few hours before we had to meet again and we found out there was a pool so of course we dropped our things off in our rooms and headed straight there. The pool was on the roof with a view of the city and the ocean with islands peeking out in the background and was soo pretty. The water feel amazing in the heat and we swam around for about an hour before we had to head back. Of course I didn’t put sunscreen on and got burnt because I'm an idiot and forgot that how freaking hot the sun is, but whatcha gonna do; you live and you learn. After a quick shower we headed to the market. Again it is so crazy hot we all looked like zombies. It was so hard to focus because my body was overheating and I was trying not to pass out. I had no idea how much sweat my body could produce until arriving here. The market was definitely an experience. Row after row of people selling fruits and vegetables I have never seen before. We go taste some of the fruits like the snakeskin fruit, jack fruit, and mini bananas. Since a lot of the vendors are selling the same things they would scream their prices at us repeatedly to try and get us to come over. Also there are cats everywhere! I am probably one of the biggest cat people on the planet so I got super excited until most of them looked pretty dead which is obviously very sad but everyone here lives in such poverty they can’t afford to feed animals let alone their families. Also the US views cats and dogs very different then the rest of the world. Pets to us are family members where in many other places they are used for services like protection and are normally not allowed in the house. Another interesting thing is that they break all the cats tails for fashion so it looks like a little ball at the end. In my head I was immediately judgemental then had to stop myself because it is another culture and in the US we do things like crop dogs tails and declaw cats which I’m sure is equally as horrible and looked down on from other people.
After a nice stroll through the produce section we headed to the fish side which lets just say had a lot of smells. Again it is incredibly hot, there is no refrigeration, and mounds of freshly caught fish are laying out to be sold so there are such interesting smells going on. Its times like this where I am thankful for things like volunteering at The Raptor Center or zoology labs where I am gutting rats and cutting things open so I am not very grossed out by the sights or smells. It was interesting to see rows of reef fish like parrotfish and piles of huge tuna. As ocean acidification progresses and we continue to overfish there simply won’t be any of these fish left and fishing communities like the people of Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan are going to take an incredibly hard hit which will be detrimental to a community already in such poverty.
I was wondering how people don’t get sick as I saw raw chicken, covered in flies sitting out it the sun but I was reminded they cook their food very well to kill the bacteria though our guide Mike still said a lot of people suffer from digestive problems. For dinner we stopped at a place in the market that was a restaurant with a few plastic tables right on the water. With KK having an economy so dominated by the fishing industry most restaurants at the market being run by fishing families most of the food sold is seafood that they catch each day. As a vegetarian this made things a little tough. Since this was our first meal Mike ordered us some dishes to share. The only vegetarian things I could eat were white rice, boiled cabbage, and some seaweed but it was still really yummy, those not very filling. I also ordered mango juice that was really good. After dinner we headed back to the hotel for a lecture on coral reef ecology and some fish that we should be able to identify then I went back to the room and immediately fell deep asleep.
