Last full rest day in KK

Didn't start off very well... had my first major hit of traveler's sickness this morning.   Woke up in a cold sweat, upset stomach, huge headache, and dizziness.  It was bad stuff.  But I headed out to the market to take my mind off it, and that helped a little.  Then Aywaen, Mindy, Le, and I headed to the Sabah State Museum.  Learned a lot about the 30 indigenous tribes of Sabah (one of the 13 states in Borneo), and got so see some skulls from the ancient head-hunting days.  It was pretty cool.

Came back, had some lectures.  The first was from Kinari, Cam's wife, on the AMAZING organization they started together.  It was so inspiring and impressive.  Then we had a lady from an organization called LEAP come in and make everyone cry.  (Yeah, it was one of those deep discussion things.  What do you stand for? What will you tell your great great grandchildren when they come to you in your dreams asking, "What did YOU DO when you learned that the planet was dying?"  It was dramatic.)

Then we all went out for dinner together... though I didn't eat, because my stomach is really hating Malaysian cuisine right now...  and now we're all stuck in the hotel lobby editing our papers.  (We keep getting funny looks from all the Malaysians wondering, "Why have Americans taken over our lobby with their laptops and headphones?" Haha.)  Leaving for the mountain tomorrow!  The word is, we may or may not have *limited* internet access at some point in the next three weeks, but we will definitely have *limited* cell phone service during the last two weeks.  So text to keep in touch!  (But not too much, because it's super expensive.)

GAYA ISLAND (of PARADISE, as we named it!)

6/22 – Day 1 in Gaya Island

 

This morning Serena and I woke up at 7:30 in KK and rushed to be on the bus by 8AM.  We made it!  The bus took us to the University of Malaysia Sabah, where we got three lectures:  one about the Borneo Marine Research Institute, one about carbon footprints in aquaculture, and one about Harmful Algal Bloom.  None of us really approved of any of the lecturers… they didn’t seem to know what they were talking about very much.  Universities here are so different from universities in the states. 

 

Then we went to the university aquarium, which was pretty cool.  I got to hold a horseshoe crab! It was huge and heavy with a tail like a stick of metal.  And slimy.  But its underside was SO cool.

 

Then we had to stop at immigration so that the Southeast Asian students could get their visas extended.  I listened to Serena’s ipod with Molly and took a nap.  Mmmm.  J

 

Then we stopped for lunch.  We found a bakery!  Had a real sandwich, and mini-donut and mini-brownie.  Yummm, recognizable food.  We also found a grocery store and got some dried fruit and Oreos.  It was a nice afternoon, because we’ve got a week of Malaysian food ahead of us.

 

Then it was off to the dock to leave for the island!!!!  The dock itself was gorgeous, and we could already see the beautiful turquoise color of the water in the bay and a bunch of sergeant general fish swimming around (5 stripes -- that’s how you know it’s a sergeant general!).  Then we boarded these two super fun fast boats that took us the 15 minute, 8km ride out to the island.  It is GORGEOS here.  The boat pulled up to a big boardwalk like the one that goes into the ocean in Greece in the Meryl Streep version of Mama Mia.  (Yeah, we’re listening to Abba right now, so that’s the first comparison I thought of, lol.)  There’s a little building here that has toilets and a place to eat, and the rest of the island is beach and jungle, so we’re sleeping in tents on the beach! J  It is AMAZING.  SO beautiful.  The sunset today was GORGEOUS, AND there was a huge rainbow that got pinker and pinker as the sun went down.

 

But before the sun set, we did tons of cool stuff!  As soon as we were settled in our tents, we changed into our swimsuits and got in the water!  The snorkeling here is INSANE.  And Dad, that underwater camera was SOOOO not a waste of money!  I can’t wait to show you the pictures I have!  Here’s a list of the amazing things I’ve seen so far:  sea star (turquoise!  I held it!), sea cucumber (I held that too!  So soft, yet slimy, with these tiny little suction cups that suck onto your hand – SO cool!), clownfish swimming around in their anemones (I got some AMAZING pictures of these guys – they’re territorial, so they don’t run away when you get close enough to take a picture – they stand their ground and sometimes even come closer!  Cam says they bite so I should watch out, but I was having an awesome time! J), sea urchins (HUGE BIG BLACK SPIKEY THINGS!  And you can hear this faint crunching sound as you swim, and apparently that’s the sea urchins chewing on pieces of coral!), razor fish (they swim vertical!  It’s so cool!), a spawning sea cucumber SPAWNING (yeah, I didn’t touch this one, because it was stuck straight up from the bottom of the reef squirting sperm all over the place!  Nuts!), cone snails (they’re poisonous!  Watch out!), lionfish (SO pretty, but they sting, so I couldn’t get too close), a million different kinds of coral, a bunch of schools of fish, a fish that looked like a mini-swordfish, and a ton more.   It was an amazing day.  I could stay in that water all day long, and sometimes I’ll go 5 or 10 minutes without picking my head up out of the water – I don’t want to miss anything!  J  I love snorkeling… I love how there are a million things going on visually, and yet it’s so quiet except for the sound of your own breathing.  And you can hear yourself talk.  Yeah, I found myself talking to myself as I snorkeled.  “Oh, look at that!  Hey, that’s so cool!  Look over there!  This is so amazing!”  And nobody can hear me but myself!  I don’t know, I mentioned this to Jess and she laughed at me, but I think it’s really cool.  If you’re ever going to talk to yourself and give yourself little pep talks and words of inspiration, the ocean with a snorkel is the best place to do it!

 

Anyway, after we snorkeled, we changed and ate dinner.  (The food here is SO much better than it was at Lambir!  They had HAMBURGERS!  And amazing papaya – I love papaya, I’ve decided.  And mango.  But only the really fresh mango from the market.  Mmmm.)

 

Then we had a lecture from an employee of Sabah Parks (the agency runs the facilities were staying in).  He was also a sea turtle expert, so we learned a lot of cool things.  Then we watched some more Ten Commandments, and now I’m blogging, and soon it’s off to bed.  J

 

Some random things about Malaysia that I’ve noticed and have been meaning to mention: 

 

Here, there are no knives.  The utensils are a fork and a spoon, and it’s considered barbaric to stab things with your fork – the fork is only for pushing things over ONTO the spoon.  So you have your fork in your left hand and your spoon in your right hand, and you eat that way.  EVERYTHING.  Even chicken off the bone.  It’s super hard.

 

This is DEFINITELY not an egalitarian country.  I noticed it as soon as I stepped onto the Malaysia airlines plane.  All the stewardesses had the exact same hairdo and insane amounts of makeup on.  And then I realized that ALL employed women look like that.  Secretaries, waitresses, pretty much any desk job – it’s all women, and they are all dressed up and have their hair and makeup done like china dolls.  They’re definitely dehumanized and objectified.  It’s really sad.

 

Being an American here is like being a pop star sometimes; the rest of the time, it’s like being the nerdy kid in class that everyone teases.  No joke.  Whenever we go into a store in a shopping mall – especially clothing stores – the clerks start snickering immediately.  They talk to each other in Malay, and occasionally we hear the word “American,” and there’s lots of laughter.  But then other times – like when you go into an empty dance club on a Saturday night – you’re totally the belle of the ball.  Or when you go for a run in the city.  Yeah, I guess not many girls go running in the city in shorts and sneakers, but the ones that do – the American ones, at least – get the Malaysian version of cat calls a million times over.  The guys don’t speak English and don’t know what they’re saying, so they say things like, “Hallo!  I love you!” and “Hallo!  I see you before!”  It’s kind of creepy but kind of hilarious.

 

There are cats EVERYWHERE.  The people who ran Lambir Hills National Park had like 7 of them, and they were always running around, even coming into our classroom.  And they’re SO friendly, not like American cats!  They come up to you purring and then roll onto their backs like dogs looking for a belly rub!  The people here have them, too.  Cats, cats, cats – they’re everywhere.  And their owners pick them up by the skin on their necks.  It puts them into this weird creepy trance.  Apparently it’s comforting, because that’s how wild cats’ mothers pick them up.  But it’s super weird to watch.

 

What else… I don’t know.  But I’m loving people-watching here.  Everything is different.  The way they treat their beggars is different (at the market, if someone gave money to a homeless lady, they bent down, looked her in the eye, and put the money straight into her hands – much different than tossing spare change into a cup in NYC), the way the kids play is different (often disturbingly so – one kid was using a stick as a gun and pretending to shoot his friend from behind a tree), their homes are different (clothes lines EVERYWHERE, kids constantly helping their parents with the housework, no windows – just holes in the walls and tin roofs)… everything is different.  It really is fascinating.

 

Anyway.  Tomorrow’s coral day!  The next day’s fish day!  Then a terrestrial day.  Then two days for our projects.  Then back to KK and off to Deramakot.

 

I feel so lucky to be here!  We’re on this tiny little GOREGOUS island in the middle of NOWHERE, and I never in a million years would have thought to ever come here if the circumstances weren’t what they are!  And as we’re learning, with the way people are treating the environment these days and the way rainforests are being burned for oil palm plantations and the way rising sea temperatures are killing all the coral reefs, this kind of beauty might not be around for much longer.  When I think about that, all these things – the ants in my bed, the horrible things happening to my digestive system, the mosquito bites and the leech bites – all of those issues seem even smaller than bugs on a windshield.  I feel so blessed to be here exploring it!  J J J  (Thank you, Mom and Dad, for making this and all the opportunities I’ve had possible!!!!!!  Love you and miss you so much!!!!)

 

Goodnight!

 

6/23 – Day 2 in Gaya

 

Wow.  This place is unbelievable.  It’s amazing.  Wow.  As soon as I woke up, the first thing I saw was the gorgeous view of the turquoise ocean through out ten window.  I had fallen asleep to the sound of the waves lapping up against the shore, after having a nice look at the beautiful stars – they twinkle more here, because the air in the atmosphere is hotter.  And I woke up instantly in an amazing mood because of the sound of the waves and the beauty of this place.

 

Then we had breakfast and I took some photos with Jess (we’re both photographers J).  Then we got a lecture on corals (their structure and stuff) from a guy that works here.  Then a quick break and a discussion on coral taxonic axes and stuff.  Then we were off into the water!  Gorgeous again – but more exhausting this time around.  I think it’s because I had my flippers on so I kept diving down.  The hour and a half in the water wore me out!  Luckily, it was lunchtime and then an hour’s worth of break.  AMAZING hour.  Lay down on the sand (it’s softer than Jersey shore sand, because it’s not ground up rocks, it’s ground up coral and macroalgae), then got hot, so I just floated on my back in the shallow water.  It was SO relaxing.  The water is SO warm here, and we’re in a bay, so it’s not rough.  It was like being lulled to sleep.  Awesome.

 

Then we talked about the families of corals that we were learning to identify.  Then it was off some new reefs, about a five-minute boat ride off the island.  It was AMAZING.  I saw a sea snake AND a sting ray!  And some people saw sea turtles, but I missed them.  L  Oh well, next time!  This was awesome!!

 

Then we came back and worked out on the beach, haha.  Abs, pushups, lunges, squats – good stuff.  It’s weird how low tide makes the water level SO low.  Crazy.  It was cool to watch while we worked out.

 

Then dinner (we told funny stories about home, it was fun), then a lecture that was basically just a slideshow from MS.  SO COOL!!!!  And in the middle of it we saw a wild boar out the window!  It was dark so we couldn’t see it too clearly, but it looked like an elephant in the dark because they have long beards that look like trunks.

 

Fish day tomorrow!  Good stuff.  J  Loving this!

 

6/24 – Day 3 in Gaya

 

Fun day!  Woke up – it rained last night, which was cool!  It’s neat to be in a tent on the beach in the rain – got breakfast.  Two lectures:  One on fish families by Cam, and one on schooling patterns in fish by a guy from Japan.

 

Then it was off into the ocean!  First we went to a mangrove, which was SO cool!!!  It’s a place where the ocean goes right into a forest, with no beach in between – these plants have adapted to grow straight out of mud, sand, and saltwater!  It was so cool to swim next to all the roots, fingering their way down through the water into the sand.  I’d never seen anything like it – and these things only exist in the tropics!  J

 

Then it was back to our regular bay to look for the fish that we had learned to identify.  Fun stuff, fun stuff.  J

 

Then lunch.  Then we saw some macaques!  A whole family of them was right on the edge of the forest, wandering onto our campsite!  Some of the locals started throwing them pieces of bread, which was bad, but they did come much closer, and I got some AMAZING pictures.  SO COOL.

 

Then a walk into the forest.  The trail here is MUCH easier to walk, but its’ also much more artificial, so you don’t see as much.  But we saw a TON of lizards.  Lucky Kristina – lizards are her focal taxon.  But no phasmidae for me.  L  Oh, well.  We are planning to go on a night walk soon, and that’s when we see them the most.  Too bad it rained tonight.

 

Anyway.  After the walk in the forest Kristina, Shana, Molly and I worked out.  Squats, glut-exercises, pushups, abs – it was intense.  Luckily, we jumped into the ocean right when we were done.  That was a SCARY experience.  We jumped in without even thinking about the fact that it was low-tide.  It was not until we were in the water that we realized that snorkeling at low-tide is both amazing and incredibly stupid.  It’s amazing because everything is just more densely packed together.  So the corals and fish are all SO close to you – they’re all around you!  The bad part is, the water level is SO low, and you’re just floating on the surface, so sometimes you can’t control it, but your stomach and chest are dangerously close to scraping against the reef – and scraping against the spiky sea urchins!!  It was TERRIFYING.  It made me SO claustrophobic.  We swam and swam and swam as carefully as we could out into deeper water.  Then when we wanted to come back in we were stranded!  It’s dangerous (and unhealthy for the ecosystem) to walk on the reefs – you could step on a stonefish and totally get your leg paralyzed or even amputated!  But we couldn’t swim back, because it was too shallow!  Luckily, one of the TFs walked by and we shouted to him and he showed us a way back where there was no reef and just sand.  Phew!  That was SO scary.

 

Then shower, then dinner, then a lecture on fungi.  Pretty cool.  Now we’re working on our project proposal for tomorrow.  YAY CLOWNFISH AND ANEMONES!!!!!  J J J

 

6/25 – Day 4 in Gaya

 

Wow.  What a day.  Packed with adventure.  Woke up, ate breakfast, got a lecture from Cam on how diversity between the forest and the ocean are related.  Then project presentations!  Douwe, Sreekar and I are doing clownfish; Christina, Molly, and Shana are doing the ecology of the ropes that tie the buoys together; Mindy and Le are doing hermit crabs; Alex, Andrew, and Serena are doing sea cucumbers; Jess and some people are doing butterfly fish… I forget the rest, but they’re all pretty cool.  J

 

Then it was off to do some sampling!  We went out to the prettier reef, and it was INTENSE!  The water was ROUGH!  Swells were up to 1 meter!  It was so hard to collect data, but it was fun – and Cam was freaking out like a nervous Dad, lol, and Douwe got yelled at for swimming out too far (not me, Mom!  Don’t worry!).  Then we came back in and I had a very interesting discussion over lunch with Cam’s wife, Shana, and Molly about religion.  Very interesting.  I wish Dita or Agri had been there.  Maybe next time.

 

Then it was back into the water to do more sampling.  By now it was low tide, so it wasn’t as rough, and we got lots of good data.  J  Douwe’s a great diver, I need to get him to teach me how to make your ears pop so I can stay down there longer…

 

Then we came back and had a break before dinner.  But during the break a huge windstorm came in and started blowing away our tents!  Everyone took a mad dash to the tents and tried to pin them back down – except Cam, who stood there laughing and taking pictures of us, lol.  Then someone found a snake under their tent!  Cam took pictures of us taking pictures of it, lol.  I got some AWESOME National-Geographic-type photos.

 

Then dinner.  Then a lecture about the Sabah Foundation.  Then a NIGHT SWIM!!!! Man, Dad, you told me I sound like Indiana Jones – I never felt more like Indiana Jones than I did tonight.  I was TERRIFIED to get into that water when it was pitch black out, it was low tide, AND it was raining and I was freezing!  But the water here is so warm it felt like a hot tub, and I hung onto Jess’s hand – she had the flashlight – and we saw some AMAZING things that are never out during the day!  Squirrelfish (pink and white stripes!  Beautiful!), cuttlefish (look like squids but they’re bioluminescent and translucent!  SO cool!  Cam poked it and it squirted ink!!!), Marine catfish, pufferfish, beautiful coral polyps that opened up – and we swam through a huge swarm of ctenophores.  Jess says a swarm of ctenophores is called a SMACK of ctenophores – so I swam through a SMACK of jellies!  They’re these tiny little jellyfish that you can see electrical pulses going through, and they’re really pretty – but not when there’s a swarm of a million of them!  It feels like swimming through tapioca pudding while getting STUNG a million times all over!!!  They’re just little stings, though – nothing like what Ross has on his back – but they certainly are annoying when they’re happening all over your body all at once.  Swimming in that warm water, feeling the cold rain beating down on your back, searching through the pitch black water and seeing the beam from the flashlight land on something incredible that I’d never seen before – that was an unbelievable experience.

 

Then we went on a night hike that was pretty lame.  Still no phasmids on this island L  But we did see a frog, a pit viper, some lizards, and a crazy disgusting centipede. 

 

What an awesome day!!!!  Here are some other random things that I want to remember:

 

Stonefish are CRAZY!  These huge fish that bury themselves in the sand and leave this one little thorn sticking out, so you can’t even see it, but if you step on it you could get so hurt that they might have to amputate your leg!  Cam says we probably walked past one 10 times already!  But that you have to be REALLY unlucky to step on one.  I don’t know, those odds freak me out.

 

Saw a crazy long flat fish.

 

Saw another stingray today!! It was moving SO fast, flapping its little wings, I couldn’t even get a picture!

 

It thunderstorms every night here, like clockwork.  SO COOL!  More lightening than thunder, and only a little rain.  It always starts right during the night lecture, which makes that more fun.  J

 

Good night!

 

6/26 – Day 5 in Gaya

 

Our last full day on Gaya Island certainly did not disappoint!  Woke up, ate breakfast, and sat in the beautiful tree that hangs over the water to read a little… aaaah.  J  Then it was off to a new reef to look for some anemones!  The reef was right in front of a resort with tons of Asian tourists, so that was funny… as if we don’t get enough of those at Harvard.  Doing field work with Douwe is so much fun… we were laughing the whole time, especially when a clownfish chased him almost two meters and he squealed like a girl (“For the humour effect,” he said, but really he just couldn’t control himself :-P).

 

Then we came back, took a little break, and went back into our reef in the bay.  Then it was lunchtime.  Then we analyzed data for FOREVER, and then it was back to the old new reef for our LAST SNORKEL HERE L L L.  But, that last snorkel CERTAINLY did not disappoint, because I got to see my first green sea turtle!!!  It was AMAZING!!!! I was determined to see one, I kept saying, “I’m not getting out of the water until I see a sea turtle,” and then 20 minutes one of the tourists who had overheard me called over, “Sea turtle!  Sea turtle!”  And then I yelled to the rest of the group, “Sea turtle!  Sea turtle!”  And it was a mad 20-person dash to check out the sea turtle.  I was SO close to it.  I was able to swim DIRECTLY ABOVE IT and see it wave it’s arms like angels’ wings; then I dove down to get a little closer and I could see it from the side, the platelets on its head, and the symbiotic fish swimming under its shell!  It was INCREDIBLE.  Then Douwe – the Harvard-Swim-Team show-off that he is – dove right down there and started following him.  The turtle noticed him and SHOT OFF – he went from a nice, slow, relaxed, beautiful pace to showing us that those things can move FAST!  He swam in a circle for a little bit trying to get away from Douwe, and then when Douwe ran out of breath and came up for air, he shot off into open sea.  Wow.  That was one of the most amazing experiences!!!

 

Then when we came back to the bay, Ross and MS let me and Douwe and Alex try breathing out of their scuba tanks.  It was SO cool (even though Cam got really mad and yelled at them later, because apparently we could have died since we’re not SCUBA trained or something… whoops).  I really want to get scuba certified now!  You can see so much more than you can see when you’re snorkeling and need to come up for air.

 

Then took a shower and we all watched the sunset together!  Beautiful and fun.  J

 

Then we had dinner and then we met THE COOLEST PEOPLE EVER.  I’m not even kidding, I think these are the coolest people, hands-down, in the world.  It’s a group of 14 adults from all over the world who got together and decided that they wanted to sail around Southeast Asia and Hawaii and record personal stories that show the effects of climate change – on REAL people, putting a face to an issue.  So they gave up the next 3 years of their lives and are in the middle of sailing across the world recording stories of the effects of climate change on island tribes and peoples.  They are SO COOL.  AND they are always looking for members of their crew, even if only for a little while, and they said that they would LOVE for me to join them over winter break and film their expedition, and I could TOTALLY make a VES project out of that.  I have their email addresses – looks like I found some potential (and pretty likely!) plans for winter break!

 

Now we’re all sitting here finishing our projects – presentations are tomorrow, and then, sadly, we leave this beautiful island.  Back to the city, then climbing Mt. Kinabalu.  Aaaah, so sad to leave, yet so excited to be going on a new and different adventure!  J

 

 6/27 – Leave Gaya, back to KK

 

Today we left our island paradise. L  It was so sad.  But first we presented our projects!  Douwe, Sreekar, and I proved that levels of aggression in anemonefish are species-specific, and that the Spine-Cheek Anemonefish is more aggressive than the False Clown Anemonefish.  And that colony size, anemone size, length of anenome’s tentacles, and the presence of juveniles are not statistically significant factors.  (Oh, well.  It was a really fun experiment.  J)  Then we heard quickly from a marine biologit from Scotland and about her work on dolphinids in Sabah and Hong Kong.  Very interesting.

 

Then we packed up, struck the tents, and got on the boats back to Borneo.  On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a delicious restaurant.  I drank coconut juice (yes, juice, not milk – that’s the stuff you get when you grind up the bark and press it) out of a fresh coconut; it was actually kind of gross, but pretty cool.

 

Back at the hotel, we all took a short break, and then Mindy, Le, and I took our first trip to a Malaysian movie theatre!  We saw Transformers, which I was not dying to see, but I really wanted to see what Malaysian movie theatres were like.   They were actually pretty similar to American movie theatres, except instead of candy they sell fish chips, and the large popcorn is quivalent to about half of an American small popcorn, and the seating is assigned.  OH, and you have to PAY to use the bathroom.  Yeah.  .20 ringgitts per flush, and add an extra .30 if you want toilet paper.  I have never paid to go the bathroom before.  That was weird.

 

Then we came back to the hotel, and now I’m loving internet connection!  Tomorrow’s another day off (I’m going to try to make it to the Sabah State Museum), and then Monday we leave to hike Kinabalu.  (Cam’s words:  “For some of you, this will be the highest and most diffiult climb of your life.  So stay out of the karaoke bars and get some sleep.”  Well, I knew that “some of you” DEFINITELY meant me, so I’m heading to bed ASAP!)  After Monday morning there’s a good chance I won’t have internet access until I get back!!  I miss you all!!!

 

G’night!

Last day with Internet for a while :(

Another fun rest day in KK! :)  Woke up, went to the zoo!!! Very interesting.  Different from zoos in the US, and not just the animals.  It was kind of sad.  They were all in really small enclosures that had practically nothing in them.  But I did get to ride a Bornean elephant.  And I touched an orangutan.  I don't think supposed to, but a guy went driving by in a golf cart and he had an orangutan on his lap, so Kristina and I chased him down and got to pet him.  :) :)

Then we came back and I went and got a pedicure with Molly.  :)  Doesn't sound like it would be a very unique experience, but it TOTALLY was.  Pedicures here are super different.  They're ridiculously (and painfully) thorough.  It was half relaxing, half almost torturous!

Then we went shopping at one of the markets and I got a really cool sarong, because apparently we really need them for Gaya island.  It's pretty cute! :)

Then we had two lectures, one from the director of the Malaysian  program of the WWF, and one from a program called the Kinabatangan Project, which is doing some really cool stuff with orangutan and Bornean elephant conservation.  Nifty.

Then we all went to this INCREDIBLE night market for dinner.  4 of us split a red snapper that they literally just snatched out of the ocean and slapped on the grill, right in front of us.  It was ridiculous, and delicious.  Mmmmm.

Now we're all hanging out in the lobby enjoying our last hours of internet access for the next week.  Tomorrow, at 8AM, we leave for Gaya Island.  It's going to be AMAZING, but I will miss being in touch with everybody!!  Can't wait to talk to you again in a week!

Some more stuff :)

Hey everyone!

So our professor set up this Wiki server thing that we've been using to do all of our projects, share our photos, publicize our work, etc.  He's putting static versions of it every now and then up on this website, if you feel like checking it out:  http://phylodiversity.net/bb09 

Today was a nice rest day:  explored Miri a little in the morning, flew to KK, explored some more in the afternoon, had a lovely Italian dinner at a nearby restaurant, and we're about to go check out the nightlife here and see what it's like.  Going on a tour of a wildlife reserve tomorrow, followed by some peer-editing of our reports, some lectures, and off to the coral reefs the next day!

Miss everyone!  Another update soon!  :)

THE FIRST TWO WEEKS

6/7 – Morning in KK, travel to Lambir

 

Today was incredible:  my first real taste of Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Borneo, the tropics – all of it.

 

I woke up and read a Malaysian newspaper.  The King was quoted saying that he was determined to balance economic needs with the importance of nobody being mistreated, “including women and the disabled.”  Already I was in culture shock!

 

Then I went to breakfast.  Shock again!  No eggs and waffles like I was hoping.  Rather, fish chile, fried noodles, rice pudding with soy sauce, and other Asian staples.  It felt like eating Chinese food for breakfast, but very strange Chinese food!  So far I’ve pretty much been sticking to carbs – rice and noodles – since everything else, especially meat, is flavored so strongly with spicy herbs!

 

Next was a trip to the market in downtown Kota Kinabalu (RANDOM NOTE TO SELF:  WHEN WE GET BACK TO KK FOR A REST DAY, BE SURE TO GO TO THE ZOO TO GUARANTEE ORANGUTAN SIGHTING – “semi-enclosed”).  HUGE culture shock.  Hundreds of people packed into streets, children making sales, the strangest fruits I had ever seen, knives for sale, poor puppies stuffed six in a cage on sale for 25 ringitts – aka $8 – each.  It was crazy.  But we tasted some cake which was really prettily patterned with laters on the inside, AND amazingly moist and yummy!  (Moist was consistent with the ridiculous humidity – surprisingly, it’s not that hot here, maybe 75 degrees, but it’s so humid that I’m constantly sweating buckets – and yummy was a pleasant surprise!)

 

Then we boarded a plane to from KK to Miri.  Then we took a bus from Miri to Lambir.  We’re in a national park.  With REAL RAINFORESTS.  We’re staying in some surprisingly nice cabins on the outskirts of the forest.  Inside the forest, it’s everything I imagined it would be.  The insects and birds are so loud you can’t hear yourself breathe.  There’s waterfalls right and left and crazy shaky bridges to cross.  My camera is amazing, I cannot stop snapping pictures.  On our completely random, unsupervised, spur-of-the-moment hike, here are a few things we saw:  a beetle the size of my palm, an ant trail at least 30 feet long with thousands of ants marching on and on and on (we passed it on our way into the forest and it was still going when we left an hour later!), a bright orange slug (we think?) on a log, at least 3 beautiful butterflies, some crazy red thing with berries coming out of it growing on a tree, hornbills (well, not really… we could hear them, but we couldn’t see them), the biggest ant I’ve ever seen in my life (supposedly a red-bellied ant, as big as a silver dollar), banana trees, durian trees (the smelly banned fruit!), all crazy kinds of mosses, lichens, and vines, and much much more!  We can’t wait to get out there with our professors and TF’s, who will actually know where to look for things and can tell us what everything is!

 

One of the coolest parts of all this has been meeting the 9 students from Southeast Asia.  It is so interesting to talk to them about their countries, and they laugh at us when we’re shocked at the odd foods!  They are all really nice; I’m looking forward to getting to know them better.

 

At the end of the day our professor handed out these adorable little goodie bags with T-shirts that say “Biodiversity of Borneo 2009,” a pair of leech socks, an emergency whistle, an electric converter, lighters for “disposing of our waste” in the woods – and the lovely knowledge that we will need to be at breakfast by 7 and lecture by 8 every day for the next two weeks.  So I’d better head to bed.  Can’t wait for the first day of learning (we’re going to talk about what is science in the rain forest, and how do we ask good questions about the things we see there) and more exciting explorations, pictures, and fun!

 

6/8 – Day 1 in Lambir

 

Our first real day.  I knew we had to be at breakfast by 7, and I thought it would be an issue, but it turns out it definitely wasn’t, because after going to bed around 8, I woke up at midnight and could not fall back asleep!  Molly and I went for a run around 5, I took a shower (freezing cold, but I LOVED it – it is SOOOO humid here!  I look forward to my cold showers every night!  The only bad thing is that seeing mosquitos in the shower with you is quite frightening… I suddenly felt very vulnerable, haha), and then we were off to breakfast.  Typical Malaysian breakfast: fried noodles, hard-boiled eggs, and some kind of rice that was SUPER spicy, like EVERYTHING here.

 

Then it was off to our first class!  A lecture by professor Cam Webb.  Just a very broad introduction to what we would be doing… the most exciting part was the safety procedures – what to do if you get bitten by a pit viper, for example.  (Contrary to popular belief, DON’T suck the poison out or tourniquet it – just wrap it in cloth and get to a hospital J). 

 

Then we had a lecture from Sylvester Tan, a guy from the Center for Tropical Forest Science.  He told us about some of the research projects that CTFS has going on here in Lambir Hills National Park.  Pretty cool.

 

Then we had a lecture from the Kamal guy who runs the visitations to Lambir Hills National Park.  He gave us some pretty cool statistics, history, and things like that.  Yup.

 

Next we were off into the forest!  We divided into three groups, one led by Cam, one led by the TF’s (Ross and Bekti – very cool!), and one led by Sylvester.  I was in the group led by Sylvester, which was very cool, because he’s a very experienced researcher, and he explained to us all the kinds of studies going on.  He could also identify pretty much any leaf, tree, insect – it was crazy.

 

When our forest exploration was over, we went swimming in a waterfall!!!! Amazing.  No other words.  Amazing.

 

Then came a quick rest, followed by a discussion on how to ask good scientific questions.  Then came dinner, followed by a lecture about the biodiversity of Borneo:  past, present, and future.  And by then it was 8:30 and all the Southeast Asian students were totally energetic, while all the Americans were ready to pass out!

 

Some of the things we discussed today included the projects we will be creating.  We will have three projects – one here at Lambir, one on the beach, and one in the rainforests at Maliau Basin – but we will also be keeping records of a chosen taxon, trying to draw relations between all the different species in the group.  What I’m thinking of looking at:

 

Rattan

 

Arroids, Arracae family, “climbing arracae”, non-woody climbers (true vines), most heads look like arrows

 

Lianas – woody climbers

 

Phasmids – stick insects

 

We’ll see!

 

6/9 – Day 2 in Lambir

 

Today was plant day!  After my first full night’s sleep here (fell asleep around 10, didn’t wake up until 7!), we went to breakfast (awesome today – even included some American food!  Buttered toast and fried eggs!), then off to our first class.  A lecture on forest dynamics by Shawn, a super-cool, super-smart guy from Hawaii who knows everything about everything (he’s from the NIE, I’m not sure what that stands for, but he’s very experienced).  Then Cam gave a lecture on plant phylogeny and taxonomy, and then we learned about how to define different families of plants!  We learned 4 defining characteristics of 10 different families, and then it was out to the forest to go ID them!  Shawn, Cam, Ross, Bekti, and Sylvester (from yesterday) were all there, and they were all experts and great helps as we struggled to identify tree species.  Then we got to participate in some real research.  Sylvester took us to a 20m x 20m research plot, where every tree was tagged, and told us that each tree’s diameter in the plot needed to be re-measured.  So we divided into groups and got to work!

 

Back at camp, we showered and studied up for our quiz.  We had dinner (our first truly delicious one:  rice (of course), chicken, pickled cucumbers with pineapple, some other cucumber salad, dragonfruit (pink and delicious!), pineapple, and some delicious egg-drop vegetable soup.  All great!

           

Then was the quiz!  We think the professors went easy on us, because most of us got 100s – who knew we could learn 10 different plant families and even identify them on the spot, all in one day?!  But the more exciting part was when a giant moth flew in and landed on my leg right in the middle of the quiz.  That was pretty cool.

 

Then came a lecture on phylogenetics by Rod Eastwood, from Harvard’s OEB department.  Then it should have been off to bed, but instead I did some crazy things like hold a cicaeda and burn a dead bat.  Yeah.  It was a crazy night.  So much fun.  J

6/10 – Day 3 in Lambir

Inset Day!  Woke up, ate breakfast, got a nice lecture from Dave on insects.  They are so diverse!  The most diverse taxon on the planet!  Then it was off into the forest to catch some of our own insects.  We went out with butterfly nets, pooters (creepy bug-suckers), test tubes, and other catching tools.  My favorite things that I caught were a stalk-eyed fly and a scale-insect, this really cool white fuzzy-looking thing that produces wax on the outside of its body to get the sucrose to drip off, and to look like a fungus so it doesn’t get eaten.  Then we set up a Meleise trap (looks like a tent, because insects tend to fly up when they hit something, so it’ll fly up until it gets caught in a poison insect-killer thing) and a butterfly trap (just a butterfly net over some rotting fruit).  We’ll go see what we caught in two days!

 

Then it was back for lunch.  Then we went back into the forest to do some experiments with Dave and Rod!  We set up three pairs of pit-fall traps (little cups in the ground filled with a detergent/water mixture), one in a gap and one in the forest.  We also took leaf-litter samples from both gaps and the forest.  We’ll check out what we found in two days.

 

Then it was back to camp, shower, a nice talk with Jess about growing up (she’s 27) and still having adventures.  Dinner.  A lecture from Shawn on Seed Dispersal (SO COOL!).  I tasted jackfruit for the first time. J  Back to the room.  A nice talk with Molly and Jess about questions, motives for taking the course, etc.  Some pleasure reading and off to sleep.  J

 

6/11 – Day 4 in Lambir

 

Computer Day!  So complicated!  We worked on computer stuff ALL day, from 10AM till around 4.  Then I talked to Dave and Rod about my butterfly project proposal.  Then I went for a run with Molly and Shana, and then we went swimming in the waterfall.  Came back, ate dinner, had a lecture from Dave on bird and butterfly phylogeography.  NIGHT HIKE!  I was in Ross’s group, and didn’t see anything except a tree frog and a huge spider.  I really should have gone to meet up with Dave’s group, but I was tired and feeling gross.  Turns out Dave’s group saw tons of crazy stuff like a snake, a crab, a ton of stick insects, two frogs, and more.  Oh well.  Got a good night’s sleep.  J

 

6/12 – Day 5 in Lambir

 

Insect Day, take two!  Woke up, went to breakfast, then we all had a discussion about our taxons.  (I think I am going to switch from aroids to stick insects, or Phasmids!)  Then we got a lecture from Rod on associative relationships between butterflies and ants.  Next we split up:  some people sifted through leaf litter, and others – including me – went out into the rainforest (it was actually raining!) to get the pitfall traps.  We wore our leech socks because the rain supposedly makes them come out, but we didn’t see any leeches.

 

Came back, ate lunch, then it was time to look at the insects under a microscope!  We identified them by order, recorded the data, and then got a lecture from Rod that analyzed the quality of the experiment.  Then dinner.  Then a lecture from Sabrina (the lady with the University of Nebraska kids) on trade-offs that trees make – between wood density and the amount of photosynthesis, for example.  Pretty cool.

 

Then Kristina, Mindy and I went for a night hike!  We ran into Agri and Sreekar while we were in the forest; they were looking for geckos, but we were just looking for anything cool.  We saw two pairs of phasmids (stick insects) – different species! – mating!  We also saw a snake and a whole bunch of lizards and spiders.  It was SUPER cool. 

 

Came back, took a shower, put on my nice clean (fresh from the laundry!) clothes, texted Mom a bit, and had a great night’s sleep.  Good day.  J

 

6/13 – Day 6 in Lambir

 

Computing, Day 2!  Off to a smoother start than our first computing day.  J

 

We analyzed our data from the tree diameter measurements (our group was spot on!  Only one negative difference!), then we analyzed our insect data form the pit fall traps and the leaf litter.  Fun J

 

Next Kristina and I went and got our butterfly traps that we set as a preliminary to our experiment yesterday.  We caught 6 butterflies in each trap!  We recorded the data, captured as many as we could prevent from flying away, and gave ourselves a huge pat on the back.  J

 

Then we went to the bird tower!  This giant wooden structure around a HUGE tree.  Beautiful at the top.  J

 

Then worked out with Shana (abs, lunges, calves, push-ups, squats… fun stuff.)

 

Shower.  Dinner.  Talked to Sreekar, who apparently will be on TV in India soon!  He works for Disney, actually! J  They are making a TV series called “Deadly 60.”  Sreekar’s job is to go find snakes for them.  He gives them to the film people, they strategically plant the snake, and then the person on the show shouts, “OMG, look, a snake!” and goes to pick it up… haha J

 

Movie night!  Ate popcorn (J) and watched a documentary on this one guy’s quest to make “carbon credits” a commodity on the market for corporations.  Very interesting stuff, and a good discussion afterward.

Came back to the room, worked on my Phasmidae character matrix (Yay, stick insects!  They are so cool, and there are so many different species here!), off to bed. J

 

6/14 – Day 7 in Lambir

 

Wow.  What a day.  What should have been a rest day turned into the most dangerous adventure so far!

 

Woke up, ate breakfast, learned how to pin butterflies with Rod.  J  Went out with Kristina, put out the butterfly nets – site two! J

 

Then came the danger.  We were scheduled to go up into the canopy crane!  SO COOL!!!  A huge crane, 80m high, takes you 50m out, lowers you down into the canopy.  Super super amazing.  EXCEPT:  while we were out there, we saw some rain clouds in the distance and heard some rumbling. There was a three-way walkie-talkie in the tiny little cage we were hanging in, between us, the guy operating the crane, and the guy down on the ground.  The guy operating the crane said, “I am moving you to the left.”  I said to him, “What about the thunder?  It looks like it’s getting close.”  There must have been a language barrier, because he just said again, “I am moving you to the left.”  A few minutes later, he said, “If it starts raining, we will stop.”  But that wasn’t very reassuring, because we could see the lightening just meters away – and it seemed like we were at the same elevation as the storm clouds!

 

Then all of sudden, the storm – seemingly out of nowhere – got really close, and before long, we were right in it!  We could see the crowns of the trees blowing violently in the wind below us – and pretty soon there were rain pellets in our faces, and the wind was blowing the cage around like it weighed nothing!  And the worst part was, we didn’t want to hold onto the side of the cage, because we were basically standing in a giant lightening rod!  We were getting tossed around like laundry in a machine, and we could hear the guys shouting to each other on the walkie-talkie in Malay.  (Agri, who was up there with Kristina and me, said they were yelling, “Get them down fast, get them down fast!”)  A little too slowly for our taste, they brought us in from the 50m we were out, and then started to lower us down the 80m.  When we got to the bottom, our backpacks and camera bags were soaking wet sitting in huge puddles.  We grabbed them and ran the twenty minutes down the trail through the rainforest back to camp – in the pouring (and I mean POURING – it was like a monsoon!) rain. 

 

What an experience.  It DEFINITELY rained in the rainforest, and we were both above it AND in it while it did so!  We didn’t get out scot clean – our cameras got wet, our boots are disgustingly soaked, my UV Water Purifier (that I have been fondly calling my Light Saber) got wet and doesn’t seem to be working, my notebook is soaking wet, and all our clothes were soaked.  But we feel SO incredibly lucky just to have gotten down from that crane without being blown away, AND to have avoided getting struck by lightening, AND to have avoided being hit by a falling tree as we ran through the forest in a monsoon!  Ross and Cam insist that we were in no danger; they say that even if lightening had struck the crane while we were inside the cage, we would have been fine, but we’re choosing not to believe them (lol).  Wow.  What an experience.  But not one that I would want to have again!!!!!

 

Came back, dried off, and somehow ended up watching The Ten Commandments on my laptop with some of the other girls, haha.

 

Dinner, then learning Malay! Such a cool language. That was super fun.  Fae taught us, and the American guys only wanted to know how to say funny things like, “Can I have yo numba??” and “Hey, gorgeous!”  (“Hallo, chantik!”)  It was pretty entertaining. 

 

Prepared for oral presentation with Kristina, movie with Molly, Shana, Andrew, and Douwe.  Good day.  Caves tomorrow! J

 

6/15 – Day 8 in Lambir and Day in Nia

 

What a great day!  Woke up, went to breakfast (delicious today!  Omlettes and bread and papaya and mango juice!), had our project proposal presentations!  Ours on butterflies went really well  J  Molly, Douwe, and Andrew are doing lianas; Jess, Alex, and Mindy are doing water striders; Fae, Shana, and Serena are doing pitcher plants; Dita and Le are doing fungi; Sreekar, Agri, and Ridwan (apparently called Wang now; and everyone thinks Sreekar and Agri have a romance going on!) are doing lizards; and Nuwan (apparently called Imesh sometimes) and Awin are doing the Iba tribe.  Cool stuff!

 

Then Kristina and I went to get our butterflies and reset the traps.  We got fewer numbers this time, but brighter colors – two blue! J

 

Then we ate lunch and it was an hour and a half ride to the caves!  We got there, walked FOREVER through Nia National Park, and saw our first primates (!!!!) – Macaques!!!! SOOOO CUUTE!!!!  A whole family of them climbing up the trees and onto the top of the caves!  Then we went IN the caves!  Super cool!  Some parts of it had holes in the ceiling and beautiful streams of light coming through; other parts were completely pitch black; and ALL parts and squeaky bats hanging from the ceiling, sounding like they were cackling!! Creepy!! But soooo cool!!!

 

Then on the busride back I bonded with Shana, Andrew, Molly, and Mindy as we played mind tricks and other fun bus games.  Then we got REAL FOOD!!! Well, not all of it.  First I had some DELICIOUS puffed rice something with chicken and egg inside.  Then some American ice cream J  Then a strawberry milkshake!  (It wasn’t like an American milkshake… They made it with ice and soy milk, not ice cream.  It was thinner and sweeter.  Mmmmm J) Then something called Rito – some fried something – that I split with Molly.  Way too much to eat, I know, but we all got a little carried away with our ten free ringitts and a place full of GOOD FOOD!!!

 

Came back, watched more of The Ten Commandments with Molly and Shana, took a shower, now bed!  Other great things that happened today:  Managed to dry my hiking shoes out from yesterday with some newspaper and the sun, started to feel some real bonding among the group, had an interesting talk with Dita about our religions, saw primates TWICE, learned about oil palms and birds’ nest soup, successfully made my first scientific project proposal oral presentation, and lots of other great things!  A great day!

 

6/16 – Day 9 in Lambir

 

Wow.  Field research is toughter than I expected. Kristina and I went to the plot and set up our two traps.  Then we went to do a transect in the forest of the plot, but we soon found out that we were doing it all wrong.  Our new staff member, Stuart Davies (director of the Center for Tropical Forest Studies), came and pointed out that we were going perpendicular to the forest edge, which would lead to edge-effect skewing our results; he said we should go parallel to the edge, which would mean going off the trail.  But going off the trail was SO difficult!  It’s called “Lambir HILLS National Park” for a reason!  The slopes are ridiculously steep, and you can’t take five steps without getting attacked by a plant with thorns or hooks!  We were exhausted by the end of that day in the field.

 

Then a lecture from Stuart, who, by the way, is SO nice and supportive of me and my being a film major on a bio trip!  He even seemed like he would let me film at one of their cooler plots in future summers!  Remember to keep in touch with him…

 

Then a night hike with Kristina, Jess, and Mindy.  It was super fun, AND we found lots of phasmids, and a GIANT spider!  And Kristina and I resolved to complain less in the field tomorrow and to sing Disney songs on the trail.  J 

 

6/17 – Day 10 in Lambir

 

We said we would make sure today was better, and it was!  Well, we started out a little dejected, because it was POURING rain!  But we still braved the treck to the plot and got our traps, and one even had a butterfly in it!  We came back (did it fast enough to catch the cab there AND back!), re-set the traps (minor setback:  no bananas, only dragonfruit), and did 3 transect walks.  Tomorrow all we have to do is one transect walk in the plot, and analyze our data and write our report! J

 

I got my first leech today!  5, in fact!  The first one I didn’t even see, I just saw it bleeding.  The second one was right next to that one, and I saw it… it wouldn’t come off too easily when I pulled it, so I just let it fill up, and eventually it fell off (I was actually kind of sad to see it go!).  At that point I was thrilled.  But then when we got back at the end of the day I realized I had 3 more, all on my feet! (Note to self – do NOT wear just sandals after it rains!!!)  One was in between my toes, one was on the top of my foot, and one was smack in the middle of the bottom of my foot.  One of the guys who works at the national park saw Kristina and me freaking out when I took my shoes off, and he came over and crunched up one of his cigarettes and sprinkled it on the leeches; apparently they don’t like tobacco, so they let go and popped right off!  But my feet are DISGUSTINGLY bloody!  The leeches are so weird, you don’t even feel them, they’re even kind of cute, but they make you bleed SOOOOOOOO much!!!  They inject you with an anti-coagulant, so you just bleed and bleed and bleed.  My only motivation to wear my leech socks is so that all my stuff doesn’t get bloody!!

 

6/18 – Day 11 in Lambir

 

What a great day… felt productive, smart, and had fun.  J

 

Started out at 6AM to go birdwatching with Haw Chuan Lim.  We set up a trap, went back and ate breakfast (French toast!  Yummy!), and then went back to the trap and had caught a little yellow spider-hunter!  We watched him take all kinds of measurements and even a blood sample, and then we even got to hold it!  What an amazing experience.  J

 

Then Kristina and I got the taxi down to the plot and did our final transect.  Walked back in the blazing sun and heat, singing Disney songs for the whole 30 minutes.  J  Checked our traps – no new data! J – and went and got our analyze on.  Worked for a really long time until we went with Molly to go exercise and swim in the waterfall one last time.  Funnnnnn.

 

Worked some more.  Ate dinner.  Worked some more.  DONE WITH PROJECT NUMBER ONE!!! And even better…. Our results showed…. SIGNIFICANCE!!!!! YAAAAAAY!!!! J J J  Presenting in the morning, then leaving for Miri, where we will have hotel rooms and internet access!!!!!  Then to KK the next day!!! Then off to Gaya Island!!! AAAAAAH, this trip is amazing!!!

 

6/19 – Leaving Lambir, off to Miri

 

Yaaaaaay, internet!  We’re in a fancy hotel in the city Miri, and it feels like paradise!

 

This morning we woke up in Lambir bright and early and presented our projects at 9AM.  It was AWESOME.  Kristina and I were proud to show everyone how we had proven a significant association between Lepidoptera coloration and location.  J  The other groups all did an amazing job, too!  It was so cool to learn about pitcher plants, geckos, water striders, fungi, the local Iba community, and lianas, all in one morning!

 

Then we packed up, had our last lunch at Lambir, and got on a nice air-conditioned bus to Miri.  Such an interesting city – much different from KK.  We checked into the hotel, reveled in the internet access, and then headed out shopping at some Malaysian malls.  They’re a lot like American malls, except they have grocery stores in them, and all kinds of other weird shops – including a bookstore called “Salvation” that sold nothing but books that told you how to save your soul.  Yeah, it was an interesting shopping trip. 

 

About to take my first shower in two weeks that WILL NOT HAVE MOSQUITOES IN IT!  YES!!!  Then a movie night with some of the girls.  J  Some of the Americans are going out clubbing tonight… it’ll be fun to hear what they have to say about what Malaysian clubs are like, but the rest of us are looking forward to a cozy night in.  J

 

Tomorrow we fly back to KK, enjoy the city, have some lectures at night, and then leave for Gaya Island for the marine bio section of the course!!!!!  CANNOT WAIT!!!!!