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At a glance

Borneo offers all the makings of the nature-lover's perfect tropical holiday.

• Walk with orangutans in the Malaysian jungle.
• Enjoy luxury at the Shangri-La Rasa Ria resort, a 40-minute drive north of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Borneo in eastern Malaysia.
• Chimpanzees are our closest genetic match, sharing 99 per cent of our genes.
• Sharing 95 per cent of our genes, adult orangutans are said to have the intelligence of a five-year-old child.
• Seven orangutans under five live in the reserve next to the resort.

Article Tags:  orangutans,  borneo,  malaysia,  tropical,  rainforest,  shangri-la,  resort,  zoo,  wildlife,  

Borneo's great apes

Jane Southward

16 March 2010

We can hear the waves of the South China Sea pounding the sand as we trudge up a shady track through a tangle of strangler figs. The path is muddy, with some steps, but it’s far from difficult.

Even so, the sound of the birds and the crashing of the water make us think we have escaped civilisation. In our minds, we are adventurers caught in the jungle in search of one of the weirdest animals on the planet.

After 10 minutes of easy walking we see them. Four orangutans. Two nestle together like toddlers playing roly poly down the hill, while the other two sit on the branches of casuarina trees metres from each other and show no interest in each other — or us.

The orangutans are three years old and about a metre high, with dark brown fur. They are totally adorable, their arms lankier than I expect; as they skip along the jungle floor, they use one arm for balance. Like babies starting to walk, they attempt to stand upright and, just as they look like succeeding, they thrust a steady hand to the floor for comfort and amble away.

While we might have dreamt of a wild animal adventure, seeing the baby orangutans in Sabah, Borneo, is a very civilised experience. Totally satisfying, yes, but easy.

If you are lucky, you stay at the Shangri-La Rasa Ria resort, a 40-minute drive north of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Borneo in eastern Malaysia. The hotel is popular with expats and tourists who like the comforts of first-class Asian resorts.

When it was built in 1996, the hotel immediately set aside 64 acres for the nature reserve, which it established in conjunction with the largest orangutan rescue centre in the world, the Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre on the eastern side of Borneo.

If you are staying at the Shangri-La resort it costs $10 a person ($5 for children) to see the orangutans; if you can’t afford to stay at the Shangri-La, you can still see the animals there for $5 more per person.

The experience is ordered. It begins with a movie showing what happens when the animals graduate from the Shangri-La reserve and are sent across to the other side of the island to the larger Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre; then an adult being repatriated into the jungle.

In the 12 years since the Shangri-La started the nature reserve, 23 baby orangutans have been sent to Sepilok. The rangers explain that once the orangutans stop coming to them for regular feeding, they know they have learnt to find food for themselves, so it’s time to consider sending them to Sepilok and then, hopefully, into the wild.

“It’s heartbreaking to let them go,” one of them tells me. “But you know it’s the best thing.”