Gunung Panti National Park - 13.-14.Oct.2006

James organizes another short trip: a weekend trip to
"Gunung Panti National Park" in Malaysia. It is in the state
Johor, the neighbour state of Singapore, three hours away.
Since our first trip to Tioman Island was perfect, I have no
doubts to enjoy a weekend full of fun.
These two white vans bring us to the starting point from
where we head for Mount Panti. We are a totally mixed
group, a few exchange students and local students, some
foreigners working in Singapore and mostly Singaporeans.
The hike shouldn't be very exhausting. Mount Panti is only about 500m high and the walk to the
summit takes 3hours. Nevertheless we have other problems ;-)
The humidity, I can't imagine that I have ever sweated so much. And then all the mosquitos and
even worse leeches (Blutegel).








Leeches live on the ground, not only in water!!! And they must have a perfect sensor to locate their
victims. If we stop to take a break you can see them creeping towards us. They make their way up
your shoe to find a nice place. And then at the end of the day you can almost be sure to have one
blood sucking leech somewhere at your legs. More than the half of us 15people have at least one!
But not me, hehe.

This will happen without mosquito repellent.
termite hill

oversized ant








All this is not really harmful and if I can be in this wonderful nature instead, I'm pleased.












Mount Panti has an interesting shape. It is mostly not very
steep. Only on the last few 100metres the way goes up.
Some rocks have to be climbed to reach a large plateau with
a good view on the jungle.














Everybody carries so much food in his bag that we spend the rest of the day preparing Malaysian
dishes and a big barbecue. And with some cans of beer and a bottle of vodka it becomes a funny
night.










We sleep outside on the ground or in the hammock.

















On the next day we take the same way back to the vans and to Singapore, with one stop in a
Malaysian restaurant.
The food is really, really,... really good,
except the chicken feet in the soup. I eat almost everything, but I would never try this, bah!

Singapore Zoo - 07.Oct.2006

What can you do in Singapore on a weekend?
Not much. But one good possibility is the zoo. Of course it is
much more impressive to see all these animals in nature;
nevertheless it is worth to visit it.
In my opinion the territory is well designed, everything is
green and surrounded by trees and plants, some monkeys
enjoy a free stay - they are not captured, it is just a nice walk.
I won't show you many pictures of animals, you can see them in a zoo in Germany as well.
Only some ...








... but I have taken some other nice shots!

How much rain do these places receive in a year:
Amazon, Singapore, Tokyo, New York, Beijing, Saudi
Arabia.

I think Germany should be the same as New York, so I can
enjoy more than twice as much rain as you. However the
main difference is the intensity of the rain. If it rains, than
you can be sure that everything gets really, really wet.
It does not rain more often, at least not out of monsoon season.



Some more things with water. Even in my free time, I must prove to
be a Scientist ;-) We are doing some little experiments with the Lotus
flower. The surface of the leaves is impressive, the water rolls off
perfectly, nothing remains.
The Lotus-Effect works!

These are the leaves of a water
lily, which grow to a diameter
of 6m. A mature leaf can
support the weight of a
year-old child.



One part of the zoo is the "Tropical Crops Plantation". All the different fruits and spices of Asia are
growing here. I bet you have never seen a pineapple growing before, it looks funny.

Pineapple

Papaya

Durian:
the King
of the Fruits



And then, it happens! I am just walking along the way when I see some people gathering on the
side of it. And as I join them I become part of this amazing natural spectacle.
It's a matter of life and death!











A snake, about 80 cm long, is struggling against a gecko.
The winner seems to be obvious.





Ah, maybe this is another interesting photo: cockroaches.
You can find them here anywhere.
I don't know why, but they are disgusting.



A whole day walking through the humidity of Singapore can be very tiring. This red ruffed lemur
presents our situation pretty well. I mean the monkey on the right image not on the left!










Goodbye

Sabah / Malaysia - 23.-30.Sept.2006

Six weeks of studying are already over. Now we have one week mid-term break and no lectures
before the second half of the semester starts. At NUS it is quite normal that you write midterm
tests in all your modules, so you should use the week to learn for them. But as you can imagine,
no exchange student have ever done it.
We, a group of seven students - five Germans, a Swede and an Iranian- we have decided to fly to
Sabah. Flying is not very expensive, since there are many low budget airlines.
Sabah is one state of Malaysia and located on the island Borneo. We arrive at the airport in the city
Kota Kinabalu, where we stay in a backpacker's lodge for the next few days.

1.day
Our first day should be relaxing, and as we would know after
the whole week also the last day where we sleep longer than
7am!!! We go to a traditional Sunday market in KK (Kota
Kinabalu) and afterwards to one of several islands which are
near by: Sapi island. Unfortunately the weather is not good
enough to go snorkling. The sea is to rough. So we spend some
time walking over the island.

So many different sorts of prawns, on the fishmarket.











And there we see this amazing ant street.
Millions of ants...














2.day
The taxi awaits us at 7am to take us on a 2-3h way to the starting point in "Mount Kinabalu Park".
Here we are on 1866m.
The expedition crew to the highest mountain in
South-East-Asia (4095m):
Five of us students, a woman from UK and our Malaysian
guide. A guide is compulsory to enter the park. For the locals
it is a way to earn some money and for us the good
possibility to learn a lot about the flora and the national
park.













For the attentive readers among you who wonder what has happened to the other two in our group,
they are sick and have to stay in Kota Kinabalu.

Our hike leads us through tropical vegetation, through oak forest to the rocky sub-alpine summit
plateau. Just above the tree line at 3350m we reach a rest house, where we stay over the night.
Unfortunately we have bad luck with the weather and we are walking 3 of 4hours in heavy rain.
(In Germany it would never rain with this intensity for a so
long time!) As you can guess even near the equator the
temperature over 3000m could be damn cold and then this
horrible wind. So everybody of us arrives freezing at the
unheated rest house. And bad-equipped as we are, the very
first investment are these gloves, jackets and caps and then
a hot chocolate!

3.day
Before dawn next morning everybody is up. After baked beans for breakfast we start with the
second, more thrilling part of Mount Kinabalu at 3am in the night. We are climbing by torchlight
towards the summit. A steep rock step is aided by a fixed rope which continues all the way to the
summit even where the way becomes quite flat. Many people have been lost on the mountain in
the past, some never to be seen again ;-)
(click on the image to read the watch)








At around 6am we are all proud to stand on the top above 4000m!!!
But of course everything is in thick clouds.
And the beautiful sunrise is not
more than the pretty fast
increasing brightness of the
sunlight.
Nevertheless it was definitely
worth climbing Mt Kinabalu.
We all enjoyed the trip. And I
will never forget the
experience to climb steep rocks only by following a rope that disappears some meters in front of
you in the totally dark black night; and the feeling of thin air when your heart starts beating so
fast even after doing just two steps. I really had problems to fall asleep the night before, I had to
breath to much to get enough oxygen, hehe.












Many of the trees and flowers are unique or extremely rare.
The pitcher plant is an insect-eating plant. With a pint of liquid it
attracts passing flies or mosquitos.



There is no other way to get up on the mountain than to walk.
These people are carrying all the food and drinks up to the rest house,
for us tourists.












Mount Kinabalu






4.day
With the biggest muscle ache ever, we are hardly able to walk so we should find other ways to
move forward today. This train brings us directly into the green nature to the Padas River
- Wild Water Rafting -yeah!
But the train ride is almost better. The old steam engine
follows the winding river with not more than 40km/h and is
continuous shaking.
Doors doesn't exist and
some wagons are
more for the transport
of goods. So we can sit
outside on the loading
area.



The rafting in this scenery is also something special. And because of the current we don't have to
worry about crocodiles, they live more downstream.

Time for swimming... in brown water.
(pictures are following soon)

5.-7.day
We leave the west and take a bus to the other side of Sabah. We head for the "Kinabatangan River".
It is a National Park along this river. And we have booked a three day Safari to see some animals
of the jungle.
In the late afternoon the local guides take us on a boat tour to
watch all the animals on the river side.
We see a lot of different species of monkeys: Proboscis Monkeys,
Macaques, Silver Langurs and even an Orang Utan with his
baby.



left top:
Rhinoceros Hornbill

right top:
Long-tailed Macaque



right bottom:
Stork-billed Kingfisher






With the time and some experience we are getting better in
finding animals too. But nevertheless you must have an
incredible good knowledge of this area to find animals like this
mangrove snake, hanging in a branch over the water,



or the monitor lizard. Can you see it?
If the animals are not moving they are so well adapted to
their environment that it is hardly possible to see them.





On every morning from 6 to 7.30 before breakfast there is another boat trip to see and hear all the
birds singing. And it is not hard to realize that our guides really like their job. They know "every"
animal and bird by name. They can even distinguish them only by their different sounds and
they are perfect in imitating them.

flying Egret






My sunset picture is taken from the boat.


On a night walk we see some other animals, mostly
insects, like this Lantern Bug



























It is hard to put in words, but for me it was so impressive
to see all these animals in their natural environment: the
monkeys jumping in the top of these hugh trees, performing
real stunts or the Orang Utan climbing elegant from one
branch to another. If you have ever observed a Kingfisher
dipping into the water surface to catch a fish, you can forget
every zoo on the world!
And the humans are on the best way to destroy all this beauty of the nature.
The best example is Borneo itself. I haven't told it yet, but nearly all the forest and jungle is gone,
replaced by oil palm plantations. During at least 6 of the 8 hours that we needed to come to the
river, we were surrounded by plantations. Plantations with old palm trees, plantation with new
planted palms, burned plantations ...
And the National Park is about 25000 hectare large, which is an area of 25 times 10km !!!
Almost nothing!!!