Its hard to even know where to begin! We’ve been in the field for almost two weeks now and done an ton of cool stuff, near impossible to condense into something of a readable length. Nonetheless, I will do my best…

After leaving Penang, we visited a conservation center for Orangutans, which are only found in East Malaysia (Borneo) and Indonesia. Although I was a bit sceptical about the centre’s management plan to reintroduce the captive bred animals back into the wild, the center use a rather unique concept of wide stretches of natural habitat for the primates and leaving humans as the ones to be put in cages to observe the animals….its about time we felt what its like to be a captive animal. The Orangutans themselves are amazing intelligent and watching their behaviour was so neat, especially the social interactions between one another. There were even newborns being looked after by the vets, in diapers and all! High on the cuteness scale!

We then spent 4 days at a Mangrove reserve, learning about these hugely important yet wildly underappreciated swap forests. Among the various activities during our time here, we explored the ecosystem by boat, visited the local fishing town dependant on the mangroves for cockles and shrimp, and even had the chance to plant our own mangrove seedlings! The most memorable part by far however was watching the trees flicker with light at night like Christmas trees – fireflies!! One of the mangrove species provides habitat to these amazing creatures, which can flash 3 times per second!

Our next stop was a small village called Batu Ring located right on the jungle’s edge, where we spent a full week learning about rainforest ecology and staying in a homestay with a village family. We did all sorts of amazing field work, including bat trapping and identification and catching and swabbing frogs for a deadly fungus that is killing amphibians all over the world. We explored the diversity of the tropical rainforest, hiked to a jungle waterfall and visited the caves were the oldest human remains of Peninsular Malaysia were found. The most amazing part I would have to say though was the experience of living with a village family. Chantelle and I, along with Rassis who is one of the Malaysian students also participating in the field course, stayed with a wonderful woman whom we called Mak, meaning ‘Ma’ in Malay. Her husband passed away a few years ago, and most of her children are grown up and have moved out of the village. She has one youngster left, a 12 year old boy named Hakiem who was our “brother” for the week. Although Mak did not speak any English, and our Malay was limited to “Thank you” and “Delicious”, Rassis did a wonderful job as our unofficial translator, helping us to communicate with Mak. She was unbelievably warm hearted and cooked non-stop for us, all traditional Malaysian dishes and ALL DELICIOUS… the food never stopped coming. Mak also picked up on our tastes pretty quick, so after a few days all our token favourite things began to show up frequently. Chantelle and I became obsessed with something called Te Terek, which is essentially tea with condensed milk… AMAZING! I even forfeited coffee for this tastily unhealthy delight! The village lifestyle is simple yet refreshingly practical. The shower consists of a big tub of cool water and a small bucket to pour it on yourself with. The toilet is a hole in the ground…simple. The living area is a bunch of woven mats. It was a wonderful wonderful experience to be immersed in this lifestyle for a week. The hospitality of the villagers was touching and unmatched to anything I have ever seen before. I honestly fell in love with Mak and can say that I have never felt such affection for someone who not only was a complete stranger a week prior but also with whom I exchanged less than 10 words with directly. Needless to say it was emotional parting ways at the end of the week, but an experience I will cherish for the rest of my life.

After our week in the village, we moved to our current location which is another rainforest ecosystem in the southeast part of Malaysia (its pretty amazing you can almost cross the entire country in about half a day on the bus). We are staying at the Malaysian Wildlife Department’s Institute for Biodiversity. Having only arrived yesterday I will leave it at that and fill you all in on all the fun this place has to offer in my next update…including a visit to an elephant rehabilitation center and insect collecting… cliff-hanger if you will!?