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9/24/11

recent house guests

Two species of frog and a jumping spider were visiting the house, yesterday and today. stunning all three of them. Taken with a macro lens, which when you live in Borneo and have such things coming to your house, is difficult to take of the camera, just in case it's needed.

































9/8/11

the beauty of the beast

These were simply so stunning they made me cry, I like plants more than animals in general, but these white tigers left me awestruck.





More primates

During a recent trip to the Singapore zoo (I'm not really a big fan of zoos but this one had very good reviews, so we went), we saw lots of stunning stuff, here's a few of the primates.

no idea

howler monkey

a white gloved gibbon (I think)

Gibbon

Not sure what this is, maybe a kind of lemur

ring-tailed lemur

ring-tailed lemur

8/13/11

More macro shots

A few visitors to the house, think I'm slowly getting the hang of this, depth of field is key.




6/10/11

First underwater pics

So, have been on holiday in Sabah and bought a second hand diving camera off a diver who'd just upgraded. Quite difficult to get a decent shot when you are constantly in motion, but you certainly get a grip on your buoyancy rapidly. Best to be slightly negative than neutral.
So I won't post a load, just the highlights.


































A blue spotted fan tail ray































Chromadis sp of nudibranch





























Lionfish





























Scorpion fish






































Mantis shrimp





























feather stars on soft coral

That's all I'll bore you with, took about 120 shots, about 50 of which were ok. Was very happy with them, for a first attempt, may have to splash out on the external flash though.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

3/20/11

King of the Jungle

Our next stop was a place called Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. It's not far from Kuching, so an easy 20 minute drive for us. It's a smallish patch of protected rainforest and it is set up as a way of reintroducing injured, stolen, captured animals back into the wild. They have a long list of wildlife released such as pangolins, tarsiers, slow loris, civet cats and of course, the reason why most people visit....the Orangutans. Once again I've only seen them on TV or in a zoo, and my fear was that this place would be just a big zoo. It wasn't. They do say that you are not guaranteed a sighting of the apes, but as they put out big baskets of fruit for them twice a day and 'call' to them....they often come.
So we trudged through a short stretch of forest to the feeding sight (along with about 40 other people) and waited. The park rangers were doing their tarzan type calling to get the apes attention, but as time went by it looked like they weren't coming. The rangers explained to the visitors that 4 orangutans were out near the park entrance, where they also put out food, so most people wandered back off that way. We stayed and hoped for the best. The sky by this time was getting blacker and blacker and the first spots of rain were falling. Visiting time is only an hour and we were approaching 40 minutes by this time. Then, we saw signs of movement high up to our left and what looked like a mother and child stared to make their way down to the feeding sight. The heavens of course chose this exact moment to really open up, and rain poured out of the sky like it does in tropical equatorial countries...i.e. very heavily. Then.....the trees in front of us starting to move like an elephant was barging its way through them... and we got out first sighting of the alpha male...Ritchie.
Anyway enough of my blathering...here's some shots. They are not great pics, but they were still some distance from us and it was pouring down.

The young one makes his way across the ropes to the fruit

He's rather wet as you can see

Their home in the rain (forest)

The alpha-male 'Ritchie' puts in an appearance

Ritchie tucking into the free fruit




Primates

Well we've just had our first week off and have been seeing some of the nearby places. Bako national park was our first stop for an over-nighter. We drove the 45 mins up to the coast and then it was onto a boat for a 20 min ride to the park. It did feel rather like going into Jurassic park, very exciting. An amazing place. Dense jungle, with plenty of established trails for hiking, and lots of interesting flora and fauna to be seen.
We were not disappointed: Macaques, leaf-eater and proboscis monkeys were all there to behold. I've only ever seen proboscis monkeys on TV and thought they were very strange looking beasts, but I was wrong; they were so beautiful up close, the colour of their fur, the way they moved, their expressions...everything about them was majestic and magnificent. We also saw quite a lot of macaques, which as usual were quite cheeky and liked to steal stuff. Still wonderful to observe, even if they have become somewhat corrupted by humanity.
Watching me watching you

The sunlight enhancing the beauty of the golden fur

Large alpha male had just miss-timed his jump and nearly fell,
he then hung like this for long enough to get this shot,
 he was rather excited as you can see.

He then sat eyeing me up, and became quite aggressive, so I moved away

They had this wonderful habit of using the aerial roots of the mangroves as stools

Conveniently placed leaf, he's looking for stuff to pinch.

And he scores a friend's apple core

two young ones playing around

Look what I found!

2/6/11

Kuching and Damai, Sarawak

So here's a few pictures from out first few weeks in Sarawak. We have spent most of it in the capital, Kuching; as that's where we are working, we did get chance to go north to the coast (Damai) and spent a few days in a treetop cabin next to the sea.



























So we arrived just before Chinese new year, which has pros and cons obviously. When you are trying to get stuff done (like find somewhere to live) it's not good, but there are quite a lot of interesting cultural events going on. These dragon dancers were performing all over the city, as well as lion dancers and musicians.

This is the state administrative building in Kuching, which almost dominates the skyline and is a real focal point. Kuching is actually a nice manageable city and very relaxed compared to most Asian cities. A river runs through the middle, and it's very lush and green with trees and greenery everywhere.

We have also arrived during the rainy season, so it has rained most days at least for a little while, and other days have been seriously major downpours.

The city is a nice cultural mix of all the peoples of Malaysian Borneo; Muslim, Chinese, Indian and a large number of tribal peoples of Kalimantan and a smattering of expats. The seperation of 'races' is not as strict as in other parts of Asia, so lots of inter-breeding has taken place over the years, making it very difficult to tell where anyone's origins really are. Which I suppose is a good thing.






The pic below is from the very busy weekend market, that sells almost everything, though a lot of it is given over to local produce and foodstuffs obviously. The smells can be rather overwhelming on a hot sticky day; but it's an amazing place to takes photographs.


























Characters like this one hang about on the river taking tourists and locals across to the other side for 0.5 RM or 1 Rm at night, they usually wait and fill up like shared taxi, unless you are willing to pay a little extra for a 'private' trip. An unusual aspect is that they are paddled and steered from the front as you can see.

Our employer paid for us all to go on a river cruise along the river as a team building exercise and to get us out of the hotel for while, it was a bit cheese-tastic....but sipping beer as the sun goes down, aboard a boat with friends, in Sarawak, Borneo...there are certainly worse ways to spend an evening..

Here's a pic of the cabaret dancers, in traditional costumes after performing traditional dancers that had stuff to do with eagles and fish and hunting.



They also worked as the boat crew and served drinks, but they were lovely, and we've all got to earn a living some how, so good luck to them.

I'm tempted to put in some more pics of theevening, I'll restrict myself to one, my fave from the boat trip.











We also went up to a place north of Kuching, called Damai and Santubong a small peninsula that sticks out into the south China Sea. Beautiful little place and we splashed out and stayed in a treetop house on the edge of rainforest and stormy sea. Only the sound of jungle and crashing waves to sleep and wake to. We had a small troop of purple-faced-leaf-eater monkeys for company. It was a very nice four days; here's a few pics, the first of which has been heavily doctored in PS, but I took it in RAW to do exactly that.
Grainy Photo-shopped effort

Sunset

This one's for Ant

Longhouse

Local cooking cakes