WANDERLUST & WONTONS
Follow your favorite multicultural couple, Andrew and Sabrina, on their real-life adventures wherever they happen to be! Imagine, you are at party and have just met us for the first time. We are having a chat…a banter of whatever comes to mind that is sexy & cool, hilarious, controversial or just plain entertaining! “Wanderlust and Wontons” serves up spontaneous laughter, friendship & love and curious insights guaranteed to perk up your day!
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WANDERLUST & WONTONS
An Authentic River Safari in Borneo
Ever wondered what it's like to trek through the wild wonders of Borneo with a toddler in tow? Join us on a thrilling river safari adventure along Malaysia's Kinabatangan River, as we navigate rustic wooden lodges, encounter majestic orangutans, and discover the unexpected charm of pygmy elephants wandering through the jungle! We'll share tales of our exhilarating encounters with playful otters and curious monkeys, weaving together unforgettable moments that prove Borneo is a magical destination for every family, even those with young adventurers like our one-year-old son, Keane.
But that's not all—we also dive into cultural curiosities, from the infamous durian fruit that earned us unexpected local respect to the intriguing proboscis monkeys whose noses are the talk of the town. Our journey takes a twist through bat caves, revealing the bizarre yet fascinating bird nest industry with its luxurious culinary connections. These experiences, filled with awe and wonder, underscore the vibrant tapestry of wildlife and unique industries that make Borneo a captivating destination. Join us for a lively discussion that promises to entertain and inspire, whether you're a seasoned ecotourist or simply a curious traveler planning your next adventure.
Welcome to Wanderlust and Wontons, the real-life adventures of Andrew and Sabrina.
Speaker 2:Imagine you're at a party and you've just met us for the first time and we're having a chat, a banter or whatever comes to mind. That is cool and interesting.
Speaker 1:We've both lived in many countries for good lengths of time. I'm Asian and overall I've lived a third of my life in North America, a third in Europe, a third in Asia-Australia. I've enjoyed my boarding school years in Dublin, ireland. I enjoyed my single and party life in New York City and there isn't a more amazing city beach than Bondi Beach. Australia. And of course, we love Hong Kong and dim sum.
Speaker 2:I was born and raised in Munich, germany, till the age of 21, when I decided it was time to explore the world, and have since been on a crazy adventure all over the world, from South America to New York and Asia. You will learn more about us over many podcast episodes, but for now, come along and let's dive straight in so here is one of our other adventure holidays that we had when we just had one child, kian. Kian was about just about a year old.
Speaker 1:A year old right, and kian is spelled K-E-A-N-E the English way, but we pronounce it the Irish way, Kian, which is a tribute to my Irish boarding school days. Just like the band, basically Just like the band exactly, so this time we decided to go to the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It's a pretty cool place with a lot of ecotourism.
Speaker 1:We flew into the capital of the state of Sabah, which is called Kota Kinabalu which was a friendly, sleepy little town and from there we flew to Sandakan and the driver drove us to the Kinabatangan River, which is the second longest river in Malaysia. Along this river are basically lodges which you can live in and they can take you on these river safaris up and down the river. The lodges are pretty nice. Actually I mean a wooden cabin lodges, a little bit rustic, but perfectly good.
Speaker 2:I thought right yeah, I mean, it's not your like luxury hotel stay, that's for sure. But I think you're not coming there for for the luxury stay, right, yeah, I mean, it's not your like luxury hotel stay, that's for sure, but I think you're not coming there for for, uh, the luxury, stay right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's not a budget. It wasn't a budget lodge either, it was a pretty decent yeah.
Speaker 2:Now we get an authentic experience that's right.
Speaker 1:so, and the lodge we went to was actually, uh, run by a chinese, malaysian, and they ran basically three boat rides per day up and down the river. It's pretty interesting what you can see along these rivers, and the animals came to the rivers as a source of water. Some had their homes there.
Speaker 2:Or some were in the water, or some were in the water Like the crocodiles yeah, the crocodiles were in the water.
Speaker 1:We actually saw some otters go in and out of the water right, which are quite cute.
Speaker 2:But what were the highlights for you of what we saw on the river? I think when we went up at the crack of dawn and we took this boat down um, and we're like driving down there was this tree hanging over the river and there was this massive orangutan oh yeah, that's right we went really quite close. We were just underneath. It was just a really cool experience because they're like in the wild right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they're quite large animals.
Speaker 2:They're very big and apparently they're loners as well, so they don't hang out in families. So, they build a nest out of branches. Which all these like random knowledge. I didn't have right.
Speaker 1:You find out on the safari. Yeah, that's interesting. So the Orang is basically a large monkey the size of a man, essentially slightly smaller than a gorilla, but it has long hair, so they call it the old man of the forest.
Speaker 2:It's kind of an English translation.
Speaker 1:Orang means man, Utang means forest. Oh, okay, I didn't know that, yeah exactly and, like you said, they're loners, so they actually live and create their nests on the trees, at the top of the tree actually. So you have to look pretty high up and then they move every couple of days right, so you can see them move along the river. As we stayed there like three or four nights and did a couple of these cruises, you can see the orangutans kind of move their nest along the way.
Speaker 1:But they're very friendly and they're very calm animals right, yeah, and really unbothered by us. Pretty close to the humans, I think, from a DNA perspective, so they have a lot of human-like features and capabilities. There were also lots of other species of monkeys around, like a lot of them actually, I would say 10s or 20s or 30s at one time Small monkeys, big monkeys and they all travel Typically like most monkeys. They travel in groups right the group yeah.
Speaker 1:And the monkeys are pretty friendly, so they're hanging from branches very close to your boat trying to engage the humans. You know all quite curious For me. I thought one of the most interesting sights I saw were the pygmy elephants.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Pretty cool, right? So they have these elephants that came to the river to drink the water and they came in as a herd and they're pygmy elephants because they're small, so the size of these elephants are like a small SUV. Is the adult size of these elephants? So they're pretty cute, looking actually right and they come to the river to drink water as a herd and you can see them move along the river as well, and I guess what is really the interesting part about these safaris is you really have to track animals down.
Speaker 2:You don't know what you're going to see that day. It's always a bit of a surprise. That's right I think that's the thrill about going on these holidays.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's amazing how much life is around water, right, because along these rivers you think, oh okay, you know it's a river, it'd be pretty boring after doing two or three boat rides per day, right. But actually every time we went out we always saw something different.
Speaker 2:Like once we saw these river otters, right, they're kind of three or four of them very cute, kind of playing on the ground and then dipping into the water, which I didn't expect, of course. A lot of birds, big birds, small birds.
Speaker 1:You know a lot of you know sort of bird life right, and the occasional terrifying crocodiles and yeah, which we mostly actually saw at night, I think or heard. We didn't see them that much but you hear them right, you know in the water, or you can see the bubbles bubbling in the water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember the guide telling us the story of the fisherman and it's just like they never found a fisherman again, just a running motor of his boat and he was like dragged in and that kind of terrified me a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they're pretty lethal animals. The crocodiles the nighttime safari ride was actually pretty cool. So you go out in pitch black, right, really, only the guide has a torch because you don't want to scare away the night animals. Right, so there were clearly bats, because you could hear them flying around, and occasionally, when something is spotted, the guide would actually shine the torch on the animal, and so you could see birds that typically only come out at night. Yeah, so the kingfisher, which is this really small bird?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm not sure how he even found it, because we were like in pitch black and suddenly he switches on the torch and he shines it directly on the bird, I mean kudos to these guys. I was like wow, okay, how did you find that? Because you know it's so dark, right.
Speaker 2:They've got their night vision goggles on yeah that's right Navy SEAL style.
Speaker 1:But that was a pretty interesting experience, you know? Yeah, do you?
Speaker 2:remember when we walked along the river and we had our leech-proof socks all the way up to the knees, so they sold us on this afternoon.
Speaker 1:Trek along the river and you're in really dense rainforest and it is about as natural as you're gonna get, and there are a lot of insects, one of which is the leech, the blood-sucking leech in Southeast Asia not pleasant at all. And so they gave us these leech-proof socks, which are basically synthetic socks that go all the way up to your knee and it goes over your boot, I guess, and you can see the leeches on you trying to get in, but because the fiber is so tight it can't actually get in, but it's so a little bit gross to see the leech trying to get you.
Speaker 2:And after the walk you still have to check your entire body to see whether you picked trying to get you. And after the walk you still have to check your entire body to see whether you picked one up, because apparently when you walk past they can sense it and they like kind of turn themselves.
Speaker 1:It's like a little warm right and they turn their head towards you and try to like hitch a hike yeah, and they're quite small, so they could be typically on the ground, but they could be on a tree and fall on you right, so so. So you could not protect yourself completely from the leech right.
Speaker 2:That's the checkpost.
Speaker 1:Walk Exactly and actually the owner, the Chinese-Malaysian owner of this lodge came with us and he was showing his. I asked him why aren't you wearing these leech-proof socks? And he refused to wear it right, because he's like nah, this is my hood, I don't wear this sort of stuff, he's just like deals with it. And he showed me some of the scars of his leeches. They were pretty bad.
Speaker 2:I mean, apparently it's not really like dangerous to get bitten by a leech, but it's probably not a pleasant experience either it's just a nasty thought of having some like blood sucking like insect on you yeah, that's right. I mean, it's not dangerous.
Speaker 1:They don't actually put poison into you, right? Because back in the day people used to put leeches for medicine on the body to actually suck your blood out to remove poison or whatever it was like before the days of modern medicine. So the leech in itself is not a poisonous insect, but still not a pleasant experience, not that. I wanted to be sucking my blood for no random reason, right. So the safari was really good.
Speaker 1:The people, as always in Southeast Asia, are very, very friendly and the owner was quite nice actually, and you made friends with the owner pretty quickly because he brought out some durians on the first night.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we were bonding over durian. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:And then Sabrina went over and asked him hey, can I try some of your durian? I actually quite like it. And he obviously was surprised because he was like not many foreigners liked the durian. So she gave you the durian, you liked it, and then he gave you a whole durian actually and I think from that day almost we got special treatment because you got his respect, I think, as a foreigner, that actually could eat durian after that, yeah, but actually liked durian, which was like pretty special for him to see it.
Speaker 1:And then, after the river safari was completed, our driver took us to the proboscis monkey sanctuary.
Speaker 2:Now this is a pretty interesting it's a pretty interesting, pretty interesting animal yeah, the way it looks, it's almost comical it's called the proboscis monkey because it has a long nose like a banana.
Speaker 1:What does proboscis monkey?
Speaker 2:because it has a long nose like a banana. What does proboscis mean? Is that like a Bahasa word?
Speaker 1:now, no, no proboscis is the scientific word of the monkey.
Speaker 2:I see.
Speaker 1:Actually the locals call it Orang Belanda, which is basically Dutchman.
Speaker 2:Only because the Dutch used to own to be colonized Indonesia. Oh interesting, but it must be the nose. Yeah, because obviously the Caucasians have bigger nose than the Asians. That is so funny.
Speaker 1:But it's a pretty big nose. It's the size of a small banana, to be polite. Or like my kids would say, it's like a ding-dong on your face. So it's pretty funny to see and they're very friendly actually, yeah apparently their nose grows with the size as well.
Speaker 2:It has like the it has like some. So I think the more potent the monkey, the bigger the nose.
Speaker 1:Is that right? How strong the monkey is? No, no, potent. What do you mean by potent?
Speaker 2:But how like fertile?
Speaker 1:Oh fertile Seriously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what the guide said. You don't remember that.
Speaker 1:I don't remember that. I've just done a check on chat at GBT and it says that researchers have found a connection between the male proboscis, monkey's nose size and his reproductive success.
Speaker 2:That just means that he comes across as more attractive to the female. Proboscis monkey.
Speaker 1:You're right Is that your interpretation.
Speaker 2:That's my interpretation. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:I think that's right. It says here the longer, the larger the nose, the more attractive he is to females, likely to signal physical fitness or social status.
Speaker 2:Actually that reminds me of the German phrase we have. We say what does that mean? Basically meaning, meaning based on the man's nose, you can guess the size of his goods, his goods.
Speaker 1:That's a polite way of saying it. The larger the nose and the larger the goods Is.
Speaker 2:that right, Pretty much yeah. Just like the proboscis one I was like, how do I put that on there without being too impolite In your face? Fair enough, no, no, well said. Pun intended in your face. Yeah, well said, yeah, that's right Pun intended.
Speaker 1:Well done. That's an interesting fact. That makes sense, though.
Speaker 2:The shape of that appendage on your face of your fertility Interesting. They only reside predominantly in Borneo, actually, so you don't really see this monkey anywhere else, not even in a zoo. I've never encountered this kind of monkey anywhere else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, so that was a fun experience. So I would say, you know you think of safaris typically. You would think Africa safari, where you go and see the Big Five across the Serengeti, or when I went to Uganda to trek for the gorillas from the movie Gorillas and the Missiles, those are the typical surprise you would kind of think about. But I think this is a really great safari very underrated the River Safari in Borneo. Firstly, it's only three, four days and it's pretty well-priced, by the way, so it's nowhere as expensive as the African Safari, but you see a lot of wildlife, a very unique wildlife as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very unique wildlife in its natural habitat and kind of fun ones, right Like the pygmy elephant was. I didn't it existed, by the way, and when I saw it's like wow, we have elephants here, why are they so small?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's the adult size of the elephant right, yeah, so, oh, it's really cool. So yeah so I totally recommend the river safari in borneo if you're living in asia or you're coming through asia. It's a pretty interesting experience that I think gets overlooked oh, absolutely. Yeah so, and then, on a side tour, on the way back to Kota Kinabalu, we went to a cave, a bat cave. Oh my gosh. For me was probably the most grossest experience I've ever been through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember you were like really hesitant to enter the cave and I was like, well, we're here now, let's just do it. But I agree with you, it was pretty gross.
Speaker 1:So let me describe the scene. So there are these caves where they have birds' nests. So these swallows or these small birds have their nests in these caves, right, because it's remote and they can have their nests there undisturbed. And these nests get harvested because they are really expensive when you sell them, particularly to the Asian market and mostly to the China market, and it's supposed to be really good for your skin and your health, and it's very expensive to eat at a restaurant.
Speaker 2:It's a sliver right A swallow sliver. That's the secret to eat at a restaurant. It's a saliva right, a swallow saliva. That's the secret ingredient or the special ingredient.
Speaker 1:Correct, because they make their nest by putting saliva along branches. The nest comes out. It's not clean, they have to clean it. You know, when you see it in the shop in Hong Kong the bird's nest is all white. But that's because it's already been really well cleaned, maybe even chemically cleaned to make it become white. Right, because for sure the nest has got a lot of gunk in it branches, poop whatever it is so that's all get preserved, gets cleaned down yeah, I suppose it's got a lot of collagen in it.
Speaker 1:So I think that makes sense, right, because all these beauty products nowadays with collagen the more collagen the better for your skin so there's some scientific logic to it for sure. So in this cave there are lots of birds nests and it turns out, different parts of the cave are basically paid for by certain companies and they have their climbers there that basically live in the cave or close to the cave to guard their section of these birds nests so they don't get stolen in the in the night when they're not there, because this is expensive product. So in this massive cave you've got the climbers, they're guarding their territory and they've created a little walkway around, like in a? U when you walk in and you out of the cave, and it's dark, as all caves are. So we walk in on this wooden walkway and what did you see everywhere on the walkway?
Speaker 2:I mean, the floor was crawling, crawling with what then? With cockroaches, it was like the word. I mean, if you're afraid of insects it will freak you out. And they were like everywhere I mean this like walkway had a handrail and you could not touch out. And they were like everywhere. I mean this like walkway had a handrail and you could not touch the handrail.
Speaker 1:You could almost not see the handrail. There was so much cockroach.
Speaker 2:It was really bad, but I was like let's just do it, let's just walk through it.
Speaker 1:And I was like I don't know whether we should go in case we slip or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because cockroaches are attracted by the bird poop, so on the floor you imagine it's like it's actually bat poop predominantly bat or bird poop, yeah, and then you just have like these cockroaches crawling like through the poop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know so essentially so you can imagine the scene. You're walking through a cave, it's relatively dark. There's probably only one or two lamps that lit up, so you can at least see where you're walking. And as you look at it like out of a horror movie, whoa you suddenly see hundreds I'm talking about hundreds and hundreds of cockroaches on the grounds. You have the world relatively clearly on the handles as well. It's a u-shaped walkway, so in the middle of the walkway there's a pile of what I thought was like brown colored. I thought was dirt in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Actually, right, I was like what's that? Pile of dirt in the middle, because then you know above.
Speaker 1:It clearly must be the bird's nest. And you see people you know, with their ropes up there right, and I was like what is that? And as it turns out, that is actually dung. That is mostly bat dung and clearly quite a good amount of bird poo as well, right, but like a whole mountain on it. And then we look closer at this pile of poop right, and you just have, I don't know, thousands of cockroaches going in and out. You know that's where they like reside, right. So you can think there's like a lot on the walkway, that's like a gazillion more in the gun.
Speaker 2:It's like a cockroach metropolis.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, I don't know, that was like you know so if someone wants to create a horror movie you should totally totally use this scene right. The visuals I'm trying to describe to you probably don't even do it justice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Speaker 1:It was also very slippery, so on top of it, you had to be sure you don't lose your footing and fall into this mess, but we did it.
Speaker 2:We actually did go through, I mean fairly quick. Yeah, we went through. There's no lingering around there and like looking at sites, it's like let's just get moving correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, we went with intentional pace let's call it, you know, and then came out on the other side of the? U back out the cave, but it was, and the guide was trying to tell us all about the history of the cave and how important the bird nests are as an industry.
Speaker 1:I was like, yeah, okay, very interesting, let's keep moving. But it's a big industry, it's lots of money, the bird nests. If you're in Hong Kong you can go down the streets of Bonham Strand West where they sell the dried seafood and it's expensive stuff. But there you go. An interesting side anecdote to our river safari trip. So if you want a little adventure in a river safari kind of format, we recommend Borneo. Do check it out for sure. So stay tuned for more episodes. We'll talk about travel. We talk about all things that are fun and exciting in our lives Controversial moments, crazy moments, all kinds of stuff. Feel free to drop in on our next episode and we'll see you soon you.