Back from Borneo
Just got back from Borneo where we spent two amazing weeks in and around the Malaysian jungle. It was by no means a relaxing holiday! For this shot we set the alarm for 3am before hiking through dense rainforest on the 2 hour climb in dark to this fantastic vantage point. The heat, humidity and leeches were exhausting to say the least!
David Bettini Photographer 
Nice to see actual rainforest on Borneo and not just palm oil plantations! Borneo is fantastic, I have been to the Indonesian part and the heat and humidity as you say is quite mindblowing. Loved the place and want to go back, look forward to more of your shots.
Hi Bo
Yea I have admit there is an awful lot of palm oil in Borneo. Apparently about half of Malaysian Borneo is still forested which I guess is a large percentage especially when compared to Australia where we have lost a much greater percentage of our forests!
Will most some wildlife shots in the next few days.
Cheers
Dave
I worked for a palm oil plantation in Indonesian Borneo, close to Tanjung Puting National Park (Orang Utan conversation area). Something like 75% of Borneos primary rain forest has been lost to plantations and Orang Utans existence are threatened. Also, this leads to huge co2 releases into the atmosphere. Not so good for global warming. One tree in a primary jungle in Borneo stores as much co2 as a whole forrest in Europe due to the very deep peat layer under the jungle. We are killing our planet.
But you are right, before we point too many fingers at Borneo, point them at ourselves. Europe have about 2% left of the original forrest. Easy for us to point fingers, we already killed our forrest, we just don’t remember doing it.
Probiscuos Monkeys hehehe, boy the male in the group has a tough life 🙂 25 females per male, no wonder he has a constant ‘election’ as they say in Thailand 😀
Look very much forward to more!
Bugger…I lost the bet with myself! I was sure that you would have posted a cool Urang-utan shot fist but instead you posted a kick butt landscape! 🙂 Nice mate..well worth the effort for sure!
Hope you didn’t put too much money on yourself mate ’cause I didn’t really get good shots of orang untans on this trip. I got heaps of shots of probocus monkeys though. I’ll be posting some of them soon. I can pop up a shot of an orang form a previous trip if ya like?
Cheers mate
Dave
Self lost out big time mate…but other self won of course! 🙂
Looking fwd to the monkey pics mate!
Worth the effort Dave, Good to see you back in one piece and can’t wait to see your wildlife pics.
Cheers mate. I’ll pop another up tomorrow.
Dave
Hey Dave,
Worth the 3am rise and leeches for sure. All in one piece camera and all, nice image Cheers Adrian
Yep we all survived Adrian. Can’t wait to go back. Maybe next year!
good to see you’re back man.
nice image to start off with too.
love those intersecting ridge lines with a touch of mist
Thanks Stephen. What have you been up to lately?
great shot david, worth the hike for sure! would look good as a pano of the top third too i rekon!
Thanks for the suggestion Matt. I thought of a pano when composing this shot but wanted to portray the rainforest so I included more trees.
Cheers Matt
Dave