One month in Borneo...

Hi all far away colleagues!

I'm enjoying some free wireless on a verandah in Sepilok. I'm about to head into Kalimantan for a week to do a last consultancy related, field visit. Otherwise, my time in Sabah has been quite productive, though still delayed by logistics and research permit processing. I do now have an official stamp in my passport allowing me to stay until April 2009, too bad my flight takes me back to the UK in June ;).

I have spent more time in oil palm plantation than forest on this trip; however, I hope to switch that ratio on my next field visit (looking like in October). I have surveyed about 6 hectares of forest logged at different times over the last 10 years, thanks to the amazing sabah forestry inventory team. That feat was accomplished in 4 days (a bit mad, really!). In comparison, my time in the plantation was quite sedate. I've sampled only about 2 hectares of oil palm of varying ages, though the variation among them is obviously much less and would be more affected by different management regimes, which would be hard to sample when I'm working with the same company for all of them. That may need to be remedied on my next visit.

I've also picked an interesting month to come to Sabah, as May is basically a month long harvest festival culminating in one day of binge drinking on may 31. As oil palm is harvested all year round the crop in question is rice and I have sampled their lovely rice wine, tapai (though that's not quite the right word for it). Otherwise, the drink of choice for these sabahans is tiger beer. Can't quite keep up with the drinking prowess, especially with my almost constant state of dehydration (i exaggerate). Though, I think I've sweated off a few more kilos, Khoon! Anyway, as I won't be able to find a sober Sabahan for miles on that weekend, i've opted for hiking Mt Kinabalu (4,200 m). I haven't quite confirmed if its the highest or second highest peak in SE Asia. So if you get a chance to think of me that day, I'm sure I'd appreciate any wishes of encouragement :).

After that I will finally be heading off to Danum Valley and hopefully spending two weeks in Kalabakan Forest Reserve, that may well be the site of the last, largest conversion of forest (including timber plantation) to oil palm in Sabah. I'll have to confirm, but I've heard numbers of around 80,000 ha. I'm hoping to do another 6-8 hectares there, though I won't have the 6-man team from the Sabah Forestry Department (so hopefully 3 of us can pull off 1 ha line transect in a day). I will then have to save two more forest reserves to survey when I come back in October. I figure if I can, at least, do another 12 has then, plus the data I'm collecting from the Sabah Forest Research Centre (a good 50 ha at least!) and a few other extremely generous researchers across Sabah- I should be in good shape come December.

Anyway, wanted to give you all an update. Hope you're doing well! and see you in June!

Alex