Seni sunda dina bahasa sunda

Sometimes I feel like a sundae even on a Monday when I have no ice cream

Hi everyone!
Earlier this month i had a chance to visit Deramakot Forest Reserve, part of Borneo in Sabah, Malaysia. I had an amazing experience and wanted to share my experience for those wildlife enthusiasts around here. I spent also two days in Kinatabangan River, a spot many of you have probably visited that is good to spot pigmy elephants, proboscis monkeys and orangutans too.
Most people who visit Borneo visit one of the National parks in Indonesia or a quick visit to Danum Valley and Kinabatangan River. The main reason for me to pick Deramakot FR was the focus in wildlife sighting, it is the best place in the world to see clouded leopards and other wild cats and many species that only exist in that part of the world can be seen regularly. When researching, i found out that Danum Valley is great for starters, you can learn about trees and insects, do some walks and in the car, probably see a couple of civets and orangutans, but the way it is organized to be explored does not enhance your probability to see different species, it just gives you a taste of the greatness of Borneo that won’t satisfy those who want to maximize wildlife viewing. Deramakot is the place to be for variety.
We spent 4D/3N with Adventure Alternative Borneo, when we arrived we met our guide Mike, he said himself he wasn’t great with briefings or explanations so he just wanted to know our questions and target animals. I said we wanted to see orangutans and then mainly nocturnal animals, i mentioned wild cats, civets, binturong, slow loris, tarsier, etc… he said tarsier is difficult but all the other was easy, maybe not a clouded leopard but we saw 4 leopard cats, for example.
The wildlife viewing takes place on top of the back of a pick up truck where the guide with a driver runs back and forth in the 32 km main road 2 of the Forest Reserve. You have 7 hours a day that you distribute like you want depending on target species. It takes 3 hours each way to the end of the road depending how many hours you assign, we started at 15:00 and finished at 23:00 with one hour for dinner and rest at the spot at the edge of the park at the end of the 32 km.
The first day you only do 3 hours at night, in those 3 hours, we quickly came accross an otter in a body of water near the road, two types of owls, civets, - pigmy elephant, multiple leopard cats… a sunda skunk would come slowly walking by our car and we would get down and walk next to it to take the best photos and experience being close to it. A Thomas’ flying squirrel would glide between trees just on top of us, a sambar deer would run and hide past us in the shadows.
We counted 30 different species, most of them mammals over the 3 days of wildlife viewing, we didn’t see a sun bear or clouded leopard (two of my dreams), but we saw a banteng. You might know that there are bantengs in several parts of indonesia, but the malaysian subspecies has less than 324 members left to be extinct, and we crossed paths with one young one that stayed for a couple of minutes in front of the car, the guide said he has seen only 2 before and very briefly running away in all the years he had been guiding in the park, he mentioned that a banteng is much more rare than seeing a pangolin and a clouded leopards and that specimen probably had never seen a car before in its life.
Despite our impressive first night, in the other two days we had long parts of times where we wouldnt have sightings, in hindsight, we shouldnt have done 15:00-18:00 at all and just start at night since we had seen orangutan already in Kinabatangan, but once the night came down, you could be 1 hour without sightings and suddenly see slow loris, a leopard cat, a rat snake, a banded civet shyly walking past our car and a binturong within 30 minutes. The park had that magic that can make you go to bed with a smile after having two hours of nothing with the best 10 minutes of sightings at the end. You could see the guide get as excited or more than you with every sighting and say: hell yeah, when he got one of those species you mentioned you wanted to see. We spent 30 mins watching a binturong eating fruits from a fig tree or 10 mins watching a striped palm civet smile to the camera with its mouth full of fruits, or a slow loris walking down a tree to escape the light literally in slow motion.
I have been before in the Amazon rainforest in Peru, Galapagos Islands, several parts of Australia, Polynesia, two safaris in Kenya and South Africa and this experience let me wanting to come back as soon as possible and with the feeling of seeing animals i could only see in books and documentaries. I feel like i found a “secret” to keep coming back, but at the same time there is a reality many of you know from Malaysian Borneo. 60% of the territory is covered by palm oil plantations, from the moment you land in the airport to the almost 4 hours until the entrance of the park, all you see is km and km of palm trees and palm trees, you ask the locals and they say it brings a lot of money and the government wants to continue expanding, and even with that, Sabah is the poorest region of Malaysia.
Regarding the price, it is not cheap, specially considering that you can have lunch in a restaurant in telupid town for 11 myr and we paid a bit over 4000 myr for this per person including transport from and to airport, but the truth is, the reason for the reserve to have this price is that the reserve needs to prove the government that they can generate enough money from wildlife tourism to make it equally or more profitable than just turning the whole reserve into a big palm oil plantation, and seeing how amazing the wildlife is, it is extremely sad to see all those kilometer and kilometer of palm oil plantations and think how amazing all that was 100 years ago.
The accomodation is basic but safe and clean, with hot water , i would say much better than most of the homestays i stayed in Indonesia in the same trip, our guide Mike was the best wildlife spotter i ever saw in my travels, although the experience would be different with another guide, of course.
I would recommend visiting this reserve to anybody who really loves wildlife variety and would be happy to spend 7 hours a day driving around in exchange of seeing some animals that only exist in this part of the world. There was another couple happily doing early morning drives to see the gibbons and orangutan waking up and the birds followed with night drives that were having an amazing time too. If you just want a taste of the jungle you can probably stay some days in the more luxurious rainforest lodge in Danum Valley and just get a taste and fewer sightings . For me, Deramakot was even better than what i expected as a wildlife enthusiast and would love it to continue being that way and not turned into palm oil plantations down the line, hence why i wanted to share my experience.
1 and 2. Female Orangutan and baby 3.Pigmy Elephant 4.Barred eagle owl 5.Buffy fish owl 6.Striped Palm Civet 7.Philippine slow loris 8.Binturong 9.Banteng 10.Sunda Skunk 11.Island Palm Civet 12.Flying fox 13.White bellied rat snake 14.Leopard cat 15.View from the car during afternoon drive

This is for my mother’s bereavement class tomorrow. My father loved fresh water fishing so I thought this would be appropriate

Need this for my mother for a bereavement session please. She doesn’t want the truck in the background. He enjoyed fresh water fishing so thought a lake would be great.

Or at least Disclosure & Justice closing Pier stage in general. Taken from an email from Portola that was sent a little bit ago
https://preview.redd.it/9r10of5bln1d1.png?width=620&format=png&auto=webp&s=046158ef04a17f966a0dada98f202fbca0e34f3a

The Shoujo Sundae Podcast has started reviewing the Sasaki and Miyano anime and is loving it thus far. Here is our audiogram, which is a short clip of us talking about the first couple of episodes. What do you think about the series? We think it's so wholesome and love the shoujo elements in certain scenes: bubbles, triangles, and sparkles.
We commissioned Hearthaaaa to draw Sasaki for us in her style. ❤️