Wildlife Archives - 4corners7seas

Whale Watching in Kaikoura, New Zealand

Kaikoura’s a cute little town located on a gorgeous stretch of coastline an hour north of Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island.

It offers lovely scenery, a laid back atmosphere, and famous seafood (crayfish in particular), but the main draw is the daily whale watching boat tours in the bay.

Kaikoura is blessed with the year-round presence of sperm whales which come to hunt in the abundant waters of a deep submarine canyon just offshore, while there are also seasonal visits from migrating whales of other species including humpbacks and blue whales (if you’re lucky). Dolphins are also a common sight, and on the day I went whale watching we saw a huge pod of dusky dolphins somersaulting around the boat in addition to the half-dozen sperm whales we’d sighted. I got lucky as that was a particularly successful outing, but whale sightings are so common that you’re offered an 80% refund if your trip strikes out; 95% are successful.

Sperm whales in Kaikoura — A rare double sperm whale sighting

Dusky dolphins in Kaikoura — Dusky dolphins

The local Ngati-Kuri Maori people used to hunt the whales in these waters (as did the Europeans who came and established whaling stations in the area); now they own & run the whale-watching operation, adhering to strict guidelines regarding how many boats go out at any given time and how close they get to the whales. This ensures the whales aren’t disturbed, and the historical & cultural information shared by the onboard guides is fascinating. Kaikoura really is a fine example of how coastal whaling towns can transition to profiting from whale tourism instead of whale hunting – take note Japan (for further reading on that matter see this article by my friend Sean (from Tohoku tsunami volunteering days) contrasting the fortunes of Kaikoura with the Japanese whaling town Taiji (made infamous by the documentary The Cove) and offering constructive suggestions for Taiji’s future, an article for which he was doxxed and threatened by Japan’s batshit crazy far right nationalists)

Sperm whales dive for extended periods to great depths, hunting by echolocation in the pitch darkness. The crew use sensors to track the whales’ echolocation clicks to be positioned nearby when the whales surface for air. They usually hunt solo, so you see the whale surface and spend a few minutes floating at the surface to breathe, before humping its back and raising its tail to dive. This is when you can get the classic shot like the one above. Sperm whales don’t tend to be so playful and usually just ignore the boats (though they used to defend themselves fiercely against whalers – the whale in Moby Dick was a sperm whale), so don’t expect to see them jumping around for the cameras the way e.g. humpback whales sometimes do. Still very cool to see.

Boat crew using sensors to detect sperm whales

The boat may look crowded, but actually there’s plenty of space on board for everyone to get a good vantage point.

Due to the restricted daily number of tickets it’s a good idea to book in advance once you’re sure of your dates, which you can do here. It’s also easy enough to book your boat trip after arriving in town, either through your hostel/hotel or by going direct to Whale Watch Kaikoura, though you may have to wait until a later slot if they’re booked up.

Whale watching isn’t the only game in town though, so if you do end up having to wait you can use the time for a whole bunch of other activities like dolphin swimming or seal kayaking (I didn’t do any others but heard good reports, especially of dolphin swimming)

Life in Taipei: Stumpy the Lizard

Taiwan, Wildlife

Fucking bugs. Fucking cockroaches, fucking flies, and fucking, fucking, fucking mosquitoes; one thing you’re always going to have to put up with if you go live in a tropical climate is all the damn bugs.

If you’re in Korea or Japan then at least it’s only a summer thing, the colder winter months being nice and bug-free (doesn’t seem to apply in China though – even in the brutal cold of a Beijing winter I encountered the odd roach); but if you’re in the tropics, they’re ever-present and they’re something you just have to deal with – and they’re all massive to boot.

This is also the case in Taipei – though it’s technically sub-tropical, lying just outside the tropics (the Tropic of Cancer runs across the middle of Taiwan), and does cool down for a couple of months in winter, it feels tropical most of the time and has some serious bugs.

One particular room I rented for a couple of months was brutal – monster cockroaches would sometimes pop out of the drains or suddenly appear running up the wall, and the daily battle with the mosquitoes was an exhausting endeavour; just as you’re drifting off, that high-pitched buzz whines somewhere near your ear, or you feel one landing gently on your nose, so you spring to action, hit the lights, and spend the next 30 minutes playing wack-a-mozz.

Thankfully we do have some allies in this struggle – all those insects provide plenty of sustenance for Taiwan’s spiders and lizards.

Now, if you’re one of those who hates spiders and lumps them in with all the other critters, I have to warn you – Taiwan has some pretty impressive arachnids, especially out in the hills:

A large orb spider in the Jiufen / Houtong area — Came across this beauty while hiking near Jiufen

Never saw anything that big in the city though! As for me, I don’t hate spiders at all, so I’d always welcome a couple of resident spiders to do pest control on all the little flying bastards.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any spiders in that insect-infested building for some reason, but I did get another even more useful insect hunter – a little house gecko set up shop behind my fridge.

It scared the shit out of me first time I saw it – I’d just got into bed when I noticed a dark shape wriggling up the wall, differentiated by the faint glow of the LEDs in the room. I jumped up and hit the lights, then realised it was a gecko – one of the good guys. I figured a gecko in the room would mean fewer insects in the room, and left it to it.

And so this little lizard took up residence behind my fridge (they like the heat back there apparently), emerging at night to eat the mosquitoes that were trying to eat me. A handy little symbiotic relationship… or so I thought.

The arrangement lasted for a week or so, until I saw the mother of all cockroaches emerge from and then scuttle back under the fridge; it was a real monster, like one of the CGI aliens from the movie Starship Troopers (only a slight exaggeration). Pulling the fridge out from the wall, I found a whole cockroach party going under there, the one huge one along with a bunch of smaller ones – all feasting on a veritable banquet of gecko shit. Of course.

Should’ve thought of that really – the gecko eats the mosquitoes, but obviously some of that biomass has to come out again, and a pile of lizard droppings is a nice easy feed for the roaches.

Should’ve thought of it, but didn’t – and now my reptilian friend had to go.

I didn’t want to kill it, but catching a lizard is very tricky indeed, as I soon discovered. There I was at 2am with an empty take out container in one hand and a piece of packaging cardboard in the other, hot & bothered and sweating profusely as I tried and failed to catch the little bastard. It was just too quick and too alert to what I was up to, and had a couple of handy escape tricks up its sleeve – one being to take a flying leap out from the wall, launching itself a surprising distance across the room to escape my clutches. This was something I had no idea they could do, and it makes them extremely difficult to trap; but the second trick I was already aware of – that of severing and dropping their own tail.

They usually do this when a bird grabs them by the tail, but although I never touched its tail, it still came off – they have a set of muscles at the base of the tail they can contract in emergencies to sever it, something they do in life or death situations.

This wasn’t a life or death situation, but the poor little thing wasn’t to know that and just as it seemed I was about to finally catch it, pop! off came the tail. This actually surprised me enough that I hesitated for the fraction of a second that allowed it to escape yet again.

So now I had a gecko tail writhing around on the floor (the muscles continue spasming for a while after the tail is dropped), and an amputee lizard hiding under the bed… this went on and on for ages, furniture was pulled and shunted around, I sweated and cursed, and I completely failed to catch it – the contest finally ended with it slipping out under the door and running off down the hallway.

After that I kept seeing it hanging out in the stairwell of the building (this was your typical older Taiwanese residential building, with a bunch of apartments off a dingy central stairwell), easily identifiable by its stump of a tail – hence the name I gave it, Stumpy.

I have no idea if Stumpy was male or female, but I was glad it was living out in the stairwell, hopefully filling its boots with mosquitoes. I felt bad about the stump, about having scared it badly enough to drop its tail, but they do eventually grow back. And I hope Stumpy is still there, thriving, with a fully formed tail.

For more Taiwan posts see here, and see my Taiwan guide here

Photo credit: Robin Corps, used under Creative Commons

An Ode to the Crows of Japan

Japan, Kyoto, Tohoku, Tokyo, Wildlife

One time while living in Kyoto… “I went for a midnight stroll around Mt Inari, the red gates picked out against the snow, and with the sounds of the city muffled to nothingness, the night deathly quiet and utterly still save for the flakes tumbling silently down, I was in my own little magical winter wonderland. There were no footprints other than those I made as I went, and though I knew where I was going it truly had a dream-like quality; I was half-expecting to turn along an unfamiliar footpath and find myself in Narnia, or perhaps a Murakami novel… and then, lo and behold, I saw a footpath I couldn’t recall having seen before, leading back into shadow. The only thing morning had in store for me was work, so I figured I wouldn’t mind vanishing off into some spirit world and so down that mysterious path I went. The main trail is well-lit at night, but not this little corner I was now treading softly into; the only sound was the snow crunching underfoot. My eyes adjusted to the small amount of ambient light, aided by the reflective snow, and then I saw it, a strange dark figure looming before me, a statue, but looking somehow almost demonic; for some reason I was reminded of the opening scene of The Exorcist. I swear, I could actually feel it looking at me, fancied I momentarily saw a flicker of light reflected in a pair of eyes regarding me coldly from that darkened visage…

I don’t believe in ghosts, in angels and demons, but I have to admit it, I was spooked; what was this creepy statue standing silently here in the snow, seemingly almost alive, watching me, somehow calling me forward? I edged towards it, aware of my heart beating a little too fast… and then, with a piercing shriek, the statue suddenly sprang to life, lunging straight at my head! I raised my arms in defence and let out a shriek of my own…

A crow! A fucking crow had been perched there on top of a Buddha statue, and had indeed been watching me approach; it took flight and flapped straight past my head, and I absolutely shat my pants and screamed like a little girl. It was just a crow! Haha… I let rip with a torrent of expletives I’m glad no-one was around to hear (though the statues may have blushed), and with my peaceful walk through the enchanted forest thus thoroughly shattered I made my way home.” (from my Fushimi Inari post)

That was yours truly getting the shit scared out of me at Kyoto’s mysterious Fushimi Inari shrine in the small hours of a snowy night a few years ago. Little bastard! Well, not so little actually…

They’re a common sight there, regarding you with beady eyes from their perches atop the shrine’s red torii gates (torii literally means ‘bird perch’) or wheeling around in the air currents above you; on one occasion I witnessed a murder of hundreds, if not thousands, circling the skies over the shrine, making such a cacophony as you’ve never heard as though they knew something we didn’t about the imminent end of days.

Called karasu in Japanese, they’re remarkable creatures really. Survivors. In fact not just merely surviving in the urban environment of Japan’s sprawling concrete jungles, but thriving; roaming bands marauding their ways through the city streets, calling to each other from rooftop to rooftop, here! an uncovered garbage bag! and they descend, their enormous beaks tearing through the thin skin of plastic to get at the goodies inside, the shiny bits of plastic that catch their eye so, the scraps of food they partially live off… and all the bag’s other contents dispersed all across the street, strips of packaging and shreds of tissue strewn across the narrow road like someone set off a trash bomb.

And thus they earn their bad reputation as early morning noise polluters and rubbish bandits, despised as pests by most of the human population they share their territory with. But even though I’d curse them when their caaaawing woke me at 5am (making me want to apply the alternate meaning to murder of crows), I can’t help but admire them. Their intelligence, their boldness, their zero fucks given attitude.

Just north of Ikebukuro Station there’s a grimy pedestrian overpass over Tokyo’s iconic circular Yamanote Line, the green paint flaking and peeling away, the rust bleeding into the concrete from decades of rain, a revolving selection of mould-ridden discarded furniture pieces lining the way, one of those surprisingly gritty corners of that great city where the multi-levelled urban environment completely surrounds you as though all the world must be so; the trains thundering beneath your feet, the elevated highway rumbling overhead, the horizon defined by skyscrapers, the rows of apartment blocks hemming it all in from the sides. I used to cross it when walking from my apartment to the shining neon pastures of Ikebukuro, and it was such a striking spot; yet I never paused there to muse or ponder, as it was a favourite haunt for the boldest crow in all Tokyo. Those brave or foolish enough to cross (rather than taking the long route around on the other side of the intersection) did so with a wary eye on the infrastructure above, searching for that ominous black form perched on a lofty fire escape or road sign. And when it was there, you could only hope it allowed you to pass – the greatest danger was when it watched you from on high but you didn’t see it there, as it seemed to know when it had the element of surprise and usually took full advantage.

Those still unawares of the guardian of this decaying bridge are the main victims, and so it was with me the first time. There I was, crossing the bridge to Ikebukuro, my trademark beanie protecting my shaved head against the winter chill, slowing down to ponder the outstanding urban detail around me, when a sudden rush of air fractionally presaged a raking of talons across the top of my head – my beanie protected my bonce from a lot more than just the cold that day! Thankfully it dropped my hat almost immediately, which thankfully fell on the right side of the railing where I could pick it back up rather than seeing it fall 20m onto the railway tracks.

That was the second time a crow scared the crap out of me in Japan, coming a few years after the shrine in Kyoto. As I reached the end of the bridge, I passed someone coming the other way.

“Watch out,” I told him in Japanese, “there’s a big bad crow up there.”

But he totally ignored me in the usual Tokyo fashion, perhaps with a hint of a sidelong glance at this stranger breaking his bubble – and so I chuckled as I looked back to see the crow let him go by, before divebombing him and clawing at his unprotected head. This was something I witnessed on several more occasions, though it never got me again – I was always careful after that to watch above and watch my 6, and whenever I saw it we kept our beady eyes on each other the whole way across. What a performance – but yet, again, I couldn’t help but admire it. Oh, you humans built all this? That doesn’t make you the boss. Or so it seemed to say.

Another place where the crows have particularly stuck out in my memory was spooky Osorezan, a volcano at the end of the Shimokita Peninsula up in the Tohoku region. Osorezan translates as Mt Fear or Mt Dread, and in Japanese tradition the Sanzu River (which drains the lake in the volcano’s crater) is the gateway to the spirit world; it’s a desolate and otherworldly spot, with volcanic gases venting from the ground and the poisons in the water giving the lake a luminous quality, jizo statues everywhere to mark the souls of departed children, a lone temple standing guard on the lakeshore, and everywhere these huge black crows calling to each other across the sands. It really is a cool spot, and the crows play their part.

So here’s to the crows of Japan, terrorising the cities, kicking up a racket and waking everyone up at 5am, ripping open garbage bags and spreading trash all over the streets, and divebombing passers-by on footbridges; what absolute characters they are. They may be right troublesome little bastards, but they’re actually pretty awesome in my opinion; really smart and full of character, and while certainly not cute they make up for it in attitude. And I definitely like it that one of them once scared the crap out of me in the snow at Fushimi Inari!

For more Osorezan pics see here, and click here for more Japan posts

Whale Shark Snorkelling in Donsol, Philippines

Philippines, Southeast Asia, Wildlife

Snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol, Philippines — One of the smaller specimens we encountered that day

“There, there!” he kept shouting, “go straight, go straight!”

I kicked on through the murky water, peering through my goggles into the plankton-deepened gloom before me but seeing nothing.

“Where, where?” I yelled to the spotter on the boat, surfacing and looking back to shout, “I can’t see it!”

“Now, now, swim!” he cried, pointing, and I turned and popped my head back under just in time to see the gloom coalescing into an absolutely enormous dark shape coming right at me…

“Fuuuuuuuck,” I remember hearing myself shout through my snorkel, scrambling to get out of this leviathan’s way before it bulldozed me.

I then marvelled, breathless, at its beautiful spotted flank and fins as it passed, eyes boggling at the insane size of the thing. This was a full-grown adult male, some 12 metres in length, and due to the visibility only being a few metres that day I couldn’t see the whole shark at the same time. First the enormous mouth and eyes came past, then that view of his flank and fins, and finally the tail fin (itself double my height) pushed past with enough force to actually shunt me to the side.

Absolutely breathtaking. Stunning. And thoroughly, utterly humbling. Superlatives aren’t enough.

(I just wish I’d managed to get better pictures – the 3 on this page are the only remotely decent ones from the whole film!)

Snorkelling with whale sharks was hands down the highlight, followed by the excellent diving, of my (not always entirely enjoyable) month travelling solo around the Philippines. The word awesome is as overused as any in the dictionary, but swimming alongside those gentle giants, being so completely dwarfed by another living creature, really is an awesome, awe-inspiring experience.

I did so in Donsol, which at the time was the only place in the Philippines you could reliably do it – and only from March to May, when the whale sharks’ natural migratory patterns bring them to Donsol’s plankton-rich waters to feed.

Since becoming famed for the chance to swim with whale sharks (or butanding as they’re known locally), sleepy little Donsol has reinvented itself as an eco-tourism hub. The activity isn’t only a way for visitors to check an item off the bucket list and for locals to make some money – it’s also a very well run conservation project, with the welfare of the sharks given utmost importance. Before going out on your boat tour, you’re given a briefing and watch a video explaining all the rules governing your interaction with the sharks e.g. they have a 1-boat 1-shark policy, meaning that if there are 6 boats out there, once a boat finds a shark the other 5 boats have to hang back and wait their turn before their own passengers get to jump in (this rule isn’t 100% followed to be honest, but the others are). We were the first group out on the water that day, having registered the previous evening and then getting there nice & early in the morning which meant we were placed with the most experienced crew and were the first boat out – it paid off, as we were first to the majority of sharks encountered that morning (it was a bumper morning too, with half a dozen sharks spotted). If you stay walking-distance from the centre it makes it easy to stroll over in the evening and get the registration done (see below for accommodation).

More importantly, though, the very existence of the snorkelling project helps protect the sharks from being fished. Sharks worldwide are under pressure from the finning trade, their fins prized as the key ingredient for shark fin soup – a popular delicacy at Chinese banquets, wedding receptions in particular. The practice involves removing a shark’s fins before throwing it back in the sea to die – the fins are by far the most valuable parts, and a fishing boat can carry a shitload more fins by discarding the rest of the carcasses at sea.

Of course it makes sense to the boat owners to do this, in terms of maximizing their profits; but what a cruel death, and what a deplorable waste. The sheer size of whale sharks and their fins make them a prime target, of course, and the rest of their huge bodies are dropped to the bottom. Brutal.

While there is increasing awareness of conservation in China and a growing movement to ban finning spearheaded by WildAid, China’s huge population and new-found wealth means demand for fins will continue for years to come; furthermore, it’s also a common menu item at Chinese restaurants in various other countries such as Thailand and Malaysia. The whale shark is now listed as endangered, with global numbers estimated to have halved in the last 75 years.

So sharks need all the help they can get, and if fishermen can be persuaded it makes more sense profit-wise to conserve them than it does to dismember them, it makes a real difference. By going snorkelling in Donsol, you’re helping to do that.

Donsol or Oslob?

As mentioned above, when I went to the Philippines the only place to snorkel with whale sharks was Donsol (unless you happened to get very lucky elsewhere); but in recent years another town started offering a rival whale shark experience. This town is Oslob, and its location on Cebu Island makes it easier to get to than Donsol (relative to most visitor itineraries); it also offers whale shark snorkelling year-round, rather than for a limited season. However, this is achieved by actively feeding the sharks to attract them to and keep them in the area. This both disturbs their natural migratory patterns, and causes them to see human boats as sources of food – which could lead to them approaching fishing boats. Furthermore, the sharks around Oslob have sustained boat propeller injuries due to the lack of consideration for their well being. In other words, whereas Donsol runs a proper conservation scheme, Oslob really is just locals cashing in on bucketlist backpackers without a care for the sharks themselves. While this is still clearly better than killing them for their fins, if you actually give a shit about the sharks I reckon you should support the good work being done at Donsol instead, even though it may mean going way out of your way. I wouldn’t want the people of Oslob to lose their living standards or start fishing the whale sharks, but hopefully if enough people vote with their feet Oslob will eventually adopt the better practices followed at Donsol.

If you really can’t get to Donsol, or you’re there in the wrong season, you’ll have to make the call on Oslob. Personally I wouldn’t go – in fact I intentionally timed my visit to the Philippines to be there in the right season for Donsol, and that’s what I implore you to do if you can (or alternatively, if you’re heading on to Australia aim to do it at Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth, Western Australia, where the season is longer and runs from March to August)

Where to Stay in Donsol

The whale shark snorkelling centre is a little out of town (to the north), and there’s a string of accommodation options along the stretch of coast there. These are more expensive than the places in the town itself, but are nicer and mean you’re just a short walk from the centre – and as noted above, the earlier you get there and register in the morning, the better the crew you get and the better your chances of more quality shark interactions (if you’re on a tighter budget, you can reduce expenses by staying in town and taking a tuk tuk to the centre – make sure to get there early though). We stayed at Amor Farm Beach Resort which was a 5-minute walk from the centre, run by a friendly family, and nothing special accommodation-wise but a nice enough place to hang out over food & beers in the evenings. For other options in Donsol see here

View of Mayon Volcano from Legazpi — View of Mayon Volcano from the bus station in Legazpi (the white van took us to Donsol)

How to Get to Donsol

Donsol’s a 90-minute minivan ride from Legazpi city, which is a 1-hour flight or a gruelling 14-hour bus ride from Manila (search & book transportation options here), or a 1-hour flight from Cebu City. I took an early bus from Manila and stayed overnight in Legazpi, then continued to Donsol in the morning with a British couple I met at the hotel, and we signed up for whale shark snorkelling the following morning.

(Oslob is on the island of Cebu, around 3 hours south of Cebu city)

A row of jeepneys at the bus station in Legazpi

Have you been snorkelling with whale sharks in Donsol (or Oslob)? How was it? Any questions? Give me a shout below and I’ll get back to you.

(This page contains affiliate links i.e. if you follow the links from this page and make a purchase, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from them. This commission comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. I’m recommending these products and services from personal experience, and thank you in advance should you choose to purchase them via the above links)

Dog Bites Man: on soi dogs, getting bitten, and rabies shots in Bangkok

Southeast Asia, Thailand, Travel tales, Wildlife

Bitten in Bangkok

Khao San Road, circa 3am… (and this is not the first story I’ve told on these pages that picks up at that time & place!) …my Canadian buddy’s waiting for me in the street while I pop in to a bar to grab us two more beers and make use of their restrooms.

(drinking in the street on Khao San, toilets are an issue; you have to use the (paid, shitty) public toilets, pay to use a hotel’s, or, best, pop into a cheap bar to take a leak and grab takeout beers… guys can also pee in alleyways of course, but that’s running a high risk of being cornered by a pack of ladyboys… happened to me once and I only narrowly escaped!)

Heading back out to rejoin him and resume whatever political debate we’d been in the middle of, I suddenly felt the most unexpected of sensations – a set of sharp teeth sinking themselves into my Achilles tendon… this fucking little bastard dog just ran up out of nowhere, unseen and completely unprovoked, and got stuck straight into the back of my leg!

I shook it off, and when it gathered itself to lunge again I aimed a kick at its face, which didn’t connect but caused it to back off. At this point, the owner of the bar intervened – very much on the dog’s side! The mangy little mutt didn’t look like anyone’s pet, but she was obviously fond of it and told me to leave it alone.

Me leave it alone? Haha… I was most definitely not the aggressor here!

Fact is, Thailand unfortunately has an issue with street dogs, or soi dogs (soi is the Thai word for alley); living rough on the streets and forming into packs as wild dogs do, they have tough lives. It’s awful to see animals living in lousy conditions like that, but that’s not the only issue. They can also be really sketchy, sometimes outright aggressive, and human fatalities do occasionally occur directly from dog attacks, and more frequently from rabies contracted from dog bites.

As much as I pity the soi dogs, they also shit me right up; though this was the first time I’d actually been bitten, this wasn’t the first run in I’d had…

Territorial Soi Dogs in Ayutthaya

On my first visit to Bangkok, my buddy Danny and I took a day trip up to Ayutthaya; as we got off the boat across the river from the station, a random dog snapped at Danny’s bare ankle, Danny just pulling his leg away in time. Totally unprovoked, and of course it makes you worry about rabies. A short time later as we walked to the ancient ruins, we rounded a corner to find a pack of seven or eight dogs straggled across the road; their ears pricked up and they all stood and took interest in us, and not in a friendly way judging from their body language. We turned back and found a different route.

Ayutthaya… cool place, but watch out for the soi dogs!

A Face Off with Two Soi Dogs on the Laos Border

A few years after that, when en route from Chiang Rai to Laos, I’d spent the night in the Thai border town of Chiang Khong (this was before the 4th Thai – Lao Friendship Bridge existed, and we hadn’t made it in time for the last boat over the Mekong); my beloved Leeds United FC were playing in the League One Playoff Final that day, and I went off in search of an internet cafe to follow the game (smartphones and wifi everywhere weren’t a thing yet). I totally failed to find an internet cafe though, and in fact the whole town was shuttered up for the night; but what I did find was a pair of stray dogs blocking my way back along the town’s only road.

Attempting to calmly pass them didn’t work; they jumped to attention, growling and snarling and adopting threatening postures. It seemed they’d attack if I got any closer, so I backed off and waited for them to hopefully lose interest or wander off.

But they stayed right there, so I tried to pass again by walking flush against the wall at the side of the street, giving them as wide a berth as possible; but they still wouldn’t let me pass.

I couldn’t see any other way around, but there was a pile of bricks at the side of the road. I picked up a brick in each hand, and decided I’d just call their bluff and walk past them; and if they actually attacked, I’d just have to fucking well bash their skulls in… or get ripped to shreds… even odds, perhaps; any more than two though and there’d have been no chance.

So, thus armed, I approached again; as they snarled and gathered themselves to lunge, I told them (as calmly as I could) to chill out and let me pass, and started walking through.

They snarled; they growled; and then they ran at me. This was it, they were actually attacking, I was in a fight to the death with two dogs… shit! I raised my right hand, brick at the ready, and shaped to smash it into the first dog as it leapt – and the dog slammed on the brakes, whimpered and yelped, and ran away with its tail between its legs, its companion following suit.

I guess they were as scared of me as I was of them; their threat display was menacing, but all it took was a threat display in return and they backed off. These dogs live hard lives, and have likely taken a kick or two before. And so, thankfully, I got back to my guesthouse unshredded (where I eventually learned (via SMS, I think) that Leeds United had lost the final).

Bangkok’s Soi Dog Problem

There are an estimated 8.5 million (Bangkok Post, via Wikipedia) to 10 million (Canadian Medical Association Journal) stray dogs in Thailand with 300,000 in Bangkok, 1 in 10 of which are estimated to have rabies. Dog attacks are a regular occurrence (I can’t find any full national statistics but according to the above CAMJ report, 1.3% of foreign visitors get bitten), occasionally severe enough to be fatal – and even if the wounds themselves aren’t severe, the victims sometimes get rabies and that is virtually always fatal.

By day, the soi dogs look positively wretched and pathetic, curled up in gutters and keeping a low profile; but come midnight when the road and foot traffic dies down and it’s dark, packs of soi dogs roam the streets and you don’t want to bump into them when they’re on the move with their tails up. Half a dozen growling dogs in a dark alley is seriously scary, even if they are skinny little things. Some people even carry weapons for just that reason.

It isn’t just the soi dogs that are scary in Thailand either; pet dogs very much double up as guard dogs, and walking through residential areas at night you’re constantly subjected to aggressive barking from the dogs in the houses you pass. It’s not so bad by day, but even then they’ll still sometimes give you a bit of verbals as you pass. The houses all have high walls and solid gates so it isn’t scary per se, but it’s extremely tedious and they don’t half scare the bejesus out of you sometimes when you’re not expecting it – what’s more, the barking of the house dogs attracts and excites any soi dogs in the area. Between the aggressive guard dogs and the roaming packs of soi dogs, I quickly learned to simply not walk around late at night.

In a perfect world, all of these poor animals would be rounded up, the rabid ones put down humanely, and the rest adopted and taken in by people who would show them a bit of love. Some lucky dogs do get adopted, but given that that’s not going to happen in anything like sufficient numbers what really needs to happen is a large-scale program to spay & neuter enough of the existing dogs to control the future population. The Soi Dog Foundation is a Phuket-based charity also active in Bangkok which runs adoption and spay & neutering programs; if you want to help, check out their website (and here’s the Wikipedia page for more background reading)

So anyway, back to Khao San Road; I’d just been bitten by this little shit that may or may not have been a pet, or perhaps semi-stray, and now the bar owner lady was giving me shit for not being happy about getting bitten!

Although it was a bit like adding insult to injury that she was having a go at me, it was actually a good thing from a rabies perspective. And that was the real issue – although the bite did hurt a bit it was only a small dog and I was wearing jeans and socks, so the wound was light. But a light wound is still enough for rabies transmission, and a rabies infection is a death sentence; if the animal is wild or stray, a full course of shots is required (usually 5 shots over a month) with the first within 24 hours of the bite.

But if the animal is known (e.g. someone’s pet), it helps as the animal can be observed – rabid animals are only contagious in the final days before death, so if the animal is still healthy 2 weeks after biting you, you’re in the clear. You still have to have a shot within 24 hours and a second a few days later, but the full course can be discontinued if the animal can be observed and confirmed healthy within the relevant timeframe.

So, while I didn’t appreciate the bar owner taking sides against me, at least it would help that the bar staff seemed to know this animal… or at least, it should have helped. But when I tried to ask about the dog’s health, where it lived or if it belonged to anyone, she got really defensive; when I persisted (politely) I was told to fuck off, right to my face, with a few guys appearing to back her up. Having seen some vicious beatings on Khao San in the past, I knew I had to just walk away and accept I’d need the full rabies course.

It did occur to me I could still report it to whatever body is responsible for dangerous animals and rabies in Bangkok (if indeed there is one), but it also occurred that the dog would likely then be destroyed, and I’d have made some enemies on Khao San Road – not a good idea when you live in Bangkok and drink on Khao San several times a month! And perhaps that’s why she got so defensive of the dog – she didn’t want it getting put down. Fair enough I suppose.

Hungover Sunday Hospital Visit for Rabies Treatment

So, anyway, there I am on Khao San, they’ve just told me to fuck off and pulled the shutter down to end the conversation, and my buddy has to leave soon anyway with an early morning flight to catch. So we finish those beers and call it a night, and I head home to deal with the bite. This means first thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting the wound, then getting to a hospital within 24 hours for the first shot. As I got home at 4am, I decided to get some sleep after cleaning it, and head to hospital when I woke up.

Not how I like to spend my Sunday, especially when hungover! To make matters worse, the public hospitals close on Sundays so I had to fork out for a swanky private clinic (the Sukumvit Hospital next to Ekkamai Skytrain station, near where I was living at the time – yes, Sukhumvit is usually romanised with an ‘h’ in it, but the hospital styles itself without the h for whatever reason). I have to say it was top notch – the doctors and nurses were excellent and all spoke great English – but factoring in the consultation fee, a rabies shot, a tetanus shot, and some antibiotics, made it by far the most expensive night out I ever had in Thailand!

Fortunately (and to my surprise) they said the rabies vaccination I’d had many years earlier was still good, so I only needed two shots rather than the full 5 and this would be the same regardless of whether the dog could be observed or not, so no need to try checking back on it.

A few days later I went for the second shot at the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University Hospital (near Victory Monument Skytrain Station), which was far cheaper but still gave exemplary service and care. The young doctor cracked a nice joke referencing Khao San’s reputation for crazy behaviour, asking if I was sure it was actually a dog that bit me?!

This actually happened in the same month that a drunk driver almost took me out when he totalled his sports car right in front of me… seemed like Bangkok was trying to tell me something! (and I took the hint – I moved back to Taiwan a short time later)

So anyway, a few injections and that was that. Not nearly as good a story as my Canadian friend who got savaged by a monkey in southern Thailand a few months before that and had to get all 5 shots – she was a good source of advice!

Should You Get the Rabies Vaccination Before Travelling?

So is it really worth getting the rabies vaccination in advance before you leave? Well, the shots are likely more expensive at home, but in the event of a bite you only need 2 shots, which will be far less disruptive to your trip than having to make 5 separate hospital visits! And on the one hand, only 1.3% percent of foreign visitors get bitten by dogs in Thailand; but then on the other hand, a whopping 1.3% percent of foreign visitors get bitten by dogs in Thailand! That works out as more than 400,000 tourists per year, which is quite a lot really (and that’s not even counting monkey bites).

One line of reasoning is not to get vaccinated in advance as, in the event you do get bitten, you can then claim the costs back on your travel insurance; this is probably fine so long as you’re never going to be more than 24 hours away from a clinic, you’re able to cover the cost of the full course until you can make your claim, and are prepared to accept the extra disruption to your trip of making five separate hospital visits. I always use World Nomads for my travel insurance, especially as I’m usually buying insurance on the go when I’m already overseas (which most travel insurance companies don’t allow – as I once found out the hard way when my camera got pinched in Bangkok); however, another thing to consider is that if you’re not vaccinated, in the case of severe bites they’ll also want to give you an immunoglobulin injection which a) may not be available outside major cities and b) sounds deeply unpleasant (it’s a big old injection, apparently), so take that into account too.

What to do if You Get Bitten

Firstly, clean the wound thoroughly with disinfectant, soap and water, or whichever of those you have available, and then seek medical attention – remember, the most crucial thing is to receive the first shot within 24 hours. If you’re somewhere remote like rural Laos, you need to get yourself to a large town with a decent hospital as pronto as possible.

As for the animal, if it’s possible to observe it for the next couple of weeks, and if there’s a relevant authority in the country you’re in, then it’s worth contacting them and possibly saving yourself having to do the full course of treatment; otherwise, you have to assume the worst and get the full set of shots.

For more detail, see here

Again, don’t forget to buy a good travel insurance policy! If you did leave home without one, World Nomads will still cover you.

And finally, if you want to help soi dogs in Thailand, here’s the link to the Soi Dog Foundation again.

Have you had any run-ins with soi dogs in Thailand? Been bitten? If you have any questions or stories, leave me a comment below!

For more Thailand posts, click here

Check out my Thailand overland travel guide

Dog photo credits 1&3:Thai Dogs 2:nist6dh (all via Flickr and used under Creative Commons Licence)

(This page contains affiliate links i.e. if you follow the links from this page to World Nomads and make a purchase, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from them; this commission comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. I’m linking to them because I know and trust them through personal experience; thank you in advance should you choose to purchase your insurance via the above links!)

Palm Oil and the Plight of the Orangutan: visiting the orangutan sanctuaries of Sumatra and Borneo

Indonesia, Malaysia, Southeast Asia, Wildlife

Orangutan means ‘man of the forest’ in the Malay and Indonesian languages. But where does the man of the forest go when the forest is gone? There are a number of places in Southeast Asia where you can see both the answer to this question and the reason it must be asked in the first place, while coming face to face with these magnificent creatures. Two of the easiest to visit are Bukit Lawang (in Gunung Leuser National Park, Sumatra, Indonesia) and Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre (Sabah (Borneo), Malaysia).

Palm oil and the orangutan

Orangutans are found on these two different islands (in two different countries), but face the same problems in both; their natural rainforest habitat is being destroyed to produce palm oil and by illegal logging. In their natural states, the islands of Sumatra and Borneo were covered in dense jungle, the world’s greatest deposits of rainforest after the Amazon and Congo basins, with the accompanying wealth of flora and fauna that includes (but is far from limited to) the orangutan. These days, however, most of it is gone, surviving mainly in the protected pockets of national parks like Gunung Leuser, or in the deepest depths of the islands’ mountainous interiors where logging roads have not yet reached. The rest was felled, the timber sold off, the forest cleared to make space for the oil palm plantations.

Travelling along the highways, it’s actually quite awe-inspiring (and not in a good way) to see the miles upon miles upon miles of oil palms standing in their neat and anything-but-natural lines; the scale of the endeavour is immense, all those thousands of square miles of mighty rainforest transformed into straight rows of evenly spaced palm trees. Perhaps it might seem that oil palms are at least a better replacement for rainforest than cattle farms or city blocks would be; they are trees, after all. However, it’s estimated that only ten to fifteen percent of rainforest wildlife successfully adapts and survives the transition from rainforest to palm plantation. Furthermore, for the wider issue of climate change, oil palm plantations can’t remotely fill the role of the rainforest as a carbon sink, and nor can secondary growth forest; once virgin rainforest is gone, it’s gone. And for the larger fauna like the Sumatran tiger, Sumatran rhinoceros, and the orangutan, the loss of the forest is nothing short of disaster on an existential scale.

Sadly, for the Sumatran tiger & rhinoceros it is probably already too late; the orangutan clings on (the Bornean orangutan is listed as endangered, the Sumatran orangutan as critically endangered), and might very well even be able to adapt successfully to life among the palms were it not for the farmers’ guns. But to the oil palm companies, these great apes are little more than great pests, beasts which eat their product and reduce their yield; the simplest solution? Shoot them.

Cutting down on palm oil

So what is palm oil and why do we need it? Well, simply put we don’t need it; but it is a most useful and flexible product – palm oil is found in the majority of cosmetics and confectionary produced the world over, and is present in around half of all items on the supermarket shelf. A Mars a day may help you work, rest, and play (or more likely develop type II diabetes), but prior to 2014 it also killed the rainforest and pushed the orangutan closer to the brink. Somewhat encouragingly, in response to public concern and consumer pressure, Mars introduced a palm oil policy in 2014 with the stated aim of using sustainable palm oil in all its products. Palmolive shampoo? Honestly, fuck that shit. Is your silky hair more important than the survival of the orangutan? Maybe you do think it is, and if so I’m unlikely to change that; but the majority of people, if really forced to choose, I’m confident would not wish to wipe out these creatures for the sake of cheap beauty products and chocolate bars. Palmolive have been slower to respond than Mars, but have at least made a commitment to switch to sustainable palm oil by 2020. And this is the thing really – alternative ingredients can be used, but the alternatives are more expensive; sustainable palm oil can be used, but that is more expensive to produce and NGOs question whether even the so-called sustainable palm oil is genuinely sustainable – certified sustainable palm oil is hopefully better than uncertified palm oil, but it’s surely still better to find a product which is palm oil free, full stop (if you can). So what it all really boils down to is the profit margins of multinational corporations, and our wallets as consumers. To cut palm oil deforestation, either we have to pay more, or the companies have to make less.

Since visiting Sepilok in 2004 (and then Bukit Lawang in 2008), I’ve been making a conscious effort to reduce the amount of palm oil I purchase. And you know what, it’s bloody difficult; the damn stuff is everywhere. Here’s a WWF list of products that contain it, and I’d be willing to bet good money that every single one of you reading this has used or eaten something on that list in the last couple of days.

So how do you avoid it if it’s in everything? Well, here’s another list, this one of palm oil free and sustainable palm oil products. They do tend to be more expensive; but if you give a shit, that’s the choice you have to make and it’s the main tool you have available to try to influence the big companies – the Mars policy linked to above shows that they do hear this. Vote with your wallet. Of course, you can go further and try to pressure them through emails and letters, and I would strongly encourage you to do so – see here for more on that.

Spending a significant amount of time overseas as I do though, there’s also the matter of being able to even read the labels, and in fact whether the labels even fully list the itemised ingredients in the first place. But after visiting Sepilok and learning about all this, I knew I had to try from that time on to help the orangutan in any way I could; hence I haven’t eaten one single Mars bar since 2004 (though have started eating the odd Snickers again since 2014), and hence this blog post. If I can persuade even one person who reads this to make an effort to seek out palm oil free products, or at least products using sustainable palm oil, the time writing it was time well spent.

Visiting the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary

The Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and the Gunung Leuser park offer areas of protected virgin rainforest where orangutans can safely live without crossing paths with the palm oil companies; they ask the companies not to shoot any orangutans straying onto their property, but to instead call the park staff who then go and sedate the orangutan and move it to the park. In Sepilok’s case, it’s actually a rehabilitation centre for orphaned orangutans that you visit; a gradual process is required to get them healthy and back out to the forest, reducing their dependence on humans and encouraging them to return to natural behaviour as far as is possible. During the rehabilitation process they do become used to humans and come to rely on them for food, especially those who are very young when they arrive; so it’s far from an ideal solution, and Sepilok readily acknowledges this fact. But it’s still a better solution than the farmers’ guns.

The sanctuary has a feeding platform in the forest, to which the orangutans can come back for meals after their release from the rehab centre; though they initially do rely on this, the idea is that they will gradually move further and further into the forest reserve, and come back less and less for meal times at the centre. Apparently this usually works quite well, though certain individuals never manage to break their reliance on the centre – again, it’s usually those who are very young when they first arrive.

For visitors to Sepilok, it’s these feeding times that enable you to see the orangutans (there are around 80 orangutans living in the sanctuary, with around half a dozen coming to the feeding platform at the time of our visit); and just as there is a feeding platform where the staff lay out the food for the orangutans to dine, there is a neighbouring viewing platform for us homo sapiens to jostle for the best spots to snap the best photos. And to be honest, it is a bit of a zoo, but one where we are the exhibit – you do wonder what the orangutans make of us all. I got fed up with all the elbows after a while and went to chill out at the back of the platform, when this little one suddenly dropped out of the tree right next to me:

I had a good 30 seconds to quietly marvel before everyone else cottoned on and rushed over to get a close-up, at which point she scratched her arse and climbed off into the trees again. Seeing the orangutans this way may not seem like an ‘authentic’ experience, but then the whole thing is by its very nature unnatural; orangutans don’t normally live in such dense populations, and it’s much better for them to fear humans than to see them as a food source, but the orangutans are here because they’ve lost most of their natural habitat, and this place is helping them as best it can. It is a complete tourist gong show on that viewing platform, but by going and taking part in it you’re helping the sanctuary to continue to exist and to continue the good work they do to save these animals. The sanctuary also does a great job with educational materials and presentations, offers guided walks along the forest trails, and if you’re visiting Malaysian Borneo you can easily include it along with an ascent of Mt Kinabalu (the day we descended from the summit we were able to jump on a bus to Sepilok from the Kinabalu park gate and visited the orangutan sanctuary the following day). If you also plan to go scuba diving at Sipadan, then Sepilok is a natural place to stop between Kinabalu and Semporna (the town for Sipadan).

Gunung Leuser national park, Sumatra — Gunung Leuser National Park

Jungle hiking in Bukit Lawang

The setup at Bukit Lawang in Sumatra is a little different; Gunung Leuser National Park covers a much larger area than the Sepilok reserve, some 8,000 square kilometres (it’s one of the largest tracts of surviving virgin rainforest in Southeast Asia today, though still just a tiny portion of what it once was part of), and the rehabilitation centre isn’t open to visitors. Instead, you can arrange guided jungle hikes into the park where you can hopefully encounter some orangutans – these are semi-wild animals which have been released from the rehabilitation centre but continue to live in the forest close by. There are around 5,000 orangutans living in the park, from a total estimated population of just 14,000 Sumatran orangutans in the wild.

For tourists, the towns of Bukit Lawang and Tangkahan are by far the most accessible parts of the park (and pretty much the only accessible parts if you’re not going full Indiana Jones and mounting an expedition); Tangkahan is also famous for jungle hiking, but if you want to see orangutans your odds are better in Bukit Lawang.

Unlike at Sepilok, the apes aren’t coming to you; you’re going to them, and it’s up to your guide to figure out where they are and help you to find them (and there’s no surefire guarantee that you will do so). This, combined with the fact you’re only in a crowd of however many are in your hiking group, and also the effort you put in to hiking and sweating through the jungle, makes it a more rewarding way to actually see and encounter orangutans. We spotted four altogether (two solo apes, plus a mother & child), and two of them actually came down from the trees to greet us; and, sadly, to beg for food. That’s the downside to the less organised nature of these encounters compared to Sepilok; there are regulations on not feeding the orangutans in Bukit Lawang, as the idea is for them to find their own food and get back to as natural a lifestyle as circumstances allow, but apparently many guides break these feeding regulations in order to help guarantee sightings, thus damaging the good work being done by the centre. Our guide was actually a bit of a creep, in that he was was constantly trying to use rubbish pickup lines on the single girl in our group, but he did have excellent forest knowledge and a very principled approach to the orangutans – he wouldn’t feed them, expressed anger and frustration with those guides and tourists who do, and made very clear to us that we were not to offer them any food either. He was also adept at pointing out all the other wildlife around us, especially tropical birds (he could mimic many of their calls) and two species of monkeys (one inquisitive and running all around us, the other shy and easy to miss).

Bukit Lawang was almost entirely destroyed in 2003 by a flash flood (itself the result of illegal logging), but has since rebuilt itself as an attractive riverside town. You can also do river tubing, though it’s a harmless bit of fun rather than the notorious tubing of Vang Vieng infamy.

Access to Bukit Lawang is by road from Medan. In my experience, this can be a rather interesting journey! (The road is apparently being repaired now (2017), so hopefully will be a smoother drive in the near future)

As an overall travel experience, I’d say a jungle hike in Bukit Lawang is better than a visit to Sepilok, and any orangutan encounters there are more likely to be up close and personal; but as an educational experience and a chance to directly contribute to a worthy cause, Sepilok is excellent. I would certainly recommend including Sepilok as part of any Borneo trip or Bukit Lawang as part of any Sumatra itinerary, and visiting both of them if you are visiting both Sumatra and Borneo. And more than anything, I want to leave you with these three (four) words: fuck (unsustainable) palm oil. You don’t need palm oil more than the orangutan needs the forest. Look at this company scorecard and this product list (for the UK) for the best product choices, failing that look out for products with RSPO certification (not a clear-cut sign of sustainability, but surely better than nothing), and make your purchasing decisions accordingly.

Other orangutan sanctuaries

In addition to Sepilok and Bukit Lawang, there are a number of other orangutan sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres you can visit including the Semenggoh Centre just outside the city of Kuching in Sarawak (the other state of Malaysian Borneo), and several in Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo) – this page has a good map showing all the rehabilitation centres and sanctuaries in Borneo and Sumatra.

Have you been to Sepilok or Bukit Lawang? Any comments or questions about palm oil? Leave a comment below!