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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!

Thailand to Malaysia Overland: getting stranded at the eastern border with a lonely policeman (or, how NOT to travel to the Perhentian Islands)

Malaysia, Overland travel, Southeast Asia, Thailand, Travel tales

How NOT to travel from Thailand to Malaysia overland!

(for the sensible routes from Thailand to Malaysia, scroll to the lower half of the post)

Hat Yai bus station. The day was getting old, the sun dropping and the shadows drawing long, and I wasn’t sure if I had time to make it to Kota Bharu in Malaysia before the border closed. Earlier that day I’d made a last-minute decision to change my route and head to Malaysia’s Perhentian Islands (instead of Thailand‘s Ko Pha Ngan) to catch up with some friends (or rather, my ex-girlfriend and her friends); I’d almost caught them in Hat Yai, but their bus had just pulled out before mine arrived. I knew they were planning to take the ferry to the Perhentians in the morning, and assumed (incorrectly) they were on a bus to Kota Bharu – so I decided to chase them and take the next bus to Kota Bharu, if indeed there was one.

Thailand to Malaysia. The goal: the beautiful Perhentian Islands — The goal – Malaysia’s Perhentian Islands

In actual fact, they’d gone to Penang (on the opposite coast), from where they were to take an early morning bus across Malaysia to reach the ferry, and my chances of reaching Kota Bharu that night were already absolutely zero. But that didn’t stop the bus company guy from lying through his teeth and taking my money anyway…

I told him I wanted to go to Kota Bharu (on the northeast coast of Malaysia and the nearest city to the Perhentian Islands) in the hope of catching up with them there, asked if it was still possible that day, and was sold a ticket for a minivan which he absolutely promised would take me all the way through to Malaysia.

On the beach, Perhentian Islands — Beach in the Perhentian Islands

Now, the reason I was so keen to get this assurance wasn’t just that I was worried I wouldn’t catch my friends that night, but because I knew this bus would be passing through Thailand’s far southern Patani region – a majority-ethnic Malay area which has seen a decades-long separatist struggle by armed groups aiming to split the area from Thailand and join Malaysia; thousands have died over the years in terrorist attacks and gun battles between separatists and government troops & police. I was well aware of all this and wasn’t just blindly wandering into a conflict zone, but I also knew that at that particular time the violence was dormant and the highway was considered safe (I double-checked this with the policeman on duty at the bus station); so I decided it was okay to go, so long as the bus just passed through and I made it to Malaysia that same night. I didn’t want to be spending the night in that troubled region though, as you never know when trouble could flare back up again; it was a slight risk as it was, and that’s why I’d doubly and triply sought the bus company’s assurances, and he had absolutely promised the minivan would take me to Kota Bharu.

Well, that man was an utter shameless lying bastard, and after a very nerve-wracking 4-hour journey during which we were flagged down at military checkpoints every 20 minutes while jumpy soldiers quite literally pointed their rifles directly at those of us inside while everyone’s documents were checked, and with all the other passengers having disembarked one by one and clearly not heading to Malaysia, we finally pulled up in some dark desolate middle of nowhere on the
Thai side of the border, and the driver told me to get out. I was hesitant (as in I’m thinking “where the actual fuck am I and what the hell is going on and am I about to get kidnapped?!”), which only made him agitated; he grabbed my bag out of the back and chucked it on the ground, pointed towards some dark and forbidding buildings, and yelled at me. I tried to ask him to drop me at a hotel, or at least take me into the town centre, but I couldn’t say it in Thai, he didn’t speak English, and he was in no mood to attempt any other form of communication. He looked about ready to stab me and picked my bag up again and hurled it further away, so out I got and off he drove.

At this point it would be fair to say I was shitting myself; I was unsure exactly where I was or where to go, it was dark and isolated and felt very sketchy after hours of checkpoints and guns, and I was aware of a pack of dogs close at hand and I’m no fan of the roving packs of stray dogs in Thailand. I shouldered my pack and jogged towards the cluster of very closed-looking buildings over yonder, and to my immense relief found one of them to be a border police post with one chap on duty.

He spoke very little English and I speak very little Thai, but I managed to communicate that I wanted to go to a hotel and cross the border in the morning; he in turned conveyed that I would be staying with him for the night, an offer I most gratefully accepted.

He pulled out a little camping bed for me, and I would’ve been perfectly happy with that; but then this chubby middle-aged policeman with the kindly face absolutely made my day by serving me up a plate of rice and eggs. That’s all it was, a simple dish of rice and pickled eggs, but I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime and wasn’t expecting to eat until Malaysia, and it tasted so damn good.

Small talk wasn’t really possible, so as I wolfed down my rice and eggs he sat working away at his computer, presumably dealing with the daily reports or whatever. And then I had an idea – perhaps he’d let me email my ex to update her where I was and to say I’d be on the morning ferry.

I enjoyed those eggs immensely, and he even insisted on washing the dishes; I tried, but he wasn’t having it. So I figured that would be a good time to use the PC, and asked if I could send an email; he said that was fine and opened up a browser window for me. Sitting down at the computer as he washed my plate, I was most amused to see he hadn’t even bothered to hide the fact he’d been porn surfing! He had about a dozen windows open, all playing hardcore western and Japanese porn. I didn’t put the headphones on (but could hear some tinny squawking emanating from them) and didn’t comment. Fair enough I guess – what else is a bored and lonely policeman going to do at the shut-for-the-night Thailand Malaysia border?!

Email checked and sent (and now realising they’d gone to Penang), I turned in while my man watched a bit more porn, and then he retired to the back room. Sometimes when you’re travelling you find yourself in some unexpected situations, and kipping on a camping bed in the front office of a border post wasn’t something I’d ever expected to do! A few hours later he shook me awake again, gave me a coffee, and indicated I should be on my way; thanking him profusely, I walked the short distance to the border, crossed the bridge from Thailand to Malaysia, and found a bus to Kota Bharu and another from there to the ferry pier where I rendezvoused with my ex and her friends, and we then spent a few days in the beautiful Perhentians. While I guess he was basically just doing his job, he did it with the warmth of genuine hospitality and I’ll never forget that policeman’s kindness and his delicious rice and eggs.

How to travel from Thailand to Malaysia overland (Hat Yai to the Perhentians)

If you’re heading from southern Thailand to Malaysia, the usual (and easiest) route is a minivan from Hat Yai to Penang, going through the Padang Besar border crossing (by far the busiest crossing on the Thailand Malaysia border). An interesting alternative route exists from Thailand to Penang by sea, which involves island hopping from Thailand’s Ko Lipe island to Malaysia’s Langkawi island, and from there to Penang. These islands are connected by regular ferries, and Ko Lipe is also connected to other Thai islands like Ko Lanta and Ko Phi Phi – in fact, it’s possible to island hop all the way from Phuket to Penang without touching the coasts of Thailand or Malaysia. I haven’t done this island-hopping route all the way, but needless to say it’s a very appealing idea if you have the time!

Whichever way you decide to go from Thailand to Penang, after visiting Penang you can then cross Malaysia to reach the Perhentian Islands – the Cameron Highlands and Taman Negara park can both also visited on the way to the Perhentians, or on the way from the Perhentians back to Penang or down to Kuala Lumpur.

As Penang is most likely a part of your intended itinerary anyway, it really does make sense to head there first when going from Thailand to Malaysia overland, thus avoiding the conflict region. However, if you do want to skip Penang, because you’ve been there before or don’t fancy the dog-leg route or whatever, and want to head directly from Hat Yai to the Perhentians, then I would advise two main things:

First of all, check and double-check that the security situation is clear. Don’t do this with the bus companies, but ask the police directly in Hat Yai; they should have the latest information and be the most reliable source of it. Also double-check whether your own country has any travel warnings in place for the area, and whether or not your travel insurance will cover you while you travel through the area (most insurance companies have a clause that they won’t cover you in areas under your government’s travel advisory warnings, unless you specifically pay more to be covered there). Take all of this into account.

Secondly, don’t get yourself stranded at the Thailand Malaysia border overnight! There is no cross-border transportation, meaning you have to take a van to the border, walk across, and then a bus or van on the other side; it’s not a 24-hour border, and as I found out you can’t trust the Hat Yai bus station on any of that. The Thai border town of Sungai Kolok is 4 hours from Hat Yai, and the Malaysian border town of Rantau Panjang is about an hour from the city of Kota Bharu. It’s hard to pin down the actual closing hour of the border, but I left Hat Yai before sunset and didn’t make it in time; I’d say you’d want to be leaving Hat Yai at lunch time (i.e. if you’ve stayed overnight, check out and go), or be leaving Kota Bharu by mid-afternoon if going the other way. If you have a choice between crashing overnight in Hat Yai or gambling on an afternoon bus to Sungai Kolok, I’d say crash overnight in Hat Yai and continue on the next day.

If you do manage to end up stranded at the border, look for the border post and hopefully you’ll get taken in by a friendly cop with a plate of rice & eggs!

For more Thailand posts, click here

Also check out my overland travel guides for Thailand and Malaysia