Eleven years ago, to mark a milestone birthday, I booked a solo overseas trip to check off two items on my bucket list: a Kenyan safari guided by the Maasai Mara and a mountain gorilla trek in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda.  While I had previously been to the African continent three times, I’d never visited those two countries. That trip exponentially superseded my expectations, and I consider myself fortunate to have experienced it. Having been alive during the horrendous and murderous dictatorial governance of Uganda’s Idi Amin in the 1970s, I never imagined I’d visit that country. I was pleasantly surprised by its beauty and appreciated the Ugandan citizens’ warm hospitality. Seeing a family of gorillas in the mountainous rainforest remains one of the highlights of my life. 

After that trip, my goal was to travel every October to a new destination (preferably out of the country), to experience different cultures. After all, I reasoned, how much time did I have left to travel internationally and how well would my body hold up to such strenuous activities?  Friends and acquaintances younger than I were succumbing to serious illnesses and even death. I didn’t want to lose any time in achieving my goal, but money issues and then Covid got in the way for a few years afterwards. Instead of overseas travel, I booked local trips, which were awesome as well. Then, last year, I resumed international travel with a journey to Vietnam.

Borneo Bound

This month, I am traveling to Singapore and Borneo. Most people, I have learned, have no idea where Borneo is. Also known as Kalimantan in Indonesian, Borneo is the third-largest island in the world, located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and east of Sumatra. It is divided among three countries—Malaysia and Brunei in the north, and Indonesia to the south. The Indonesian side is the larger of the three, taking up 73 percent of the island. I’ll be visiting the Malaysian side and like I did in Vietnam, I’ll have different, personalized guides in all eight locations.

I recall first hearing about Borneo some 24 years ago when my husband and I vacationed in Bali. One of the young, male employees at the lodge where we stayed hailed from a small village in Kalimantan (Indonesian side) and he proudly plied us with remarkable stories from his native land. We were fascinated by the culture and traditions (a mix of indigenous “Dayak” and Islamic) and especially enchanted by the wildlife found on the island. Everyone knows about orangutans, right? Well, those great apes are found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra. In fact, the name orangutan is derived from the Malay words orang (meaning person) and hutan (meaning forest).   

Birthday Cruising

Although my original intention was to travel to the Indonesian side of Borneo, I opted for the Malaysian side at the suggestion of my travel consultant. Main reason is that the Malaysian side tends to be more developed and prepared for foreign tourists. Plus, she told me her coworker had recently visited Indonesian Kalimantan and was bitten by a leech while traversing the jungle. No thank you to that.

This will be the first time in decades that I’ll be out of the country on my actual birthday (October 24), and a plethora of exciting activities is planned for that day alone. After breakfast, I am scheduled to visit both the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre as well as the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre. The sun bear center cares for and rehabilitates rescued, ex-captive sun bears so that they can eventually be returned to the wild.

Afterwards, I’ll take a river boat cruise through the Mangrove Forest to the Lower Kinabatangan River Sanctuary where I’ll have lunch at the Abai Jungle Restaurant. In the late afternoon, after checking into the lodge of the same name, I’ll cruise again till sunset in search of wildlife on the riverbank, returning to the lodge for dinner. After dinner, a guide will take me on a night stroll along the nature boardwalk in the jungle, where birds, snakes, insects, and other wildlife can be seen.

I’m exhausted just typing all that, yet invigorated and eager to experience it all. And that’s just one day out of the 10 I’ll be in Borneo. This amount of activity is, obviously, beyond anything I’d normally do on my birthday—I’d typically opt for a relaxing day off, getting a massage and then a birthday dinner with family. While I’m not looking forward to the 17-hour flight to Singapore, I can’t wait to experience the tropical magnificence of that not-so-well-known island called Borneo. I’m conserving my energy to accomplish it all.