Sabah - A Question About my Trip (1 Viewer)

[Jeff Hopkins]

All:

I recently completed a trip in Sabah, Malaysia, with a reputable international birding tour company. I have some questions about how the tour prgressed and the intensity of the tour, and I'd like some feedback as to whether my expectations for the tour were incorrect or whether this tour was "atypical."

Let me state for the record that I have been on other birding tours, in Costa Rica, Belize, Brazil, Romania, and Kenya, as well as the US. My experience on those tours was that you spend the morning birding, get a break at lunch, and then get back in the field in the late afternoon. A typical schedule for a non-travel day would be:

5:30 Breakfast
6:00 In the field
11:30 or 12:00 Break for lunch/siesta
2:30 or 3:00 Back in the field
Dusk Call it a day (unless there's a night drive).

In some cases, some of the clients wanted to continue to bird during the siesta, but in my experience the guides insisted that if they wanted to do so, they did it on their own. The official tour was taking a break.

This tour was not like that. When I sopke to our guide about it I was told that Asia is "different." A typical day would be spent birding from 6:00 until at least noon. If the lodge's guide insisted that the afternoon session would not start until 3:00, the company's guide would push the morning session to 12:30 and maybe even 1:00 to get more field time. When there wasn't a local guide to modulate the company's guide, we would get an hour for lunch, and then back into the field until dusk (or later). And these were usually on steep, muddy, narrow, difficult trails.

On top of that, the guide set a very fast pace. He was significantly younger than most of the tour patrons, and most of us couldn't keep up with him, even when we were on the roads instead of the trails. There were a couple occasions when someone fell on the trail, and the guide was so far past us, that he never even knew somebody fell. He seemed to focus the tour intensity for the most intense of the tour patrons, a much younger man who was basically a professional birder and had been all over the old world including some places most of us could never hope to get to.

I spoke with several of the other patrons and many of us agreed that this was easily the most grueling birding trip we'd ever been on. One patron said, "I've never been on a trip where I woke up in the morning and didn't look forward to going birding." Interstingly, the company's catalog listed the difficulty of this trip as "Moderate, with one difficult hike." I attempted that difficult hike - others didn't - but gave up after about a km. I couldn't keep up with the leader's pace.

I'll also add that I was injured early in the trip, in part due to that I was not prepared for the difficulty of the trails and in part due to some horrible judgement on the part of the leader. Therefore, I could not have kept up with the intensity of the tour even if I wanted to. While I'm not in the best of shape, I can usually keep up with birding pace. However, the leader's interpretation was that I was just too out of shape to keep up. Between the two issues, he pretty much didn't care whether I kept up or not.

What I'd like to know from those who've birded Borneo is whether you'd consider Borneo a moderate difficulty tour or a very difficult tour. Is the intensity of what I describe typical for birding in SE Asia, or was this more of an aberration? And lastly, if this tour is indeed moderate, which tours would you consider difficult, so I can avoid them?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[Jos Stratford]

I have never been on a guided trip, or would ever like to, but surely a guide should cater to the group, not the fastest or most able members of the group.

If this is indeed the case, "One patron said, "I've never been on a trip where I woke up in the morning and didn't look forward to going birding.", then the tour company failed rather badly, in my humble opinion.

 

[Marmot]

We do have a long time member Horukuru [Jason] who is a guide for this area. I did send him a PM to point this out, thankfully he was not the guide you had even he feels sorry for the eperience you had.

 

[Mark Bruce]

Jeff, I've not done Sabah but have had enough similar experiences in SE Asia that I feel this type of thing happens quite a bit in that part of the world. I've been guided in Africa and East Asia (including Taiwan), too and found those trips to be far more to my liking. As far as possible I now avoid guided trips in SE Asia. I go under my own steam and at the most will use a local guide on the first day in a particular area and then do my own thing after that or just to locate a special bird at a specific location. I've heard of people having good guided trips in SE Asia but I've really yet to experience one. I've found it pretty heavy going on so-called moderate trips to Thailand and the Philippines.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

I just wanted to add that I was exceptionally pleased with the local guides we had on the trip. They were Wang Kong at Borneo Rainforest Lodge and Haswan at Sukau Rainforest Lodge. Both of them were exceptionally knowledgable about not only the birds but about general natural history. I'd recommend either of them in a heartbeat.

 

[halftwo]

Jeff,

Like Jos, I don't like to be guided during my birding, and I'll be doing Borneo guiding myself.
But, I should think that the idea of guiding is to make sure as many people see as many of the birds as possible.
If you're marched along at a pace too fast then how can you bird? This guide seems misguided to me - unless the pace was explained in detail before you booked - and it was necessary to reach certain areas where endemics could be seen.

 

[Jeff Hopkins]

...unless the pace was explained in detail before you booked - and it was necessary to reach certain areas where endemics could be seen.

The guide was certainly focused on seeing the endemics, which in my experience, is a good approach. Work for the endemics and more difficult species and the easier species and non-endemics will come along in the bargain.

The point that was stressed was that in order to get the endemics, you needed to spend as much time in the field as humanly possible. While I don't deny that's critical, the definition of "humanly possible" is what's in doubt, in my mind. I think all but one of the clients would likely have sacrificed seeing an endemic for a more calmly paced tour.