8-11 September
We spent these last few days relaxing, licking our wounds, and doing a little culture photography. We all have mixed feelings about coming home. It is difficult to leave the rainforest and the work we enjoy to return to the daily grind of the U.S. But it is good to get home and see the people (and dogs) we've missed and we are excited about getting into our new lab at LSU. All in all, the summer was immensely successful from a scientific view point. We discovered many new species of frogs and lizards in some of the most remote and dangerous places in Southeast Asia. We figure we will have a minimum of 11 scientific papers resulting from our summer's work which will be published in [real] peer-reviewed scientific journals.
For those of you who are interested in seeing any of the images of this summer's field research ranging from Cambodian villages and its children to injuries and new species, there will be several annotated pictures posted outside my lab before the end of the month. Please stop by and have a look. See you all back in the world.
8 September
We visited a local reptile dealer who collects all over peninsular Malaysia. We were able to see and photograph many rare species.
7 September
Gave the talk, ate lunch, did all stuff, and we headed north back to Kuala Lumpur (6 hour drive). We arrived tired and hungry as usual. But, Bukit Bintang is the place to be tired and hungry. We had a great meal, sat at a local pub afterwards and just watched the city walk by all night.
6 September
The rain had caused the river to swell and there were some great rapids. At another camp upriver there were some large intertubes. You do the math. Nobody felt like preping right away so I figured a little mental r&r would be what was needed. We hiked to the next camp got enough intertubes, and hiked upriver another kilometer or so more. We jumped into the river on our tubes to float downstream to our camp. These things always go differently in your mind before you do them. The rapids didn't look that big and we could see no rocks. However, the rapids were huge and were submerged on a number of occassions. The rocks pounded our seats all the way dowm. I ended up with a bruised chin, elbow and seat. It is the peripheral things that will get us not the snake bite.
After preping specimens that afternoon we had to pack up camp, drive out of the park, and go south to the city of Johor Baharu (JB). I was scheduled to give a lecture at the state parks headquarters the next morning at 10:00 am. You can just imagine how excited about that I was. We rolled into JB about 7:00 pm found a place to stay, at some great Indian food at a roti house, and then went to bed. I slept poorly! I loved sleeping in my tent in the forest and waking up to the sounds of White-handed Gibbons calling to each other from the hillsides. Here I got cabbies yelling at one another and prostitutes banging on the door all night.
5 September
The infection in my leg statrted to take a turn for the better and I could walk without pain. Tim was sick the night before and threw up. Other than that we were maintaining an even keel of being about 80% healthy overall. We all had low-grade fevers and stomach cramps left over from Cambodia but we just put this aside and continue with our work. It's no big deal, just something that's part of field work. That afternoon we went out and did some stream photography and easy collecting. There are a number of waterfalls in the area, both under the canopy of the forest as well as giant ones along the river. It was very relaxing and we got some great shots.
That afternoon it clouded up and began to drizzle at about 6:00 pm. It continued to increase slowly and by 8:00 pm it turned to a light rain. We waited until 8:30 to see if it would stop but it only got heavier so we went out collecting any way. The frogs were going crazy. They too were waiting for the rains as much as us apparently. We collected many species around the breeding pools along the edge of the trail, some of which were not previously known from the reserve. It was a great night. We returned to camp and it rained heavily all night until the morning.
4 September
Jasin came over early in the morning and explained to me that Orang Asli hunters wear special wrist, ankle and arm bands that are woven onto their bodies which are removable only by cutting them off. He was impressed by our blowpipe prowess and asked if we wanted bands. We all said yes. Tim, Tom, and JR had wrist bands woven on and I had one put on my ankle and upper arm. They are made from the stem of a fern that grows in the forest and if you want one that is multicolored, a weave of ratan palm is put into it as well. A special guy from the village came over and put them on us.
It was another hot, dry day and disappointing night of collecting. We had just heard about the death of Steve Irwin which hit pretty close to home. I have been telling my students for years that his number would come up but it was surprising how it happened. We all sat around and talked about it for a long while. We figured if we were to die in the field it would not be from a snake bite or something like that which we have control over. It would be something peripheral like a branch falling on us or getting stung by bees and having an allergic reaction. I was very quiet and removed from everything the rest of the night.
3 September
I woke up this morning and found it difficult to walk. I was hoping the antibiotics would have kicked in by now. We began to prep our previous nights catch while at the same time training the UKM students on the various procedures. It was fun.
It was a very hot, dry day today and so the collecting that night was not good. What made it worse is that the moon was out. Species that live in rainforests need the rain to make things go for them. Species that come out at night do so to avoid being seen during the day. So a bright moonlite night following a dry day in a rainforest is a bad combination.
2 September
Up early again to take care of the specimens. My leg infection has worsened and there are red streaks running from my thigh to my ankle. It is almost too painful to walk. Tim dug out the large piece of glass from my heel with a knife and I started taking some antibiotics.
Later that afternoon, a group of scientists from the National University of Malaysia (UKM) joined us. These were friends of ours that we have been working with for years. We took them out on a new jungle trail that night and got lots of great things, including the most primitive species of all living geckos (Cat Gecko)which not only constitutes a new species record for the reserve but an entirely new record for this family of lizards.
After we returned I imediately went to my tent to lay down because my leg was really sore. Fortunately, Tim, Tom , and JR stayed up to chit-chat with our guests.
1 September
Up early for another lengthy round of photographing and preping. Things started to go downhill on us a little bit today. The stress from the previous month's field work shows up when we get run down. Tom was developing some intestinal issues and I was beginning to experience a significant lymph tract infection extending from my groin to my ankle. I figured it had something to do with a piece of glass I stepped on a month ago in Cambodia and never dug out of my foot and/or all the septic bites and abrassions on my right leg.
I met a fantastic individual today named Jasin. He is an Orang Asli (the native people of Malaya) native of the Jacun Tribe. He stood about 5 foot 3" and had a very muscular stature with amazingly wide feet. He could speak Malaysian so I was able to talk with him. Being a hunter himself who uses a blowpipe, he was interested in the animals we were collecting, especially the lizards we were blowpiping from the trees. I was astonished by his knowledge of the species we were collecting. I would show him a frog and he would immediately give me the Orang Asli name, tell where they are found, and what its mating call sounded like. He also had the sharpest eyes of anyone I had ever seen. I would tell him I was looking for this species of lizard and he would point to a tree and say "right there is one". Living in the forest and hunting for generations it is not surprising these people know so much. I guess it is my Anglocentrism that leaves me so astonished.
Today was a hot dry day and the small stream we walked at night did not produce much. When we retured to camp, Jasin had a bag of frogs for us that he collected. What a champ!
31 August
Up early and spent the next 5 hours photographing and preping our specimens. We took a break and went swimming in the river after snacking on an absurd amount of Malaysian junk food we bought in Bekok. We went a little overboard after having to eat so much spoiled meat in Cambodia. That night we walked a trail that led north through the jungle along the edge of the Selai River. Having rained, we found lots of things. We got a species of Cat-eyed Snake which was not previously known to occur in the region, a large Rat Snake sleeping 20 feet up on a thin branch which we shook down and caught; a very rare species bright green and orange Angle-headed Lizard on which I am currently doing research, and various amphibians. Anytime you catch four snakes in one night it's a good night.
30 August
We left Kuala Lumpur in the morning and stopped in the small town of Bekok to sign in for the park, eat lunch and buy more supplies. It had been raining very hard and the drive into Selai (the place where we would be camping) was very muddy. Nonetheless, compared to Cambodia it was nice. We camped in an open area at the edge of the jungle along the Selai River; a wide, fast flowing, shallow river whose depth and speed changed rapidly and dramaticaly with the rains. After getting set up, it was dark and we went out collecting. Right away we got three Wallace's Flying Frogs! This is a species that comes down out of the canopy only after hard rains. It is bright green with greatly enlarged hands and feet which support extensive black webbing. It leaps from trees, opens its hands and feet and uses the webbing as four separate parachutes to control the length and direction of it's descent as it glides through the forest. This was our first time to see/collect/photograph this species in the wild. We got a couple of rear-fanged mildy venous snakes and some tree geckos as well. About midnight we retreated to our tents and listened to the rain.
29 August 2006
We went to the orchid park today to shoot photos and packed for tomorrow's trip to Endau-Rompin. This is an exceedingly remote area of jungle in southern Malaysia wedged in between many river systems. It is the latest place of the big-foot sightings and the government officials are hoping we'll find one. Yeah right! Last year we were nearly trampled by a raging female elephant. I stay away from large mammals. I'd rather take on a King Cobra any day. We discovered two new species of frogs here last year and expect to find more this trip. We'll be camping in the forest for a week or so which will get pretty nasty after a while. Lowland rain forests are notorious for heat, humidity, and leeches. We are hoping to collect over 200 specimens.
We are a bit worried about Tom. He is not looking or feeling 100% and he has a rough time ahead of him. No movie in the mall tonight for Tom.
28 August 2006
Back in the KL today. We went to the mall, ate waffles covered in ice cream and honey (only because we know they are good for us), dropped off laundry (I pity those folks), went for chips and salsa that night and saw Monster House at the theater. Horrible movie.
25-28 August 2006
We rented a car today and drove to a hill station called Fraser's Hill northeast of Kuala Lumpur (KL). Hill stations were built by the British near the turn of the century along the Banjaran Titi Wangsa (the main mountainous spine of the Malay Peninsula) as a place to escape the heat of the lowlands. Fraser's Hill is in the cloud forest. It is cool, quiet and lacks the money depleting attractions of KL. We stayed here for a while and rested up. We still have a very difficult leg of our trip ahead of us in the mountainous areas of southern Malaysia known as Endau-Rompin.
We got a room for four and enjoyed laying around eating junk food, talking trash, listening to good and bad music, and driving the roads at night looking for snakes. We walked a few trails along some streams and collected some really cool frogs. We took lots of pictures, ate at the local eateries and kiosks in town, and chatted with the locals. Being able to speak Bahasa Melayu opens up all kinds of doors. There are few westerners who speak the language so often when I start talking to people they just stare at me in disbelief and say nothing (the look of panic I call it). When they snap to, it is quite pleasant and often people will come up to me just to hear me talk. When we left, many people asked when we would be back and to be sure to visit them.
24 August 2006
We left Tioman today by boat after tearful goodbyes from the locals. We boarded a bus in the coastal town of Mersing and after 8 hours arrived back in Kuala Lumpur.
23 August 2006
We left Aur and boated all the way back to Tioman. The ride wasn't too bad because we were going with the wind so waves weren't breaking over the bow of the boat on us. I was feeling better but no where near 100%. I slept most of that day on Tioman and tried to regain some strength.
22 August 2006
Jamie and I left at 7:00 am (not a lot of sleep) to return to Tioman Island. He and Jesse had to fly back to the states in a couple of days because their semester at Louisiana State starts in mid-August. The others stayed on Pemanggil and I went back to check on Jesse's health and see him off. Jesse was fine but had a very rough previous day. I then got back in the boat with Is (the boat driver) and went back to Pemanggil on another brutal ride. We picked up everyone else on Pemanggil and continued on to Aur Island. The sea was very rough and the ride very long. You cannot imagine how these boat rides suck the energy out of you and this was my 3rd one of the morning. We arrived on Aur, arranged a place to stay, and ate some food. I was feeling really bad and the hot weather made it all the worse. We got on the boat and went across the channel to Dayang Island to look for skinks (a type of lizard). I remember sweeping through the palm debris with a snake stick. I felt like a zombie who was watching himself go through all the motions in slow motion. After an hour or so, we got back in the boat and returned to Aur. I knew my temperature was soaring but I did not want to check it. I was trying to convince myself I was okay and that after a rest I would be fine and able to climb the island tonight. Last year we found a trail on the back side of the island that ascended a very steep ridge through some really great forest and we had returned to Aur this year specifically to walk this trail at night.
I laid down and the next thing I remember was Tim telling me it was time to go. I stood up and then everything went white. I lost consciousness and passed out. I recognized Tim's voice as he was picking me up off the ground and I could hear waves hitting the beach so I knew I was on an island. Other than that, I knew nothing else. The rest of the guys came over and apparently I was asking some really lame questions like "Where are we?" "Who is here?" and "...are the Japanses invading Malaysia again?"; go figure. After about 10 minutes I completely regained my memory (I think) and felt pretty good. I said, "OK let's go" and everybody said no way, I was to stay back tonight. There are many aspects to being a good expedition leader. One is setting an example by working harder than anyone else and another is being sensitive to each person's particular needs and how it influences the group as a whole and the mission of the trip. The most important criterion, however, is having the ability to trust the people under you whom you have trained to be able to make appropriate decisions when you can't. So I stayed back. I sat on the beach watching the sun set and began to eat my trail mix when I cracked one of my molars in half. The loose 1/2 was really sore but I couldn't pull it out with my fingers so I used a large pair of forceps from my prep kit. I was afraid it would leave a big hole on one side but the gum sucked up around the remaining half of the tooth and it didn't hurt. It did, however, leave a jagged edge that kept cutting my tongue so I had Tim file the tooth off with the file on my Leatherman pocket knife. Now I am afraid he might become a dentist and not a herpetologist.
They all returned early because the trail was so overgrown they could not access it. So instead they walked the hillside behind the village and caught a few things. Basically Aur was a bust. But it is what it is. If it were easy everybody would be doing it.
21 August 2006
Jesse was still too sick to travel so I left him on Tioman in the good care of our surrogate family. The rest of us headed on. The boat ride was brutal. We used a simple formula in making such sojourns. We choose the most distant island, find the smallest boat, load as many people and their gear as possible into the boat, and head out when the seas are the roughest. This way you'll be sure to have the life beat out of you by the time you arrive. It took us 2 hours to reach Pemanggil Island (usually a 1/2 hour ride). We arrived wet and sore. That afternoon I had visible bruises on the backs of my legs and butt. However, we have a boat pilot who is the best around. I have used him for years and will trust nobody else.
We went out that afternoon and collected a species of gecko I had described a few years back which is known only from this island. I needed photos of this species for my next book and so I was quite pleased to collect some. Our next goal was to find a snake on the island. None have ever been reported but from talking to the locals we knew they were there. But which species? We took a boat ride around to the back side of the island to look for good forest, but like the front of the island, this area had been whacked (deforested) as well. The only significant event was JR getting stung in the head by six ground hornets and losing his $100 sun glasses while flailing around during his escape. One stung his ear which swelled up really really big and we gave him no end of ridicule for it.
That afternoon after prepping the morning's catch I felt really run-down and laid down for a couple of hours. When I got up to go out night collecting I felt worse. We went out and found our snake! JR caught a large bronze-back snake sleeping in a tree and also found the eggs of two flying geckos. Both of these were new records for the island which he will report. We returned to the beach to sleep.
20 August 2006
We made it to Tioman Island in a few hours, got settled in at our usual haunt, and went out to socialize with the locals. We are quite well-liked on this island because of our conservation efforts. We have had Tioman featured on international television with our episodes on National Geographic and Animal Planet as well as in many newspaper and magazine articles that featured our research. I made arrangements for a boat today. We plan to head out tomorrow to do some field work on Pemanggil and Aur islands. We have been to these islands before but need to tie up some loose ends. Jesse, Tim, and JR spent the day in bed. Tom, Jamie and I headed into the forest to climb the trail. 1/3 of the way up, Tom turned back to go rest. Jamie and I continued. We saw some amazing species and nearly 60 individual lizards, many of which we collected and photographed. We returned at 4:00 pm, rested, ate, and headed back up the trail at 7:00 pm. Jesse and Tim stayed in bed but Tom and JR joined us. The night wasn't so great and we saw little. When we returned at 12:30 am the next morning. I went to bed and realized I had been awake for 42 hrs straight and the last 10 of those I was hiking. This pushed me over the top as I began to crash.
19 August 2006
We got on a bus in KL at 11:30 pm for a 6 hour journey to Mersing on the other side (east coast) of the Malay Peninsula. Our driver was on crack or something and drove so fast that I was actually clinging to the curtain to remain in the seat. We arrived at the boat jetty at 5:00 am and slept on the dock until 7:30 am when our boat for Tioman Island left. Not a good night. Jesse's health continued to spiral downwards and Tim and JR were now beginning to crash as well. We just needed to get to the island and everything would be fine.
17-18 August 2006
Bad travel day. We flew to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia to prep for our next bit of work in the Tioman Islands and Endau Rompin (southern Malaysia). I had planned to have a couple of days in KL of R&R because this is the time that everyone should be succumbing to the microbes of Cambodia. Jesse went down first and never really recovered; vomiting, fever, chills. He took his malaria meds and stayed in bed the rest of the trip. When he returned to the US on the 23rd, he went to the hospital and got some IVs. Everybody else was drained and some laid low, staying close to the toilet of the hotel room. At this point I was still OK. My crash would come quite suddenly a few days later.
16 August 2006
We spent the day being tourists. We bought gifts, DVDs, went to a few local clubs and met some people, and rode around the city on motorcycles. At the open market, our Cambodian hosts insisted we try local foods being sold in the central market. So I ate a deep fried tarantula (not too bad), a giant cockroach (very bad, one orange soda to wash it down), and silk worms (hideous).
15 August 2006
We left early and stopped at a crocodile farm to get tissues for Jamie. Tim, Jesse, and I wrestled a large aggressive croc out of a pond (at the utter disbelief of several onlookers) and held it so JR could noose it. Then we pulled it up onto shore, sat on it, and Jamie took some tissues off its tail. We headed back for Phnom Phen after that. We made one stop to eat snakes and frogs that were collected from the rice paddies which the locals had cooked up and were saling along side the road. We also caught a few more lizards. I had the van stop for an hour so I could photograph people working in the rice paddies. It was beautiful under the polarized light of the overcast sky. Rice is far more than just a food to Cambodians. It symbolizes health, wealth, and is a signature of their culture and status. In some areas, the community revolves around the life cycle of the paddy fields. Much like Americans and their televisions. We went on to arrive in Phnom Penh that night.
14 August 2006
We left the village at 7 am and walked most of the way back before being picked up by the rotavators 4 hours later. We ferried our gear across the river and on the way back into town stopped at CMAC (Cambodian Mine Action Centre). I wanted to see if they had any extra land mine warning signs I could hang outside my lab. They gave us several. I figured this was obviously better than removing them from the sides of the road. After lunch in Pramouy we boarded a jeep and headed out to Pursat. On the way we came across an area where CMAC was in the process of clearing mines. It just happened to be ideal habitat for a particular species of lizard Jesse was working on. We convinced the locals to help us dig up lizards . They took us into the "already cleared" areas to dig and we caught several. I will never forget the image of this beautiful young Cambodian woman running across the mine field with a lizard in her hand shouting out Jesse's name. He can clearly check that item off his "fantasy wish list". It was a bit weird to be walking around in that area knowing it had just been cleared of mines and that a cow had blown up the day before yesterday down the the road in a "cleared" field.
We got our fill of lizards, climbed back into the jeep and headed north in a raging electrical storm that turned the dirt road into a river. I was sure our driver was going to slide off into a rice paddy on several occasions. But we made it to the city of Pramouy. Here we slept in a bed and ate at a restaurant.
13 August 2006
We spent an extra day in the village resting before our walk/ride back to Pramouy. It was weird to be sleeping in the jungle where so many people had come to a violent and tragic death. If unrestful spirits do exist, this would be the place to find them. I watched the locals slice open the scrotum of a pig today and remove the testicles to eat as well as to fatten up the pig. It was done with no anesthetic and was horribly brutal. Pigs can really scream!! It was difficult for me not to step in to stop it. Afterwards, the pig just stood there bleeding while they filled the scrotal sac with ashes to stop infection.
12 August 2006
We got an early start back to the village today having prepped all our specimens the night before. We will defer photographing after we get back. The hike back like the hike in was rough but it went fast. We had lighter packs being that most of the food was gone and we could transfer some of our heavier items to the porters. Tom was not yet 100% so his pack was given to a porter and he was made responsible for carrying the specimens. We stopped at our previous camp to pick up a container of specimens that we had hidden inside a tree two days earlier so we didn't have to carry them up to the second camp. During this time Tom found a second specimen of the new species of ground skink.
Just before returning to the village we had one last river to cross. The only way was to tight rope on a tree that was about a foot submerged in the rapidly flowing water. It was quite difficult and we were pretty tired from the hike. I told JR to get off the log and walk along the up-river side of it. Wrong. JR sunk pretty deep when he stepped off the log and was less than pleased with my advice.
It was nice to get back to the village. Everybody comes out to see what we caught and coax us into taking their pictures. They also proudly display all the animals they collected for us while we were gone and waited patiently (sometimes for hours) for their payments.
We were all pretty beat up from the trip and didn't even go out that night collecting around the village. That evening it was really nice to listen to the local chatter of Khemer (the Cambodian language), hear the children laughing and playing, and watching the old guys tell stories. All of this in the hut under the illumination of smoky candle light. I caught myself smiling on several occasions being so thankful for how lucky I was to be able to experience all of this. We all slept great that night.
11 August 2006
We got an early start back to the village today having prepped all our specimens the night before. We will defer photographing after we get back. The hike back like the hike in was rough but it went fast. We had lighter packs being that most of the food was gone and we could transfer some of our heavier items to the porters. Tom was not yet 100% so his pack was given to a porter and he was made responsible for carrying the specimens. We stopped at our previous camp to pick up a container of specimens that we had hidden inside a tree two days earlier so we didn't have to carry them up to the second camp. During this time Tom found a second specimen of the new species of ground skink.
Just before returning to the village we had one last river to cross. The only way was to tight rope on a tree that was about a foot submerged in the rapidly flowing water. It was quite difficult and we were pretty tired from the hike. I told JR to get off the log and walk along the up-river side of it. Wrong. JR sunk pretty deep when he stepped off the log and was less than pleased with my advice.
It was nice to get back to the village. Everybody comes out to see what we caught and coax us into taking their pictures. They also proudly display all the animals they collected for us while we were gone and waited patiently (sometimes for hours) for their payments.
We were all pretty beat up from the trip and didn't even go out that night collecting around the village. That evening it was really nice to listen to the local chatter of Khemer (the Cambodian language), hear the children laughing and playing, and watching the old guys tell stories. All of this in the hut under the illumination of smoky candle light. I caught myself smiling on several occasions being so thankful for how lucky I was to be able to experience all of this. We all slept great that night.
10 August 2006
We photographed and prepped last night's specimens before rolling up camp and heading out. Just as we finished it began to rain. We waited a while but I got impatient and suggested we just hike in the rain. The trail quickly worsened and became very impacted with vegetation and tree-falls (were a tree falls across a trail). At one point I tripped and could not gain my balance because my pack was too heavy. I hit the deep mud hard and splashed it up into my eyes. I was elbow and knee deep in mud, could not see, my back felt as if it were going to crush me and all I could do was laugh out of frustration. I remembered thinking how cool this was and how much better I liked it than teaching General Biology. The leeches were in force again and we would have at least three to five on each leg at any one point in time. But it was a good hike. The guide in front of me was hacking away at the vegetation and flipped a pitviper onto the trail right in front of me. Jeremy saw an 11 foot reticulate python on the top of a fallen tree which Jesse grabbed by the tail as it was trying to escape beneath the tree. We all then got a hold of this thing and with much effort pulled it out, posed for pictures, and let it go. It was incredibly tame. Probably very tired from the 10 minute struggle.
We finally made it to camp and the guides cleared us a nice area and set up tarps under which we pitched our tents, leaving an open space for prepping. We immediately went down to the stream. It was beautiful, clear, cold deep fresh drinkable water. We sat in the cold water to relax and alleviate the swelling from the cuts and sucks of the journey. It was sobering to think that this beautiful camp was witness to some unimaginable atrocities. Here the food improved. The guides collected small fish from the stream which they deep-fried whole and boiled some bamboo shoots. All mixed together with soy sauce and hot sauce wasn't too bad. Beats rotten meat!
We walked the stream that night to collect. It was surreal to be so out of touch with the world at night in this exotic place. We found a lot of really cool species I had only read about before as a kid; giant lizards, poisonous snakes, and frogs that lived only in water falls. Swimming in the small falls and deep pools that night was also amazing. We returned back to camp very tired. We slept great.
9 August 2006
A morning check and things were much improved. I elected to not go to the clinic and just stay on the antibiotics to prevent sepsis of my urinary tract. I got everybody together and told them we would head back into the jungle today for another three nights. Our guides knew of a jungle camp near the base of Samkos mountain which was a former Khemer Rouge hide out and torture site. He said it was along a nice wide, clear stream. We would make one night's camp in the forest along the way and reach the other camp on the next day. We all agreed. We headed out a few hours later. The trail was horrible. It went through 7 foot high saw grass that cut our fingers and ankles continuously. Then it would turn to deep mud. And of course there were the many streams and river to cross. We made it on to an elephant trail just one day after the elephants had come through. This was nice because it opened things up. However, elephants leave some pretty deep water-filled pot holes which I kept falling into. By late afternoon we made it to the first camp in the lowland forest. Again very leechy but level. We found some good ponds to collect in that night and even walked down one of the rivers. This was great! We got some rare frogs, huge bright green lizards called Chinese Water Dragons, and a number of non-poisonous snakes. I slept good that night as I watched the leeches, who were homing in on my body heat, crawl all over the outside of my tent. I took great pleasure in flicking the little things off and watching them fly off into the forest.
8 August 2006
After another difficult night's sleep I awoke with only one thing on my mind. So after a spot check I could see that things were better. This was quite a relief! I bathed in a well and decided to delay my walk to Pramouy for 24 hrs and see if things improved. I got some of the kids in the village to collect lizards and snakes for us and one boy took me on a short walk to find more. It was the first sunny day I saw in Cambodia since my arrival. When we returned to the village, the kids had a lot of stuff for us. Many species that are difficult to find. We paid them 2000 riels for each specimen ($.50). It was a nice day. We ate some of our rotten meat for dinner. Thank God for soy sauce. It covers up the after taste of the carrion smell.
7 August 2006
I woke up early to a driving rain storm and layed in my tent until it passed. I got everybody together to go into the forest to photograph last nights catch. On the way in I caught another mountain horned lizard sleeping in a tree. These lizards are about two feet long with a huge creast of spines running down their back and big spines above their eyes. During the photo session I made a quick check on myself and was shocked to see that things were much worse. I could not concentrate on my photography and after I showed Jesse he made the decision to cancel the expedition and get me back to a doctor. I could not have canceled an expedition I had spent a year putting together. I figured I would just work through all this injury. But by this time, another three leeches had attached themselves. I am glad Jesse was there. The plan was to get me back to the village, spend one night, and then I would make my way back to a clinic in Pramouy and take it from there. So the guys prepped last nights specimens (preserved them for collection) and we packed up camp during a thunderstorm. It was bad and everything was soaked. But no one complains. You do what you have to do. Jamie found a new species of a very specialized rock gecko on his tent which turned out to be a new country record for this group of geckos in Cambodia as well. So not all was lost.
The walk back to the village was painful but we did stop along a roadside pond in the jungle and waded into waist deep water to catch more specimens of the new species of water frog we had collected the night before. This was great because we now had a nice series. We got back to the village in about four hours. My shorts were soaked in blood and I was already quite the "talk of the town". Apparently this had never happened to anyone before and all wanted a peek.
6 August 2006
We awoke to a driving rain but knew we needed to head out to the mountain today to get to our first camp on the lower slope. So we packed up and prepared to hike wet. The trail had turned to a very deep mud with water running down the top of it. Our spirits were up however, because we were very excited about what we might find in this unexplored area. Crossing rivers and streams was quite unnerving at times. We all had expensive camera gear and equipment in our heavy packs and did not want to go under water with it on our backs. About 7 hrs later we made it to our fist camp located on the side of a hill next to a small stream. It was an awful place with lots of vines and an infinite number of leeches. I had the porters clear us a campsite and in the process they uncovered a slug-eating snake. A great find! The rain broke long enough for us to unpack our tents and set up camp while everything was dry. We caught a smoke- fire started to keep the mosquitoes a bay. WARNING: READER DISCRESSION ADVISED. That afternoon I felt something was wrong on my body so I checked myself out. A leech (I later surmised) had lodged itself inside the end of my urethra and cause considerable discoloration and swelling along with a trickle of blood. This was very scary because I did not know the cause. I showed it to Jesse (my son) and he too was perplexed. I convinced myself that everything would be ok in the morning and immediately started a course of antibiotics to prevent a urinary track infection.
That evening we went out collecting and found some amazing species. A bright green pitviper, a cat-eyed snake, a mountain horned lizard (necessary for Tom's research), a new species of water frog and a new species of tree frog. The tree frog was unbelievable. It was an opaque bright green above with transparent skin on its underside. We could see that its bones were turquoise and its blood was green! I cannot wait to examine these further in the lab. Two new species unknown to science in one night! Afterwards I spent a very restless night in my tent trying not to worry about my problem. I had some really crazy dreams.
5 August 2006
The rains had been so bad that the bridge to our base camp, the village Che Tal Chrum, had washed away. So we ferried all our gear (26 people worth) across a very swift flowing river in small wooden boats constructed by the locals. From here we hired 2 rotavators (sort of a cross between a tractor and an ox cart) to take us as far as it could. The roads were in miserable shape and they could take us only about 14 km. So we walked the last 16 km or so through the mud. We waded across several streams and tight-roped on fallen trees crossing rivers. One tree was about 20 feet up. Walking across a wet log with muddy boots and 50 lbs of weight on your back is challenging. We arrived at the village a few hours later and arranged to stay the night in the headman's hut. This village is very rural, lacking electricity, running water, and toilet facilities. It was filled with naked little kids running all around and 7 white people was quite the oddity. So the entire village seemed to hang out where we were and watch our every move. The young girls (13-17 years old) were enamored by the guys, Tim, Tom, JR, Jamie, and Jesse. It was quite the scene. One woman told me she wanted to have a white baby. My gut feeling is that LSU administration frowns on that sort of thing. The headman was a former Khemer Rouge officer who walked around on a homemade wooden leg with a cut up piece of car tire for a foot. He told me he stepped on a land mine near Battambang along the Thai border shortly after the revolution.
After settling in we decide to do a little collecting around the village and waded into a stream on the west end of the town. The water was about waist deep and we caught some great frogs and a mock viper (a snake) resting in the overhanging branches. On our way back to the village we were caught in a heavy thunder storm and ducked into a small hut to wait it out. Inside was an old woman who was quite surprised to see all these white guys come rushing into her hut unexpectedly. But with poise and dignity she sat us all down on the dirt floor and fed us lychee and mangosteen (tropical fruits). We communicated the best we could and it was quite fun, not at all awkward. Next to her was a woman in a hammock with an iv drip. She was suffering from malaria. Not a good sign.
That night we slept on the floor of the headman's elevated hut. Naturally I chose the spot right above where the pigs sleep. All they did was grunt and stink the entire night. The smell wafted up through the thatch and I could not sleep at all. The next morning everybody seemed to know of my night and it was quite the joke around the village. "Any fool should know not to sleep above pigs."
4 August 2006
We left Phnom Penh in a 15 passenger van at 7:30 am. I saw some beautiful paddy fields along the way with children swimming in them and riding on the backs of water buffalo. Central Cambodia is breath-taking. Our first stop was the city of Pursat where we met another of our Cambodia counter parts and picked up the rest of our food. Unfortunately the meat was bought three days before our arrival and had already started to go bad before we even left for the mountain and it stunk up the van. From Pursat we drove south on a dirt road to Pramouy, through some of the most heavily mined areas of the country. So off course we had to have a blow-out 1/2 way there. The first thing the students wanted to do was to walk down the road and investigate where a river was crossing under a wooden bridge. I obviously put a quick stop to that. We arrived in Pramouy that afternoon.
This is a Khemer Rouge town that has land mine warning signs all around it. Many of the people working in the village had committed some of the worst atrocities of the revolution but have never been arrested. I saw an older man with one leg standing along the road. I asked him how he lost his leg and he said he stepped on a mine. I asked where and he pointed to 30 feet away across the road where we had just done some collecting. However, we knew the areas in town had been cleared of mines so we were safe. He lost his leg in the mid 80s. We spent our first night in Pramouy.
3 August 2006
We had a day in Phnom Penh before heading out so we rented motorcycles and rode out to the Cheong Ek, some of the mass burials of the killing fields. We were literally walking on bones protruding from the ground of people that were murdered on site. The whole thing was very sobering. It is amazing how an entire country can turn on itself and engage in such brutal genocide. I offered some riel (Cambodian money) to an on-site pagoda where Buddhist monks still pray for the victims. We did collect two Bronze-back Snakes from the area and it will be weird to catalogue them into the LSU collection with the collection data reading "killing fields".
2 August 2006
We met our Cambodian counterparts today who prepped us for our trip tomorrow into the Cardamom Mountains. These mountains are a biological black hole and we will be some of the first scientists to ever explore this region. We are certain there will be many exciting discoveries including new, undescribed species never before seen by scientists. But it comes with some risk. We will be along the Thai border where the Khemer Rouge still carry AK-47s, dangue fever is rampid, and malaria is still a problem. We were told not even to step off the side of the road to urinate (they actually used a different word) because the areas have not been cleared of land mines. However, we have good guides and military escort and I am sure everything will be fine. So why do we do it? Because it is important that we catalogue the biodiversity of this planet so it can be effectively managed. Sadly, too many people will realize that after all the forests are gone and we have irrevocably changed the course of this planet, that you can't eat money or buy a new biosphere.
This will be my last entry until 16 August. I am certain there will be much to share when we get down out of the mountains.
1 August 2006
It was slow going up river but we reached the border crossing into Cambodia after winding through an endless maze of water-ways. I passed many huts and villages filled with waving children and smiling adults. However, the situation changed drastically after clearing customs on the river and passing into Cambodia. Here the people were much poorer and life was one more of subsistence from the river. Also, river traffic essentially stopped whereas it was quite busy on the Vietnamese side. The boat ride was dragging on so I climbed onto the top of the boat and shot some photos. This went well until a large storm hit and forced me to finish my ride inside. On the outskirts of Phenom Penh, I got off the boat and found a bus to take me into the city where I met Tim, Jesse, J.R., and Tom. It was good to see they arrived safely. We went out that night and ate some "street meat" (food cooked in kiosks along the roadsides) and swapped stories.
31 July 2006
I got a ride in a van from Saigon to Chau Doc, a small river community on the banks of the Mekong River at the border of Cambodia. This community thrives on what is harvested from the Mekong so the open markets are filled with all kinds of fish and freshwater turtles. I did see a disturbing sight where a women was selling about 30 puppies which had been butchered. Being a dog-owner it's hard for me to shake those images and it bothers me when I remember them yet the dead people in the road I saw on route to Chau Doc (a bad car accident) doesn't affect me in the least. I stayed in a hotel for $12/night and got on a fishing boat the next morning for my trip of the Mekong to Phenom Penh.
30 July 2006
From Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)I got in a minivan designed for 8 people which had at least 18 on board to head southeast to survey areas of the Mekong Delta. This area was once a vast flood plain that drained all of central Cambodia and composes the southern 1/4 of Vietnam. I was hoping to find some native areas that had not been converted into rice paddies. On the way there, however, one of the passengers had a seizure and passed out, loosing all control of his bowels and other faculties (oh yeah, smelled great). We were able to get him to a hospital. Here I was astonished at the conditions. There were no lights on in the building, dirty bandages littered the hall ways, and lying outside on the hospital grounds were bloody clothes and discarded I.V. bottles. I think I would have rather taken my chances in the over-crowded van. I did not get a chance to survey the Mekong and hitched a motorcycle ride back into Saigon. Here I sat down to a nice meal of fried something-or-other with an ice milk coffee. I head up the Mekong River to Phenom Penh in two days. I am hoping to travel on a small fishing boat but we'll see.
25 July 2006
Today we arrived on the Con Dao Islands by plane. This is a group of 16 islands 180 km off the coast of the Mekong Delta. I wanted to check out the island to see if it would be good for bringing a field study class here. This island has all the qualities that the Tioman islands of Malysia have and look like they would be a really great place to teach. There are no anglo tourists so I am a bit of an oddity. Everybody wants to practice saying hello over and over and people stop along side the road just to look at you. Seeing some white guy chasing lizards apparently is not an every-day event on Con Dao. After a few nights and many species of amphibians and reptiles collected in the jungle, we returned to Saigon. In a few days, I head up the Mekong River by boat to Phnom Penh, Cambodia to meet up with the students working in my lab. We will hire Khemer Rouge loyalists to guide us through the land mines of the killing fields on our way to survey the Cardamom Mountains.
24 July 2006
I arrived in Saigon today. This place is like a giant tourist gift shop. I get at least 7 solicitations every 100 yards. It really lacks the feel of Asia which was so great in Hanoi.
23 July 2006
We reached a mountain called Ta Cu. Here the forestry dept. was very kind and gave us our own private cable car ride to the top to spend the night and hunt for reptiles among the buddhist pagodas built into the hills. The area was at the edge of the cloud forest and wandering through the misty jungle at night among the giant statues of Buddha was surreal. We also discovered two new species of lizards so the forestry dept. invited us back to head a large expedition survey next year. Very cool! That morning I had fried butterfly lizard for breakfast before I left. The bones crunched up nicely but were scratchy as they went down your throat.
22 July 2006
I flew south to Nha Trang and met my collaborator Ngyuen Tri. Here we got onto a bus (which we flagged down from along the side of the road) and went south to Ca Na. The bus was designed for 50 people but had at least 70 passengers and their produce and livestock. I shared my spot with an old woman who had incredibly smelly feet and her extended family. Normally that would have bothered me but that day I expected nothing less. Some passengers were even in hammocks suspended from the roof. That night, Tri and I went out collecting in rocky areas along the coast and discovered a new species of gecko (a type of lizard) with huge orange eyes. That was the great thing. The bad thing was that Tri got bit by a pitviper. So it's the middle of the night, you're in central Vietnam a long way from help, your command of the language is restricted to hello and thank you and your only contact gets bit with a deadly snake. What do you do? Well after I convinced him that he needed to go to a "doctor" we flagged down a motor cycle. The clinic was 50 km away and he left on the back of the bike. I had no idea if he was going to come back, live, or what. Miraculously he returned by morning with a swollen and black oozing thumb. So we continued south.
18-21 July 2006
I flew into Hanoi, Vietnam to meet with scientists and to set up research programs for next year. I stayed in the Old District of Hanoi which is a great area. It is clear this is a communist country with all the reminders in place yet capitalism is the name of the game on the streets and the people are generally well-off. I took a trip to the northwest to a hill station called Tam Dao. Non-natives rarely visit this place and my food choices were rather limited; bats, porcupines, dog, chicken (thank God), wild pigs, and all kinds of reptiles. So I had some lizard and goat testicles for breakfast. The locals love it when you try their native dishes (although I'm sure the goat was less than thrilled).
14-17 July 2006
I flew into Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to arrange for a research pass for a month and to give a lecture to the Malaysian Nature Society. All went well and I am now scheduled to give a live radio interview on 18 August.
12 June 2006
I leave on July 12 to lecture in Malaysia. On 18 July I fly to Hanoi to meet with Vietnamese scientists and plan for field work in 2007. I then take a train half way down the country to Quy Nhon and meet with another VN scientist and we well survey many of the isolated mountain ranges in central Vietnam (VN). Then we work our way down to Saigon by bus and motorcycle collecting in isolated mountains and sleeping in VN villages for the next 600 miles or so. We then take a boat to the Con Dao islands, 180 km off the coast of the Mekong Delta and survey these for new species.
I am also looking at these islands as a place to teach my summer course next year. We return to Saigon and I take a boat by myself up the Mekong River, cross into Cambodia and proceed on to Phnom Penh (the capitol) where I will meet some of the students doing research in my lab. We then take four-wheel drives into the killing fields of the Cardamom Mountains in the southwest stop in villages to employ Khemer Rouge loyalists to serve as porters and guides to get us safely through the mine field and to the top of Cambodia's second highest mountain, Phnom Samkos (last year we went to the highest mountain, P. Aural). Here we will camp in the jungle for two weeks during the rainy season (ugh, lots of leeches) and collect. We are certain we will find new species unknown to science. We then return to Phnom Penh and fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and take a boat out into the Seribuat Archipelago to continue our work on these islands for a couple of weeks. We have already discovered and described 13 new species from this area and we know there are still more to be found.
After this, we fly back to Kuala Lumpur, rent a four wheel drive and head to the southernmost mountains on the Malay Peninsula where we worked last year and discovered two new species. This area is called Endau-Rompin and it is where the most recent Bigfoot sightings have occurred. We will hike 25 miles across this jungle for two weeks collecting along the way. Then we go back to Kuala Lumpur and fly to the Langkawi Archipelago (on the Thai border in the eastern Indian Ocean) and finish up some of our work there. Then we fly to Bangkok for a few days to unwind and then home.
We expect at least seven publications from this trip.
lee