Holly and the big-nosed, pot-bellied monkeys of Borneo

Holly (fresh off the plane from London), Sandy and I caught an Air Asia flight from JB in Johor, Peninsular Malaysia, to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah, East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo.



First on the agenda in Sabah was to find the big-nosed, pot-bellied proboscis monkeys, which can only be found in Borneo. We headed southeast along the coast to the Klias river delta — halfway to the border with Sarawak — and followed a boat tour through the river system for an hour or so.





We soon became adept at spotting groups of hilarious-looking monkeys in the trees on either bank. The male proboscis have huge round droopy noses, pot bellies and pemanent erections! In Indonesian they are known as "monyet Belanda" or "white-man monkeys".