Among the Clouds

See that shiny lit­tle speck down there?”

I asked my sis­ter, point­ing at an arbi­trary point in an end­less mass of tree canopies as we looked out into South­west Kalimantan.

Kalimantan Border Lookout
Kali­man­tan Bor­der Look­out — View from 3,281 feet

That lit­tle speck is gonna grow big­ger,” I made a soft whizzing sound as my fin­gers por­tray a rapidly approach­ing metal­lic object, “Whizzzz.. Arrrgg!” I poke myself in the neck, tongue out, in great pain — imi­tat­ing get­ting hit by an arrow.

As I fall thud on the ground,” I con­tin­ued “You’ll hear drums from afar. ‘Dum… dum.. dum.. dum..’ and the wail­ing of cel­e­bra­tive tribesmen.”

I glanced over expect­ing to see a very ter­ri­fied sis­ter, only to be greeted by a set of eyes rolling almost out of their sock­ets. “Yeah, right!”

The South­west Kali­man­tan Bor­der Look­out point was by far the best view I’ve seen all my life (pho­tos won’t do any jus­tice) and the best part of our 3-day Bor­neo High­lands trip.

Garden In The Sky - Borneo Highlands Resort
Gar­den in the Sky — 3-exposure HDR

When it was appar­ent that the rain wouldn’t stop three days into the Chi­nese New Year, we thought it’d be a good idea to flee to the moun­tains before all of Kuch­ing gets sub­merged under ten feet of water. The near­est high­lands we could reach were the Bor­neo High­lands, sit­ting more than 1,000 feet atop the Pen­ris­sen Range, an hour and a half’s drive away where no flood could reach us. Safe.

The Path - Borneo Highlands Resort
The Path

Okay, that was obvi­ously a joke. We pre-booked our room but seri­ously it was rain­ing so hard it made the trip up in steep, wet roads rather scary.

A lot of friends were rather skep­ti­cal of our trip up though, warn­ings of the lack of things to do since ‘there’s noth­ing up there but flow­ers’, and ‘you’ll only find your­self chas­ing but­ter­flies’ were in abun­dance. The fact that so many peo­ple had so much to say of that place also meant one thing — everyone’s been up there except us.

Warn­ing: Large post laden with tonnes of amaz­ing imagery ahead.

Jungle Cabins - Borneo Highlands Resort
Jun­gle Cabins

We didn’t think it would rain that hard when it rained for a good two out of the three days we spent there, forc­ing us to stay indoors. For­tu­nately the Jun­gle Cabin where we stayed had a large shaded bal­cony that allowed us to still savour the sur­round­ings despite the rain.

So we spent time watch­ing TV, movies on the lap­top (The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton, any­one? Bloody good movie!), take naps, and meals. Stuff we wouldn’t have done as a fam­ily back home. And when our chirpy lit­tle neigh­bour­hood friend decides to make a visit, Dad and I would rush out, cam­era in hand and snap away. I’ve never had a prob­lem with my kit lens until I realised I couldn’t zoom in enough to shoot a freak­ing bird!

But I’m not really into bird spot­ting any­way so a tele­photo could wait.

Bird - Borneo Highlands Resort
Birdie Vis­its — Cropped photo

The sky proved it still had mercy when it stopped rain­ing on the evening of the sec­ond day — not until there was only a few hours of day­light left though. We headed out imme­di­ately for a walk to a plateau nearby.

One Step at a Time - Borneo Highlands Resort
One Step at a Time

The air had a fresh after-rain scent, and was cool à la Cameron High­lands or Kun­dasang Val­ley if you’ve been to either one. The clear­ing mist sur­round­ing the land­scape around us added to that mys­tique feel. There’s noth­ing like nature I’d say.

Long exposure shot of a waterfall - Borneo Highlands Resort
Long expo­sure shot of a waterfall

Two rivers run down along the two sides of the plateau, com­plete with water­falls and hang­ing bridges, all in their after-rain full of gush­ing water glory. I took the chance to try out long-exposure shots of water — kind of like those smooth feathery-like pho­tos of rivers and water­falls you see in poster calendars.

Long exposure shot of a waterfall 2 - Borneo Highlands Resort
Smooth­ing water over time.

Although those that I took were far from end­ing up any­where near posters. It is one tick off my list of dSLR pho­tog­ra­phy technique’s to-do list though.

Pines Up Close - Borneo Highlands Resort
Pines Up Close

Any­way, on the morn­ing of the 3rd day, we signed up for the Kali­man­tan Bor­der View­point tour for which you have to pay an extra of 40 bucks per head. The weather was good — it had to be — so Dad thought why not? We were taken to the bor­der view­point first, which was where the first photo above was taken.

At the Nursery - Borneo Highlands Resort
Mom and Sis at the Nurs­ery. That’s a Semi-pro Canon dSLR hang­ing off that guy’s shoul­der. XP

The sec­ond stop was the Resort nurs­ery which had this huge col­lec­tion of annual plants.

At the Nursery - Borneo Highlands Resort
At the Nursery

After quite some time at the nurs­ery where Dad bought a few plants, we were dropped at the final stop — a gar­den right above the plateau we explored to a day earlier.

At the Nursery - Borneo Highlands Resort
Sis with hang­ing flowers

I know my sis is poor in her poses, no need to tell me that. xP

White flower- Borneo Highlands Resort
White.

I found out that there aren’t just flow­ers in Bor­neo High­lands, con­trary to what everyone’s been say­ing. It’s so much more. I mean, there’s the breath­tak­ing Kali­man­tan Bor­der View­point with a view to die for; some flow­ers, yes; a heav­enly gar­den right above a well-landscaped plateau with flow­ers — lots of ‘em; a huge nurs­ery of uh, flow­ers; swan lakes; flow­ers; water­falls; flow­ers; a golf course and many more flow­ers. And did I men­tion there were flow­ers up there?

White flower- Borneo Highlands Resort
I had a flash­back of a scene from the Bee Movie when I took this shot.

Seri­ously though, what else did you expect? =P

It was def­i­nitely more than a giant flower exhi­bi­tion in the clouds. For those of you who haven’t made a trip up yet I’d def­i­nitely rec­om­mend you to.

As for me, I spent a really great time up there with my fam­ily. Not to men­tion three days in a photographer’s heaven! =D The pho­tos shown here are really a small frac­tion of a those I took within 3 days — some 3.4GBs worth. Don’t worry, I’ll try to get some of them up on Flickr or Facebook.

Whew! Finally man­aged to get myself to com­plete this long-overdue mam­moth of a post. More than enough to show how big of a pro­cras­ti­na­tor I am.

26 thoughts on “Among the Clouds

  1. wying

    i love those pho­tos. x)
    espe­cially birdie vis­its, long expo­sure of water­fall (kinda get used to it already, doesn’t look much like cot­ton wool any­more lol.)
    and the one with your sis pos­ing, seri­ously i LIKE that.
    did you just men­tion ‘The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton’? I just watched the mak­ing of the movie. Unusual plot. I wanna watch it. x)

  2. teddY

    Wow, really lovely pho­tos from your high­land trip! I’ve received the same com­ments from friends who heard that I was head­ing to Cameron High­lands back then — they told me that what I will see are straw­ber­ries, tea leaves and more straw­ber­ries, more tea leaves. But what really draws me to such places is the escape from the hec­tic lifestyle of the city and fully leap­ing into the embrace of Mother Nature.

    I really love all the pho­tos you’ve posted here — from the HDR to the birdie visit, as well as the long expo­sure of the water­falls. I’m won­der­ing if you’re using any sort of neu­tral den­sity fil­ter for the water­fall pho­tos? I’ve tried to sim­u­late such an effect in the past and the photo turned out to be over­ex­posed, so I got myself a ND 0.8 fil­ter just in case I needed it in the future, heh.

    1. ember Post author

      Thank you! Exactly, Teddy! And not to men­tion a pho­to­graphic oppor­tu­nity to pho­to­graph nature. Cameron High­lands is really a nice place, I’ve actu­ally been there twice. =D

      Nope, I haven’t acquired any fil­ters or any other acces­sories as of yet. So you can expect all the pho­tos I’ve taken at the moment are with­out acces­sories, heh. The water­fall pho­tos were slightly over­ex­posed before I dark­ened them a bit, but no too much per­haps because it was a cloudy day and thus, you get to enjoy dimmed and dif­fused light. =)

      Will keep in mind about a nat­ural den­sity fil­ter though!

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