Wildlife

One thing I never really thought about was the different types of wildlife we would have in Brunei. I did have a fleeting thought in relation to mosquitos and other types of creepy crawlies but that was it. Little prepared me for the extremely cheeky monkeys and the mad Hornbills (a type of bird).

The Hornbills here seem to be slightly deranged and fly from a branch in one of the trees at the back of the house right into either our bedroom or dining room window. To start I thought it was simply a mistake, but I stood in our bedroom watching these rather odd birds fly back and forth, hitting the windows and then looking a little shocked. I have tried leaving the blinds down but this seems to make no difference to their crazy behaviour, so I have learnt to accept that when I hear very loud bangs on the windows I know the Hornbills are playing chicken!!

As I also mentioned we have monkeys, so far we have seen 2 different types, a large grey macaque and a smaller (but not by much) brown macaque. So far the only ones to totally plague us are the brown ones, they have no respect for anything and like eating cockroaches and dropping the remains on our veranda. They also adore the bin and like to have a good rummage, I feel that on this one we have deeply disappointed them as we don't put anything out until late at night so it is slim pickings!

On returning from a week away we were shown that they had got hold of a bottle of floor cleaner that was in a box on our veranda and had been biting it, as well as trying to destroy the box it was kept in. Nothing is sacred!

The large grey macaques are amazing and swing through the trees around the perimeter of our garden (you don't see the other monkeys when the grey ones are around). There must be around 30 of them and they a go one by one from tree to tree, I have to say it beats telly...

Other than ants, cockroaches, mosquitos and other buzzy insects we have Monitor Lizards, these also seem to be the main form of road kill! There is also a crocodile that lives up the road and has based its home at the Panaga Club Golf Course, so far have not seen it and in all honesty I am not overly worried about this, I feel that crocodiles are best left alone.