Previously on “Two Up and Overloaded” -
Marisa: We came across a bizarre creature that kind of reminded us of humans, but in a not so flattering way.
Oh my gosh! It just walked right past me!
But now as we make our way to another area of the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Reserve in East Malaysia, we were warned about another type of monkey there: the macaques.
These guys look really vicious.
Because we were about to find out that unlike the proboscis monkeys, these guys definitely want what they want.
He wants my flowers.
Tim: He's a romantic monkey.
Marisa: No, no, no, no, no... Not my helmet! No, no.
Tim: And they definitely don't want pancakes.
Marisa: There were a lot of pancakes going on in the last episode.
Intro: Hey everyone! Nice to have you here. We are Tim, and Marisa Notier. I ride in the front. And I’m in the rear. We travel the world and we pack too much gear. Oh, all the places we’ll go! Through rain and through sleet and through mud and through snow. Oh, all the things we’ll see! We’ve been to a country or two. Or three! Oh, all the fun we’ve had! To have you along, would make us real glad. So give us a like, and hit subscribe to join us along our epic ride.
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[Labuk Bay - Malaysia]
Tim: So we got back on the motorcycle and we went from Platform A to Platform B.
Marisa: Okay, so apparently it is not a good idea to leave our motorcycle here while we go to Platform B. And the reason why is because of the macaques. They say that they try to steal things. We have everything kind of tied down, but they will tear things apart and bite them. They'll bite our boots and they'll take our socks and anything that they possibly can to see what's inside.
And so they said we should ride it over to Platform B and there'll be more cars and more people and the macaques will be less likely to mess with our stuff. So... What are you going to do? I can't argue with that.
So we got to put all our gear on and go.
Tim: No, we're not.
Marisa: We're not? Okay, well, we're going to at least take things apart.
Tim: It was all of like a three-minute ride.
Marisa: Yeah, it wasn't very far. But people told us do not leave your motorcycles here and we're like, "Why?" I mean, everything's fine. We don't have very much stuff. They're like, "No, the monkeys are going to come and they're going to steal your stuff." And we said, "Nope, we have these awesome little Mosko Moto things that lock, and everything's secured onto the bike." And they said, "They will tear into it. They will bite it. They will tear it apart. Don't leave your motorcycle here. Bring it to platform B where there are more people and there's a bigger parking lot, and then there's less likely to be monkeys to tear apart your stuff." And we were like, "Okay, what can you do?"
We're going like this.
Tim: Yup. Most of the gear, some of the time.
Anytime we get on the bike, and we're not fully geared up, we get some comments to say, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe you don't ride without gloves!” sometimes people say. This is a very short distance, and we're not taking anything too lightly because we are definitely - "all the gear all the time." We travel around these really hot portions of the world fully geared, sweating bullets. But the protection is definitely Safety First, if you will.
But for this 3 minute ride, please give us a little bit of a grace period. We rode in our t-shirts.
Marisa: Yeah I know we're risk-takers through this little bit.
Tim: Rebels. Rebels, I felt like James Dean cruising along on my KTM.
Marisa: Great.
Tim: We survived.
Marisa: We did.
Tim: And we got to Platform B.
Marisa: Platform B is where it's at when it comes to Labuk Bay because it has a full-on establishment there. They have a restaurant. They have actually a little museum. They have a place where they are making all of this food that they give out to the proboscis monkeys since the reserve is so small that it does not provide enough food for them. They have to supplement it, such as the pancakes that we covered in the last episode.
Tim: And as soon as we got onto the main area of the master feeding deck, there were little Curious Georges hanging out everywhere.
Marisa: Oh my gosh! They were just sticking their heads up over the stairs as if they were people just sitting there, like yep, just chilling on the stoop.
Tim: What are you doing? What's going on over there? There’s a lot of you guys. What's going
on?
Marisa: It was too cute!
Tim: It was super cute.
Marisa: And these proboscis monkeys have such strange features. Not just their faces, their noses, and their bellies, but their hands! I cannot get over their hands, they're so weird. Super cute, but super kind of creepy too.
Tim: It's kind of creepy, yeah. It's like werewolf hands.
Marisa: Yeah! It's like someone on Halloween in a costume hands.
Tim: For sure, like Spirit Halloween store gloves are like, "Well those are cheesy."
Marisa: But they're also kind of scary.
Tim: They're pretty scary.
Oh, is that him?
[man calling out]
Tim: Then there was this little old man that had the Yum Yum snacks and he was going to the platform. He had bananas. And we turn the corner, and he starts setting up on the ledge to feed... hornbills!
Marisa: The man with the bananas is heading over here. Oh my gosh! I've never seen a hornbill! It's on all of their promotions. Oh my gosh, there it is!
Yeah, so he was not going to feed the proboscis monkeys at this moment. He was actually putting out these bananas, apparently proboscis monkeys don't eat bananas. Crazy...
Tim: Mind blown, but hornbills...
Marisa: But hornbills love them.
And so these are wild birds, gorgeous, super iconic, we've been hoping to see these for a very long time. They were being fed, so you know, that's not awesome. But in that moment I was so excited to see them.
Tim: And this was a good blend, and I'm not just making up excuses, but it was a good blend of where man and nature meet more harmoniously than some other zoo type settings where there's actual cages. This was a natural nature reserve and the hornbills flew there on their own.
Marisa: It did feel very harmonious.
And the hornbills are so beautiful. They have, of course, these giant horns on their...
Tim: Bill.
Marisa: They also have these amazing eyelashes, what?!
Tim: They are Vogue. And I think it's the males too, usually the males are the pretty ones.
Marisa: They are the pretty ones in the bird world.
Tim: This is true.
Marisa: They all had eyelashes.
Tim: Yeah, and I cannot stand, sorry for all of our viewers, but I can't stand fake eyelashes that are like these two brooms coming out of people's heads. But on these birds it was quite nice.
Marisa: It was amazing.
Tim: It did look like just someone had taken fake eyelashes and put them on these birds.
Marisa: It looked very weird.
Tim: Yeah.
Marisa: And in fact, eyelashes on birds is extremely rare. They only happen a couple of times. There's ostriches, emus, penguins, and then these hornbills. So it's a very bizarre thing.
The Hornbill is actually Malaysia's national bird, and with good reason. They are amazing! In order to support their heavy heads, hornbills have much thicker and stronger necks than most birds. It's also believed that if a hornbill flies over your home, that is a sign of good fortune.
Tim: Yeah, the hornbill actually makes it up on another bill as well. On the 5 Ringgit, the hornbill makes an appearance. And so that's pretty cool, and this is a little souvenir from us from now on that we'll keep because we like the little hornbills, they're our buddies.
So these monkeys were like little Tony Hawks and parkour dudes running around a little "jungle gym," if you will.
Marisa: But not even as graceful as Tony Hawk. They're like their own unique type of movements.
Tim: Yeah, when they jump...
Marisa: It's like a child that's trying too hard to jump, and he's like, "Wee!"
The big male just stuffed his face with pancakes and ran off with all the good food.
Tim: The females were super cute with their little "who" noses.
Marisa: Whoville. Cindy Who.
Tim: But the males, they're not so flattering.
Marisa: Yeah. Their noses are a bit extreme.
Tim: Yeah. It's just a lot of a lot of nose.
Both: Mmm... Yeah.
Marisa: But the girls must love it.
Tim: Yeah, the bigger the nose…
Marisa: Mhm. That's what they say, right?
Tim: Yeah, that's what they say.
Marisa: So after all that monkeying around, we were hungry and there was that restaurant right there. So we decided to eat some food.
I don't know what it is about you but you like to flatten your food out before you eat it.
Tim: Yeah. Flat food.
Marisa: Flat food.
Tim: I'm a flat food fan. Most of you do too.
Marisa: I don't do this.
Tim: No, most of them.
Marisa: Oh yeah. But you think there are other people that are like you and I'm not so sure.
Tim: Well, there's flat earthers, and then there's flat eaters.
Marisa: Yes, and if you are a flat eater, please let us know if you flatten your food. Because I'm skeptical that there are others.
Tim: What is this, Ducktales? People eating mounds of food? Comment below if you flatten your food. Who eats mounds of food? No one. No, you flatten it down. It's more temperature control for all of your food.
Marisa: That's true!
Tim: There's math behind this.
Marisa: Wow, I never thought of that!
Tim: Yes.
Marisa: Engineering.
Tim: Pie, flat. Yeah. Math.
Marisa: Yeah.
All right, so I did what you got to do in this type of weather and just soaked my head. I soaked, this thing. Feels better already.
Tim: Oh, yeah buddy.
Marisa: So as we were leaving the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Reserve, we thought this was going to be the end of our day. Got all geared up, it was a zillion degrees but we were ready for it. And in order to get out, we had to pass by Platform A again.
Oh my gosh.
Tim: Oh, look at the guy on the exit.
And as we did, there were a whole bunch of cars there and people messing around with monkeys.
Marisa: There were monkeys everywhere!
Tim: Monkeys everywhere.
Marisa: Now, these were different monkeys than the proboscis monkeys, these are the macaques. And the macaques are very mischievous.
Tim: Yeah, they're like the... evil monkeys, I'm going to go ahead and say it. I like all monkeys but these are like the little bratty skate or die punk ones.
Marisa: They do have that little Mohawk sometimes, yeah. They were all over the cars, they were definitely going through the trash bins pulling everything out. Yeah, when the people told us not to leave the motorcycle there at Platform A, they were not kidding because these monkeys were so naughty.
Tim: We don't want any monkeys messing around with our stuff.
Marisa: They were not that nice, when you got too close they were pretty vicious, and they made it known that they were not happy to have us near them.
They are not friendly. These guys look really vicious. One just totally made a hostile move towards Tim bearing his teeth and everything.
Maybe they don't like our helmets.
Tim: Yeah, they bear their teeth and they look like this is the first Planet of the Apes movie, like before they got super intelligent but they were getting aggressive. I can see where this plot is going. In a short amount of time span the macaques are our leaders.
Maria: Yeah.
Tim: But it should be the Proboscis monkeys.
Marisa: It should.
Tim: They're a peaceful race.
Marisa: A peaceful race. Yes.
We realized that taking the helmets off really helped because having helmets on, they did not like that.
Tim: No.
Marisa: I don't know if our heads were just too big, or what it was. They didn't like that.
Tim: No one likes bigheaded Americans.
Marisa: They kind of have an obsession with helmets in general because as we were taking pictures of them... We made some friends there, you know, there were other people taking pictures and we started going on the boardwalk a little bit. I had my helmet with me because I didn't want to leave it on the motorcycle because, you know, they're going to go onto the motorcycle and try to get the helmet. So I carried it with me. But this one monkey in particular really wanted my helmet.
Sneaky.
He wants my flowers.
Tim: He's a romantic monkey.
Marisa: No, no, no, no, no... Not my helmet! No, no.
Tim: So naughty the little monkey. He wants that helmet.
Marisa: No, no!
Woman: He's undoing my shoelaces.
Tim: That monkey really wanted your KLIM helmet. It is a really nice helmet.
Marisa: It is! It's my favorite helmet I've ever had, I absolutely love that helmet.
Tim: The TK 1200, transitional lens, made out of just Space Age light stuff. This monkey knew, this monkey was a KLIM fan.
Marisa: So we are here, right?
No! No.
He wants my helmet.
You are so naughty!
Tim: So just as a general warning because this place is on our tour that we are doing, our motorcycle tour, our motorcycle monkey tour of beautiful Borneo... Be careful when you're here with us, because they will steal your stuff.
So we are super excited. If you have Shoei helmets, we can test to see if the monkey prefers KLIM over Shoei. Or sherbet, I think that's not a helmet.
Marisa: Shuberth.
Tim: Sherbet on your head on a hot day...
Marisa: That would be excellent.
Tim: But I don't think it's DOT approved.
Marisa: But you should definitely check out our tour, we have a website page devoted to it because it's brand new and we're super excited to be hosting some of you guys to ride with us through the island of Borneo. So check it out in the link in the description below.
I bet when we go back we're going to find this exact same monkey that was after my helmet.
Tim: Bam.
So we left fully satisfied for that day. It was an amazing, amazing experience in this little reserve for beautiful birds, monkeys, naughty ones, good ones... Really, really cool.
This isn't quite the Christina Aguilera that you all might have wanted to see, but it's really nice.
Marisa: Last time I did that a little dripped into my eye and it was so salty my eyes stung! Isn't that horrible?
Tim: We rode back out and we got back to Sandakan.
Marisa: Which is a beautiful city. The sun was kind of going down as we came into the city.
And that evening we walked over to the oceanfront area which of course has been set up with all these little night market stalls and food stalls. You've got to love the street food of Malaysia. And the sun was setting behind the ocean and this woman had these bubbles and there were just bubbles all over the ocean breeze, floating around. It was gorgeous.
Tim: It was really, really pretty. Just a beautiful moment to end a really, really nice day. We are absolutely loving this part of the world so anybody from this region, we want to thank you all for your hospitality, the generosity, and the kindness and the open arms of friendship. So a specific shout out and thank you to you!
Marisa: You, the Malaysian people.
Next time - We head to Semporna.
So this is the city of Semporna.
A tourist hotspot on the coast of Eastern Sabah.
Island hopping!
Tim: Take a trip, take a trip, take a trip with me.
Marisa: But along the way...
More mirror issues.
But that will all be in the next episode. So thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you liked it. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below. And if Patreon is your thing, please check out our Patreon link in the description below. For as little as a dollar a month, you get early access to our videos ad-free and a postcard sent to you from wherever we are in the world.
Tim: This is true.
Marisa: So please check out our Patreon link in the description below and we'll be seeing you next time.
Tim: Stay safe, everybody.
Marisa: Bye!
Tim: Peace.
