With only a few days left of our Asian adventure, we had the option of staying in Jakarta for several days or blowing the budget and travelling to Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to search for wild orangutans. It was a pretty easy decision to make!

Its quite tricky to buy flight tickets for Indonesian airlines – they either don’t have a website or they require an Indonesian credit card. Perseverance paid off though, and armed with two tickets we headed to Jakarta airport very early on Monday morning. This particular budget airline made Ryanair look swish. I think the plane had been built half a century ago, and the 5 minute turnaround time between flights meant there wasn’t exactly time for the cleaning team to move in. The safety demonstration pointed to the safety information seats in the back of each chair, of which there was no evidence, at least in our row. Lets hope they were more reliable with the life jacket placement! We spent the entire flight watching Suits to distract ourselves.

The airport in Pangkalan Bun is tiny. We were hoping our guide would be there to meet us with a ‘Mr Graham McCulloch’ sign, but to start with we couldn’t see anyone. Then an Indonesian lady came and stood directly in front of us, waving a sign with someone’s name on it. She went around the tourists checking if they were her customers, while Graham walked around after her trying to see the sign. Eventually he asked if she was looking for us, to which she replied, ‘I am so sorry. I always thought English people were tall!’. During the taxi ride to our boat, Siti carried on chatting, making hilarious jokes and practising her English. As we pulled into the docks, she pointed out lots of large buildings, which are used to house swallows. The saliva of these swallows is collected and used for food, medicine and cosmetics. Apparently it is a very lucrative business to be in.

She then dropped us off at a boat, which was to be our home for the next two days, and left us in the capable hands of our guide, Mr Andi. Our boat was a klotok, a traditional Indonesian vessel with two floors: the lower deck is used by the crew for sleeping and cooking and the upper deck was for us to use. As well as a guide, the klotoks come with two crew and a chef.

We had been told that our cook was the best in the business, and shortly after leaving the dock we discovered this to be true. Lunch was served and it was delicious.

As we pootled up the river in the Tanjung Puting National Park, we lay on the sun loungers and tried to spot some wildlife. Graham was the first to spot something, saying ‘Can you see that bird in the water over there’. The bird turned out to be a watersnake… We then passed armies of macaque and proboscis monkeys. According to Andi, one dominant proboscis male is often found with a group of up to 30 females and is in a state of constant arousal. It seems like in the monkey world, the ugly guy wins! We passed a bit more time playing the Crocodile or Log game. For those of you who haven’t played this, its pretty simple: its a log. Its always a log!

It was then time for afternoon tea, and a hefty helping of condensed milk. Once the drinks were finished, we pulled up to a jetty and trekked into the jungle to feeding station one. There was a rickety wooden walkway, followed by a fifteen minute walk along a path through the forest. We ended up in a clearing and joined around twenty other people at the feeding station. The rangers had left a huge pile of bananas and were whooping to call the orangutans. A large male was the first to visit, and sat stuffing bananas into his mouth at an alarming rate: around one every four seconds! Once he had eaten his fill, he was replaced by a mother and baby. They ate most of the remaining bananas while other females sat in the trees, looking on enviously. Orangutans are solitary creatures, and seemed to be operating a one-in-one-out policy at the station. Once the mother and baby cleaned up, they moved on and some squirrels came along to collect some of the banana skin. We thought the show was over, but then there was a commotion from behind. A very large male, Roger, was walking right through the crowd towards the podium. Everyone parted to let him through, and he quickly saw there was no food left. He then exited, walked straight up to a guide and thankfully carried on right past him before disappearing into the forest. It was time for us to head back to the boat.

The orangutans in the park are all wild, but some of the adults were previously in captivity before being rescued, rehabilitated and released. This is why some have names, and they know to respond to the rangers calls to come to the feeding station. There is a huge problem with deforestation in Indonesia, particularly by companies growing palm trees for palm oil. These plantations destroy the natural habit of the orangutans, and sometimes the apes come to the plantations looking for food. The owners don’t like this and often kill the adults and capture the babies. These babies then need care before being released. Our guide had personally rescued two babies from situations like this during his 30 year career.

When we arrived back on the klotok, we were greeted with cold cans of juice and snacks, which we enjoyed while we travelled to our mooring spot for the night. We passed some small villages along the way, and most of the local men were enjoying their evening shower in the river.

We moored up at dusk under some trees, which happened to be the sleeping spot for a large group of proboscis monkeys. Every time there was a loud noise, the monkeys went crazy, making noises like a pack of dogs. This then set the monkeys on the other side of the river off too!

We had a delicious dinner by candlelight, eating prawns, chicken, rice and vegetables. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much food in one day! We then lay on the deckchairs, listening to music and chatting to Andi. He told us about some of his other adventures in Indonesia, including a trip to Mount Bromo. He had to check out of his hotel at 2am as it was too cold. He told us incredulously, ‘I looked at the thermometer and it was only 21 degrees!’.

Our bed for the night was set up on the deck, and the rocking motion of the boat sent us instantly to sleep.

We woke up to a huge breakfast of toast, scrambled egg, chips (!) and jam. Our guide had stayed up all night playing chess with the crews from other boats, but seemed to still be full of energy.

We set off to feeding station two, but there were no orangutans around so we left. We went back to the boat and sat on our loungers, spotting more animals while we made our way to Camp Leakey. We saw a lot more monkeys and one tiny baby false gharial crocodile. We were also lucky to see a stork billed Kingfisher. I’m not usually a fan of bird spotting, but this one was worth watching! Andi then spotted a wild orangutan on the opposite side of the river to the park. He was amazingly well camouflaged, and we couldn’t spot him but we could see the mangroves moving as he munched on them.

We then had a snack of biscuits and juice, followed by a huge lunch. Yup, more food! When we arrived at Camp Leakey a cheeky macaque jumped straight onto the boat and escaped with the packet of biscuits, before climbing up a tree and eating the whole lot!

On arrival, Andi had advised us to bring our rain coats. We asked him if rain was forecast but he laughed, telling us that there were no forecasts here. Apparently they used to have a daily televised forecast, predicting the weather across Indonesia. They were always wrong though, so they had given up broadcasting it and now the weather was anyone’s guess!!

We had an hour to walk around the forest before the final feeding time. Andi has been a guide for a long time and seems to know how to call the apes. After a short walk, we spotted some orangutans at the top of the trees. They quickly responded to his calls, and an infant came down to see if we were of interest. When Andi produced some monkey nuts and oranges, the infant strolled right up to us to help himself. The mother then came down with her new baby to get some for herself. It seems that orangutan mothers do not like to share with their children, and when the infant realised she wasn’t going to get any more food, she roughly pulled her mums head towards her before trying to remove the food from her mouth. She had limited success with this!

When the infant realised that Andi had nothing left, she got upset and started trying to hit him with a long stick. We started to get a bit worried that the mother would join in, but she was indifferent to the situation! We then convinced Andi that we were ready to move on. He started calling to Tom, the King of the jungle. We weren’t particularly keen to have a face-to-face encounter with the dominant male though, and were quite relieved when it was feeding time.

This time the rangers put out milk, as well as the usual bananas, and it was hilarious watching the youngsters scooping up the milk and pouring it over themselves, with a limited amount hitting their mouth. At this feeding station, the apes seemed happier to be near each other. Although they didn’t interact, there were several of them eating at one time. A smaller male then took a liking to a female, and decided it was time to mate. Her youngster wasn’t a fan of this plan and tried to protect her, resulting in a small fight and lots of painful sounds. The adult male got his own way, but all of the tourists were subjected to an uncomfortable ten minutes of primate porn before the orangutans went back to the all important business of eating bananas!

A gibbon then came along and stole a few bananas from the podium, before retreating up a tree to eat them. He made several trips to replenish his supply before going back to the forest. Watching the orangutans swing through the trees was amazing, but gibbons are in a different class. Orangutans tend to move quite slowly and deliberately. Gibbons have a ball-and-socket joint in their wrist, which hugely improves their tree swinging ability, and they fly through the trees. It was incredible to watch.

After that we headed back to our boat for our final meal and to travel back to the port. At dusk we spotted another wild baby orangutan, sitting in the mangroves and munching on the fruit. After the sun went down, we were travelling in the dark, with only a sliver of moon. Andi shone a torch into the river, illuminating crocodile eyes along the way. There were also thousands of fireflies, lighting up the bushes like Christmas trees.

We spent a night in a local guest house before heading back to the airport for our flight back to Jakarta. Siti picked us up in the morning and kept us amused on the journey. She really loves Britain and asked all about the Royal Family, London and even Britains Got Talent. It turns out that she has a huge soft spot for Simon Cowell and is plotting a way to get him on one of her tours!

We only spent 48 hours on Kalimantan, but saw watersnakes, crocodiles, macaques, proboscis monkeys, lots of orangutans, a gibbon and thousands of fireflies. It has been one of our best experiences in Asia and a great end to our time here.

• Borneo