One day a few years ago a very funny thing happened to a neighbour of mine. He is a teacher at one of London’s big medical schools, He had finished his teaching for the summer term and was at the airport on his way to Russia to give a lecture.

He had put a few clothes and his lecture notes in his shoulder bag, but he had put Rupert, the skeleton (人体骨骼) to be used in his lecture, in a large brown suitcase (箱子). At the airport desk, he suddenly thought that he had forgotten to buy a newspaper. He left his suitcase near the desk and went over to the shop.

When he got back he discovered that someone had taken his suitcase by mistake. He often wonders what they said when they got home and found Rupert.

Our adventure started in March 2019 when our daughter got engaged. She and her then fiancé lived in Chicago but grew up in Asia, so a destination wedding in Phuket sounded perfect.

Fast forward a year. The wedding arrangements were set, but then the COVID-19 started affecting everything. Travel restrictions began in some countries, so some guests had to cancel their journey. But we pressed ahead and took off for Thailand.

The pre-wedding activities were fun, and the wedding and reception were beautiful. But our adventure had only just begun! The morning after the wedding, my husband and I took off for the northeast coast of Malaysian Borneo, home to some of the world’s most unique wildlife and recognized for harboring iconic animals. We flew to the town of Sandakan, a gateway to wildlife adventures and our destination was the Kinabatangan Wetlands Resort on the Kinabatangan River. This area, an hour by boat from Sandakan, is one of Malaysia’s most important wildlife refuges. As we cruised along the riverbank our first afternoon, we observed an orangutan building a treetop nest. Next we caught sight of proboscis monkeys swinging from trees. We also spotted red and silver langurs and watched kingfishers diving for fish. But what amazed us most was that we encountered Bornean pygmy elephants with their calves wading through the river. What a harmonious scene!

Elephants are often said to make loud noise and angrily paw the ground, warning us off. And stories of tourists whose jeeps are overturned or who are even killed because of getting too close are not uncommon. It seems elephants often make our life unpredictable and threatened. But I’ve heard city people say “Actually we humans are damaging their forests.”