Our trip is planned....

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I am pretty new to this whole blog experience, but wanted a place that our family and friends could go to and see the plans for our upcoming trip (easier than sending off several e-mails to different people) IF they were interested. If not, they don't have to check this out at all. I am hoping once we are in Borneo we will have access to computers here and there and people can read about what we are doing.

We FINALLY have our trip all planned. We will be leaving on April 18th at 4 in the afternoon for the 13 hour flight from Detroit to Tokyo. We then get back on a plane for Singapore, then another one for Kuala Lumpur and yet another one for our final (ish) destination of Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

From the airport our contacts that ONE Journey (www.onejourney.org) has been working with at the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project will pick us up and take us to the village of Sukau. Our itinerary while we are there is still a little up in there air, but I know we will be staying at a "homestay" (with villagers that have opened their homes to us ecotourists). I am very excited about the opportunity to live side by side with people from half way around the world. I also think we will be able to see a lot of the work that KOCP is doing, both in the local schools (we have lots of items that our students have made here that we are going to be able to give the students there, I am very excited to see their reactions to the cards and gifts) and in the field.

After 9 nights and 10 days at KOCP we are headed out to the town of Lahad Datu, but our stay here will be short, as the next day (April 30th) we are headed to the Borneo Rainforest Lodge in the Danum Valley Conservation Area. The lodge is located right inside the area and is suppose to be a spectacular representation of some of the last remaining primary forest in Borneo (most is secondary or somewhat degraded from logging, etc).

After 4 days and 3 nights in Danum valley (where the leeches are suppose to be pretty bad, we have been told to purchase something called "leech socks", but of course my husband thinks that would be silly and fully welcomes any and all leeches!!), we are headed out to the coast, Semporna. There we will be taking a dive course from "scuba Junkies" and will finally get our scuba diving certification!!! We will be diving off the islands of Sipadan (usually ranked one of the best dive sites in the world) and Mabul.

For our last night we will head back to Sandakan and the next day, May 9th, head back out to the good old United States (after 20 more hours and 4 plane rides) where we arrive back on the 9th (actually 2 hours before we left Sandakan thanks to that international date line). I think we will have a little bit of jet lag!!!

We are really starting to get excited!!!

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