Kuala Lumpur and Sabah - Borneo Orangutans!!

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Well here we are in Malaysia, we left on the 16th and landed in Kuala Lumpa were we spent the first 5 days. KL is an impressive city with some amazing buildings, and despite the fact that i am not a “city person” i actually really like KL. We spent the first 2 nights in a very nice (expensive) hotel right next to the Petronas Towers. The view from our window on the 23rd floor out over the city was great, we actually went to sleep with the curtains open so we could look out at the millions of lights! OK i know its probably really boring but we HAVE to tell you about the breakfasts in this place, they are buffet style with about 6 different 'food stations' to choose from, cooked English breakfast, cooked Malay breakfast, omelets and eggs to order, fruit bar, salad bar, juice station, pancake and waffle stove, bread and pastry stand, cereal bar, sushi belt, cold cuts and cheese, yoghurt's and dairy, and a few more to boot. Well as you can imagine, we made sure we filled ourselves up and actually didn't eat again until the evening!!

Well after 2 nights in luxury we thought we better not spend the whole of our budget on a 2 week holiday, and so went in search of a cheep hotel/hostel. We ended up wandering around china town looking at different rooms and dorms, we discarded one where you could rent the rooms by the hour and one whose cheep room was cheep because it used to be a bathroom, I kid you not, complete with white wall tiles and a plug in the floor! After an hour of walking round we resorted to the guide book and ended up in a back packers place on the edge of Petling St (the street market) We had a tiny but clean room with a fan and its own (minuscule) bathroom so we were happy enough!

China town is a really busy area, there are people around at all times of the day and night, the hostel owner told us that they would be showing the Rugby live on the roof top bar on Saturday so at 3am we were settled there with a few beers and 20 other Brits to watch England lose!

On Monday we flew to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah (Borneo) were we are now. We had already booked into a resort from the UK as a bit of a treat. There resort is lovely right on the beach and backed by the rain forest. It is actually 30km outside of town with nothing else around it, it seems they use this fact to charge outrageous prices for everything! They run a shuttle bus into town several times a day, it costs us about 10 pound to get to town, this is our 3rd trip in, today mostly to use the net and get a blog on. (the hotel Internet is 40 Rm per hour-6 pound, here it is 3 Rm- 50p!)

We came in a few days ago to take a boat over to a nearby island, Pulau Sapi. It is a beautiful tiny little island, a circuit around is around 2km. The sea is almost clear if you go out about 10 meters from the beach, on the shore line when we were there you couldn't see anything as the weather hadn't been great so the sand was all stirred up. We spent an hour on the jetty feeding the thousands of fish of all sizes and colours, now we can't wait to get to somewhere we can snorkel in clear water with them.

OK our major highlight so far!
The resort we are staying in has a wildlife sanctuary attached to it. We went on a guided tour and saw the Orangutans!! What an amazing experience! They are rescued either from being pets or young ones who have been orphaned due to deforestation. The very young ones and sick ones are hand fed until they are strong enough to live in the jungle, then they are transferred outside. The rangers put out food for them twice a day at different posts further and further into the jungle until they are fending for themselves at which point they are transferred to Sepilok for release.

There were 4 or 5 of them around, they came to the platform which was around 15 meters from us, one 2 year old one came right down to investigate and sat a meter away from me for 5 minutes while i just grinned at him with tears in my eyes!! (soppy cow!!) But honestly it is so amazing, they are so human like, all of them look different with their own distinct facial features. We sat for an hour until they had eaten their fill and swung off into the trees. The left overs were then snatched up by a tribe of little monkeys who had been patiently waiting! We are planning to go to Sepilok to see the main sanctuary in a couple of weeks.

Well we have 2 nights left at the resort and then 31/2 weeks left to investigate what the rest of Sabah has to offer. We loosely have planned to go to Mount Kinabalu, Sepilok, Sipidan Island Tioman and maybe into Brunei briefly, but hey you know us, tomorrow that all may have changed so watch this space!!

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