I saw a wild orangutan!

I've been in Borneo a week now and it's probably the place I've felt most out of my comfort zone but I think that's a good thing. I'm staying in homestays in this little village in the rainforest in Sabah. It's very very basic living: wooden houses on stilts with bucket showers and squat toilets and eating with fingers and the like. The food is pretty good, they often do cake for breakfast (or noodles which is difficult to get used to) and then rice with omelet, vegetables and some form of fish or chicken for lunch and dinner. So it's quite samey. We're having a day off in the local town, Sandakan so I'm looking forward to getting Western food.

The community is really great here. It's one of those places where everyone literally knows everyone else. The locals all sit out on their terrace things and chat to whoever passes by and they all come out and have big games of football and volleyball at the end of the day. They're awfully friendly as well. The families I've stayed with (I just changed last night) are sweet. the first one was very big. The couple had 7 children, though 2 had grown up. The woman, Rohana, was one of the loveliest people in the world. And she was amazing: she cooks all 3 meals each day for everyone in the house, looks after her 5 kids including a 3 month old baby, takes in homestay guests - so I presumed she'd be a house wife, but a couple of days in I discovered she also teaches in the local school! Mental. They were all friendly there but it was such a different way of doing things. They made me feel welcome and everything but there was no proper explanation of who everyone was or what time I should come for meals or how things were done or anything. It was more like - Hello! Here's your room.. and that was it. So that was a bit of a shock and a bit confusing at first but I got used to it. The house was fairly big considering its basicness. The whole family often slept together in one room though, or the kids would kip on mattresses in front of the TV which didn't get turned off all night. The new house I'm in is pretty sweet too. I reckon if the Weasleys (from Harry Potter) were Malaysian, this would be where they would live. I must take a picture so I can show what I mean. It's full of people too: children and about 4 old people who all look really wise in a very tanned and wrinkley Malaysian way.

I'm doing volunteer work here. At the moment we're building a septic tank. Involving much of carrying very heavy bags of sand and pebbles and emptying said bags into the pit and sometimes filling them up too. I should keep up the guns at this rate. My body is still feeling nice and used which is always good. The work can get a bit repetetive though which isn't so good. But the village people I'm working with are all really cool. They're all around my age and they like to lark around and make jokes and so on and they're friendly and all that so I immediately felt welcome. There are only 2 other volunteers though which I wasn't expecting. I get on well with one guy but the other's really really quiet, though he does seem nice.

It's crazy cool being in the jungle/rainforest/what'sthedifference every day. i saw a wild orangutan! Twice! That was incredible. We watched her for quite a while, she ate and looked around and climbed a few trees. She looked so wise and yet kind of sad. It's funny the way they spend most of their lives alone. They're a lot more gentle the way they move than I realised, I always thought of them as great loping things. We also saw a kingfisher, hornbills and several troops of long tail macaques :D I love nature. We'll be trekking in the jungle and then camping out tomorrow so I'm hoping to see more wildlife, ah a wild gibbon would be awsome.

So as for Singapore, that was cool. Really nice to be in a hotel for a night. It was a pretty boutiquey place called the Royal Peacock and they did such a good breakfast. All the food I had there was amazing. I got to the hotel at midnight, starving and went and found a hawker centre in Chinatown (lots of booths selling cheap food) and got some amazing Chickeny singaporey soupey noodles with chillie. She just wopped them up right there. Also the Western food was pretty tastey. and the whole city smelled delicious. It's like they say, with no litter so maybe that's why. It smelled of the delicious food and orchids and traditional tried herbs and flowers and rain and freshness. Absolutely everywhere.

I saw skyscrapers for the first time (I hadn't realised I'd never seen them) - like, proper ones and that was awsome, I got lots of photos. It's quite built up and Westernised in places but then there's Chinatown and places like that which have a lot of character and are very pretty. I went into a Buddhist temple just as there was some beautiful chanting going on and wandered through a market hung with Chinese lanterns. I also went to the botanic gardens and there were some funky bonsai trees there. How do they work?? I have no idea.

There were just a couple of other things that happened in Thailand I didn't mention yet. We went to some bat caves and saw hundreds of thousands of bats form out in precise formations at sunset. It was immense. Then we went to a vibrant night market in Cha-Am and met a very drunk, very American man called Chuck who gave us frozen flannels and whiskey. We went on an elephant night safari and saw a heard of elephants (:)), a tree of long and stump tail macaques and a crab. And that's all I can think of for now.

Time to leave
Might be able to get to the internet in about a week (need to go to a town really)

Helen xxxx

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