Junglist Massive Bo!!

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Wotto people how the devil are ya?? Well when a certain Mr Axle W Rose stated "welcome to the jungle we'll have fun and games" he wasnt wrong!! After our amazing time in KL we landed in the east of borneo on the 5th of october. the flight was good and it was great to fly over an island of jungle. to be fair personally the whole thing had not quite kicked in and i wasnt really prepared for what we had in store but it was amazing. we ended up at sandakan airport about lunchtimeish and got a taxi to our operations base 30 mins from the airport. this was the the offices of UNkle Tans Wildlife adventures. it was nice to go from a bustling city to the borneo courtyside and there was a complete difference in the two as you would expect. when we got to our base we were greeted by the office manager called sadie and chilled out for the night eating lovely home made malay food and playing cards. we woke up the next day sweating like pigs and looking forward to our trip to the heart of the malaysian jungle. first stop was sepilok orang u tan sanctuary. this is a place where orangutan are looked after and fed before they get released to the jungle. it was wonderful to see these wonderful creatures and were in for a treat as it was said thatr it was normal to see only a few but we saw about 15 or so aswell as some other apes (including myself of course!!!) after that we went back to the ops base for lunch and to meet up with the other people who were going to be joining us on our trip. this was made up of 3 girls from london and a couple from sweden who were all lovely. we left the ops base and travelled by SUV for an hour to the Kinabatangan river. when we arrived we were met by some of the guides in motor boats. we all jumped in and zipped down the river to the jungle camp. this was a highlight in itself as we got to see our first glimpses of wildlife including monkeys and birds. 40 mins later we arrived at our destination and had to walk for 15 mins thru the jungle to the camp itself. it was great and everyone was so friendly and welcoming. all of the guides are so sound and were a lot younger than i thought they would be. the next 3 days and 2 nights consisted of 3 river trecks (1 at night) a daytime jungle walk and a night time walk. i cannot tell you how much we enjoyed ourselves and to see so many animals in the wild was great. we saw probiscis monkeys, macaque monkeys, various birds includin 3 types of kingfisher, lizards, frogs, a python, scorpions, A TARANTULA!!, monitor lizrds, wild pigs, wild cats, and many others in which i cannot remember but i think the highlight was seeing 3 orangutan in the wild. two of which were right next to the camp. another was 50 meters from the bank of the river as we were going past. straight away the guide backed the boat up and showed us this amazing sight. he was about 40 ft up in a tree standfing up eating something. he must have been about 5 to 6 ft high and looked remarkably like big foot. it was such a great sight tho. unfortunately i didnt see a croc but there were some near misses and we didnt see elephants as they only show up when it is wetter season. we did see elephant tracks and dung which looked fairly recent so there you go. the last thing we did was a night treck where we walked thru the jungle at night with just torches. this was a highlight for me as we got to see many nocturnal animals, this included millipeds, centipedes, frogs, birds, and without a doubt my fave bit was seeing a tarantula! it was massive and was 15 ft up in a tree with its young. we were all mesmerized and the guide told us that it was fairly uncommon to see one especially with its young. the next day was time to leave but i must say that the experience was very very special and i will never forget it. the staff were top and for 50 quid for the whole package i must say it such a bargain!! if anyone has the chance to do this i would totally recommend it! i am even thinkin of goin back myself as i have loved my time in borneo so far that much!! well as i say i am in kota kinabalu at the mo but will send the blog in a week or so as we have got another 5 or 6 days left. gotta go now as gonna get my head down as its the first dayof my PADI diving course tmrw! in 3 days i am gonna be a qualified frog man!! woohoo!! anyways take it easy people and dont work too hard!! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! sorry heh heh. PEACE X

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