People of the forest (Orangutans)

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Not had chance to update for a bit. We stayed at the forest retreat in Sepilok for two nights. It was nice and peaceful. We visited the Orangutan sanctuary and rainforest discovery centre on the first full day there. We had to wait on a platform for about 30 mins until the orangutans started to appear for feeding. Oh my it was bl**dy hot, we were dripping. It was really nice when they swung onto the platform and started eating the food the rangers put out. After this we had a walk through the rainforest to see if we could find any orangutans swinging through the trees but we only saw some monkeys.
We then walked over to the rainforest discovery centre and walked over some canopies, did a little bit of bird and lizard spotting. They have squirrels the size of cats, I am sure we saw one. I enjoyed looking at the section which had wild ginger, fig trees, black pepper and turmeric plants.. Its interesting to see where things actually come from.
We did a lot of walking this day and I was shattered by the evening. Despite using insect repellent we still got loads of bites!!

The next day we went to see the proboscis monkeys at the Labuk Bay sanctuary. I enjoyed this a lot more as we stood on a platform that was sheltered from the sun and far more monkeys came for feeding. They are quite shy creatures but the males like a bit of attention and on a few occasions scared the life out of us by leaping onto the platform we were standing on and then leaping out on the other side. They always seemed to head straight for Daniel 😊 They are quite peculiar looking monkeys and can only be found in this area of Borneo. We also saw silver leaf monkeys and Hornbill birds there as well.

We decided to take a plane back to Kota Kinabalu as I didn't fancy an 8 hour bus journey and we got a pretty cheap flight. We shared a taxi from the airport with some guys from Manchester. Actually one of them just so happened to work for my old company! Small world eh. We stayed in a different hostel this time which was much nicer. We went to our favourite drinking place called the BB cafe (lots of different bars and live singers every night) and enjoyed our last evening in Borneo.

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Comments

[Tino]

Aahhh
I will miss these little updates when you are home! Looks fantastic, as always!

[Kate Harrison]

Daniel sitting near Monkey
I love the pic of Daniel with the monkey close by. It has been great reading your blog, an education for all. Love Mum and John.