helenlb

I leave for the homeland tomorrow. Sad times. I did go to the lake place in Sumatra. It's called Lake Toba and apparently it's the biggest lake made from the hollowy bit of a volcanoe in the world. It was massive with these stunning cliff faces around it. I stayed on a huge Island in the middle called Samosir Island. The people there were lovely, like the book said. It was very odd turning up though. You have to get a boat from a town called Parapat. The main hill there from the bus stop to the harbour is full of hotels and restaurants. But they're all completely deserted. It's like a ghost town. There's nothing wrong with quiet little towns and villages, but it was so odd that you could see it used to be ... read more

I've done so much traveling over the last few days. And the last week or so before I was going out every night so I'm starting to forget my own name. No not really, I quite like long journeys. I guess that helps when you're traveling. It's nice to just sit and look out of the window and think and read and listen to music. Good way to clear my head. But it is tiring. So we had a couple more days in Ko Toa. Beaching and partying and hanging out. The group of guys I was with were awesome. Then we had to part ways :( Me and the 3 girls headed down to Ko Phi Phi together. To do that we decided to travel by night. The night ferry was surprisingly cool. It was ... read more

White water rafting was brilliant. The river I went on curved right through the rainforest and it wase all white and rapidy. don't really know how to describe it - we paddled over massive choppy waves and spun around and fell in the water and so on. Lots of fun. I had a rather interesting trip there though. Transfers from Kota Kinabalu were inculded, so they picked us up in a minibus, then put us on a bus - normal enough - then we got to where the train was supposed to be but it had crashed. So instead, we sat 2 each on a wooden board thing, like one of the sides of a wooden crate, which they attached to the train tracks. A Malaysian man preceded to stand on there with us and push ... read more

Ok. So. I had a pretty cool few weeks in Borneo all in all. It's a beautiful place (well, what I've seen of it which isn't very much considering it's the 2nd biggest Island in the world). Full of lush rainforest, or sadly more often, palm oil plantations and really traditional looking villages made up of wooden stilt houses. I saw some kick ass wildlife too. My last day in the little village I was staying in, they took me on a river cruise and we saw trees full of silver leaf and proboscics monkies - very funny looking creatures, long tail macaques (saw some grooming each other awww), a baby orangutan and its mummy, two hornbills kissing, a few other birds and stuff. Plus I've seen all kinds of beautiful butterflies. Some get to brilliant ... read more

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 ... read more

Just arrived in Singapore Airport. That and the one in Bangkok have been maybe the fanciest airports I have seen so I'm feeling a little out of place in my travelling gear and walking boots which I annoyingly have to wear on all flights because they're so bulky. Air Asia was cramped but very efficient. People hadn't even finished taking their seats when it begain moving. It was basically a nice bed in the sky for me though. looking forward to going back to my hotel and having a hot shower for the first time in weeks and then going to bed and exploring the city. The rest of my time at the wildlife centre was a lot of fun. The atmosphere changed quite a bit, I think mainly because a lot of Brits all happened ... read more

I've got guns! I can't believe it - I've always had the puniest arms ever but from all of this lifting baskets of elephant food and poo and going "banana picking" (very misleading because we don't pick bananas in the slightest; we carry the entire trees onto tractors in the hot Thai sun) for the first time ever I actually have visible arm muscles. I can't stop tensing them. My whole body feels like I've been really using it. It's really good. It's almost the end of my time in the wildlife sanctuary now and it's gone very quickly. Once I recovered from my injuries/illness and some more newbies came that I got on well with everything got much better and it's been a lot of fun. Life outside of the centre primarily consists of trips ... read more

I arrived in elephant land on Tuesday. It's actually part of a big wildlife rescue centre full of all kinds of amazing animals like Gibbons, Macaques, a Tiger, Crocodile, monkey, Hornbills, Bears and of course Elephants. Not exactly peaceful but still a really cool place. It's built in an ex Mango Grove so the whole place is full of Mango trees and falling Mangoes. Mangoes are not usually my favourite fruit but I have grown to like them much more after smelling the lovely sweet, fresh mangoey smell of the mornings. However, they fall reeeally hard from the trees and make enormous bashing sounds so I'm genuinely quite worried about one landing on my head. I take my life in my hands just leaving my room each day. The people in the centre are generally really ... read more

Well the main news is that I had a moped accident a few days ago which means I'm spending a couple of days recovering on my own in Bangkok as I wasn't really fit enough to go and help elephants and the journey there etc (I'm supposed to be doing 3 weeks volunteering now), though hopefully I'll go tomorrow or the day after. It's amazing how many Thai people see all of my dressings and bandages and say "motorbike?" as apparently it's pretty common here. I haven't broken any bones or anything - just some bigs cuts, lots of small cuts, a few sprains, a healthy number of bruises and a big blow to the head (but fortunately we'd decided to be a bit square and wear helmets!). Sadly I was sharing a moped with Emma ... read more

I went trekking in Phutoei National Park this week so that was good fun. We trekked up a couple of big waterfalls and a hench mountain that was practically vertical. It was pretty cool being in the jungle because it really does look all jungley like you see in pictures and it's full of the noise of all kinds of different birds and insects. We didn't see much wildlife however, which was good and bad as I suppose I wouldn't have enjoyed being attacked by vicious beasts. We did see a hench snake and probably every variety of ant imaginable though. And lots of interesting caterpillers and butterflies. There was one maaasive butterfly actually that I thought was a small bird at first. Very exciting. Our campsite was at the top of a hill surrounded by ... read more