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Published: August 7th 2013
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Hello! Mrs and Mrs Pale reporting in! Sooo...there was another half to the Borneo tale but frankly we've done a whole other country since then so I'll just tell you my two favourite parts.1) Turtle Island. There are a group of islands off the East coast of Borneo that are working hard to conserve the turtle. We visited one overnight where we saw the turtle hatchery, then the mother actually laying her eggs, then we released the babies from the hatchery into the sea under the cover of darkness. Really really cool to see!
2) Kinabatangan
River trip. We had heard rumours that you get to see pigmy elephants on the shore of the river but it wasn't our day unfortunately. Instead we saw thousands of monkeys; proboscis, pig tailed macaques and long tailed macaques. We also witnessed the orang-utan in the wild! A mother and two babies were clinging to a palm tree eating the emerging shoots. The excitement of the guide made us soon realise that we were lucky to see them!Unfortunately a lot of the wildlife has been forced down to the river rather than choosing to as their natural habitat has been chopped down to make way for palm trees for oil. Farmers have poisoned the elephants to keep them from eating/knocking down the new trees and put barbed fences up around their land. Evidently money means more to them then preserving their country.
On to Indonesia!!
We waved goodbye to Malaysia on the 21st of July and had decided before the plane even touched down that Bali was going to be a holiday
for us! Much sunbathing and drinking, little culture, history or trekking! Just as well really as Bali is seen as an Aussie Surfer's Magaluf. So it began...beach, sun cream, bintang beer, sunsets, lie-ins...bliss! We caught the boat to the Gili Islands after 3 days and continued the theme. Dare I say it, I have actually picked up a bit of colour. I'm still not so sure about Pastey Kate though she'll swear it's so!
The Gili's are the most beautiful and chilled out place we've been. The beaches are white sand, the sea perfect turquoise blue. There is a party to be had in some bar every night. On the journey over we had made friends with 3 Uni girls
who we continued to hang out with. It was good for us as they were on a much tighter budget - however after one night in their cockroach infested accommodation we moved next door and paid an extra couple of quid for air con and cleanliness!
After a few days (months) of persuasion (nagging) from Kate we finally signed up to a trial dive. The dive school we chose were incredible, I made them very aware of my open water apprehension and they said that I could try it out and only pay for as much as I felt comfortable with...of course, we ended up doing the full 3-day course and gaining our Open Water qualification!
Despite my nerves, Serge, our French Canadian instructor made me feel very safe. He explained everything very clearly and we practiced everything in the pool before taking on the ocean. We saw loads of turtles, massive green turtles and slightly smaller hawksbills digging at the coral for food. We saw a reef octopus, that had better colour-change skills than a chameleon and a billion other fish. (Thankfully no sharks- I'm not there yet).
Very proud of myself
and glad Kate convinced me to give it a go. Serge worked for 7 years in Thailand so he's given us some top dive tips for our next stop!
We left the Gilis for Lombok the day after we qualified. Our mates had gone a day sooner and had managed to sort out a deal to climb Mt Rinjani, the second highest volcano in Indonesia. What a bloody hardcore challenge. Probably one of the hardest things I've done to date. 2700m high but 8km slog to get there and that was only the rim. It went higher. Thankfully we didn't. We camped over night, had our dinner cooked and our sleeping equipment carried by 3 porters so I guess we had it easy but it didn't feel like that!
The views from the top were breathtaking. One side displayed the towns below, the ocean beyond and the 3 Gili islands. The other, the crater of the volcano with a mini volcano in the middle and a lake surrounding it. We were blown away.
Unfortunately the pain left from the ascent and descent has kind of clouded my memory of all of the above
and even stepping off the curb is crippling let alone squatting on the local toilets for a number one, or worse number two.
Happy to be back in Bali lying on the beach chilling for a couple of days 😊
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