Advertisement
Thursday, May 28th
We woke still feeling unbelievably stiff. Our legs got the work-out of a lifetime the last few days. After breakfast we had a few "admin" things to take care of, such as booking and researching a few upcoming trips, blogging, and backing up photos to DVD. We also phoned the bus company to hear if our camera had turned up. It hadn't yet. We just hope somebody who really need it has it now. We're still a little sad about the loss though.
Getting our photos backed up to DVD was near impossible in this town. None of the Internet cafes we could find had DVD writers and the photo shops insisted on doing it themselves, driving Ferdi to near insanity, having to stand there and watch them fumbling their way through what should be a pretty straight-forward process. The first shop copied everything then told us they couldn't write the DVD's because of some technical problem. The second shop copied everything only to realize that the computer couldn't write DVD's so they had to copy everything to another system. At one point Ferdi simply couldn't take it anymore and, ignoring them, took over the process. Someone
then deleted the files before all of it was burned to DVD so they had to copy it again. It took forever, was extremely frustrating and very expensive. More than two hours later we couldn't take it any more. We left them to burn the last DVD and escaped the horror of the photo shop to get a late lunch. Oh how we miss KL and it conveniences!
We went back to our room, Talita did the last of our laundry, then we had a chill afternoon indoors.
Since coming to Sandakan we've not seen many tourists. The people here are very friendly but they stare at us all the time. We must seem very foreign to them.
Today's highlights:
1. Booking a camping trip to Sungai Kinabatangan.
2. Finally getting our photos backed up.
3. KFC for dinner.
Friday, May 29th
This morning we walked to the post office and got rid of 8kg of stuff that we don't need anymore (cold weather and camping gear, some books and a gift for little Keira in NZ). Phew! That's a load off our backs! (literally). It wasn't cheap but it was worth it!
On the
Playing cards with Rusty
...and losi...letting him win...walk back to the hotel we drew a lot of attention from almost every guy passing us. It must be Ferdi's muscular form they're admiring...
Back in our room we packed our day-packs and left our big bags in the care of the hotel. We were supposed to leave at 12:30 but the operator was very late. Finally, at 15:10 we set out from Sandakan for Sungai Kinabatangan, the longest river in Sabah, two hours to the south. Our transport was a private vehicle, with us, the owner Roy and the driver being the only occupants. Roy has only three teeth and laughs a lot.
On the drive we talked about what we'd do if we found ourselves stranded in a strange place and about to be robbed. The reason for this morbid train of thought was a story a fellow traveler, Johnathan, told us. After four days in KL he'd met two ladies, one of whom claimed to have a daughter going to study at the same university he attended in the UK. They asked if he could be a contact for the daughter when she arrived. He agreed and they invited him to lunch at the
woman's house to meet the daughter. He accepted the invitation and soon found himself in a room full of guys who relieved him of everything he had on him. Luckily they didn't find his credit card but he still parted with a good amount of cash.
Another story we've heard was of one couple who met another couple while traveling. They traveled together, sharing rooms, meals and expenses for three weeks. One morning when the one couple woke they found the other couple had left in the night and taken all their belongings. It's a crazy world out there!
After two hours we turned onto a gravel road. The guide book warned that this road is often closed when it rains. After a few hundred meters we could see why. In places there were big ditches and our car, being of the front wheel drive variety, had to creep through these very slowly. We expected to get stuck any moment but luckily we never did.
Camp was right on the banks of Sungai Kinabatangan and we arrived at about 17:30. Here we met our guide Rusty who explained our schedule for the next few days. We were
also upgraded from a tent to a cabin because Roy had misplaced his wallet and needed to borrow some money to go back to Sandakan to pick up more clients the next day.
We paged through some books on Borneo and its wildlife. The book explained that Borneo is the third largest island in the world (it didn't say which the first two is) and it's divided between Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. On this trip we hoped to see the peculiar Proboscis Monkey (also known as the Dutch Monkey). The male has a big, flat nose while the females nose is sharp and pointy. Both male and female have these big round potbellies and they sometimes look like old men reclining when sitting in the trees, elbows propped on their knees and their potbellies sticking out prominently. Apparently they're only found in Borneo.
After dinner Talita and Rusty played cards while we waited for 20:00 when we went on our first night trek in the jungle.
The night rang with the sound of insects and the occasional far of boom from the explosions to keep the elephants out of the Palm Oil plantations. It was an experience
to be in this mushy jungle at night. Talita had unfortunately forgotten to pack her long clothing so she had to trek in her shorts. Fortunately for us, they supplied gum-boots cause it was pretty marshy out there. A few times we sank way past our ankles into the muddy path. Talita also had to stop every few minutes to check for leeches. About 5mins in she found a huge leech on her boot, blindly searching for her leg. This was luckily the only one she found. We wore our headlamps for a full minute then abandoned that idea cause about a billion bugs flew into our faces. We decided to carry the lamps in our hands instead.
Rusty was great at spotting small creatures and we saw a few small Malaysian Blue Flycatchers, four different species of frog, dragonflies, moths, spiders, grasshoppers and some deer spoor.
After an hour and a half we were back at camp. Talita was a little freaked out by the jungle and all the bugs and leeches. After a cup of tea we had a "shower" from a bucket while a big Black-Widow kept an eye on us. Exhausted we crawled into
Black Widow
keeping an eye on us while we're in the bathroom bed where we lay sweating and listening to the mosquitoes buzzing outside the net.
Today's highlights:
1. Making it to Sungai Kinabatangan.
2. Night jungle trekking and seeing the cute leaf frogs.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.09s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 30; dbt: 0.0458s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
