well hello from KK! aka Sabah! aka Borneo. God knows...I have been here 4 days and am still confused as to what this place is actually called!! lol

Tuesday 20th Oct - I checked into akinabalu youth hostel. Again deceptive from the outside, like most asian hostels seem to be! dodgey looking streets, and little alleyways. It's on Gaya street, which is supposed to be a good area, near everything. Oh, and guess who was advertising in the in flight magazine on air asia..... phoenix lodge and language college! the very place in perth where rick worked for months cleaning toilets and finding dead people etc.... lol that amused me. When I arrived the hostel was empty, she said nobody but me and 3 others were staying there. I took this as a bad sign! thanked god I had only booked 2 nights. But infact it is actually ok, its very basic, but its clean. When it came to evening I got chatting to 2 English girls and bombarded them with questions about trips and KK etc, think I irritated them a bit to be honest! lol then a bloke from Yorkshire called Andy had a chat with me, he was staying in my room. I went for a short walk through the town. I had some really nice noodles and prawn dumplings, ate them quite professionally with chop sticks! lol. I went into a tour office, after walking down by the dock (lots of dodgey looking blokes making kissing noises at me...made a mental note not to come down here at night! lol) the woman was so unhelpful and acted like me coming in, wanting to spend money was a deep inconveniance to her! It seems to be the same old story...the trips are for a minimum of 2 people. bast*rds!! it's like being the only single person on the planet again! lol. I will hunt down some more tour companies tomorrow, and I will have a tour booked in 2 days if it kills me. I had a lovely email from Rick, and chatted to mum on facebook chat tonight.

weds 21st - I didnt sleep well last night, but still woke up at 8am. I had some tea and toast which is included and went online. I am thinking about flying to Sandakan on the east coast, and arranging a 3 night tour, staying in Sepilok, where the orangutan sanctuary place is. Then fly back to KK for 2 nights, might book into a nice hotel so I can chill by the pool, or go cheap and stay in a hostel and just go to the islands for some sunbathing. Then I fly on 30th to Bangkok to meet up with Rick! :-D I found a tour company, and just said sod it, I booked 2 tours, and practically paid for 2 people each time, to cover the "minimum 2 people" balls. It's still cheap, only cost me 70 for both, but it still is irritating. After that I walked to Jessleton point, and got a return boat to Manakan island. There are 5 little islands great for sunbathing and snorkelling around KK, and Manakan is the most developed with facilities eg toilets etc. I mostly sunbathed and layed in the shallow water. I hired a snorkel, but for some reason (bearing in mind, I got in with sharks in Langkawi!!) I was pooing myself about the fish and was really nervous!! I headed back and got into bed around 11pm theres some sort of festival going on, on the street directly outside my window, the music and man talking on the microphone is so loud... wonder if i will get sleep or not lol. we'll see! got to be up early for my tour tomorrow....

thurs 22nd - I woke up at 6.45am got my day bag ready and had some tea and toast. I got picked up by the tourguide (jai...short for jaibon - aka james bond LOL) very sweet guy. I had a large tour mini bus all to myself - a private tour! We drove 2 hours via the crocker range and lovely views, to kinabalu park, where the highest mountain in malaysia, mt kinabalu is. It was breath taking, hard to breath being up so high! covered in clouds, you could eat the clouds! it was weird and wet. We stopped at a large market and handycraft place, that mostly sold cr*p, fruit and veg, and some animals, the little chicks looked so desperate in their teeny cages, I could barely look! I went to say "ahhh rick look at those poor chicks" and then realised he wer'nt there! DOH! Jai made me try some fruit which stunk, and tasted rancid - he laughed and said all westerners hate this taste and smell. I also tried some rambutans - very nice like lychees, sweet and tasty. rambutan means hair of the jungle, because its bright red and hairy, so orangutan means man of the jungle - I never knew this. We went to the parks exhibit centre, and then to the botanical gardens, where I saw plenty of odd looking flowers, which was pretty cool. I also spotted some brightly coloured insects that looked like jewellery, they were very pretty. We then stopped and paid a fee to see the world's biggest flower, the rafflesia - a very strange looking thing indeed. It looks like a huge wax octopus. They are very hard to come by, and only seem to grown in this area of sabah, directly 500m above sea level. They last 4 days, so they are pretty special to the people that live here. a golden money making opportunity! but the people work hard preserving the little baby buds in the ground until they grown into a huge pumpkin looking thing, then eventually open and bloom, then die after 4 days!! We had lunch at a chinese restaurant, and then headed for the "poring hot springs" poring means bamboo in malay. This place was a bit of a let down - I was expecting waterfalls, deep hot volcanic water pools, natural surroundings. NO.... it was like a crap version of roman baths. Teeny mini little bath tubs, with 2 taps, one cold and one hot, sulphurous water....erm it's heated by underground pipes!! I went on the rainforest walkway canopy - dodgey swinging bridge, which was a bit rubbish compared to some of the walks we did in Oz. I was not asked if I wanted to see the bat caves or the waterfall! but I was knackered anyway, and it was a long drive back to KK. I got back to the hostel around 7.30pm I ate duck and rick in the hawkers food place next door which was lovely, and fell asleep after a nice cold shower! Got my 2nd tour tomorrow, but its an evening one.

Friday 23rd - Well what a bloody morning!! I was trying to upload my photos to no avail, so decided something was maybe wrong with the USB Ray gave me. I headed out to every camera shop I could find, eventually after nearly 2 hours of walking back and forth, I found a man who was nice enough to help me out. He concluded that my memory card, which was new that we brought in singapore - had a virus on it!! it wiped all my photos. So he took an hour more salvaging them, while risking the virus on his laptop! then transferring them to a new memory card for me. I bought the memory card, and also a 4gb data traveller, so i can save anything on that. I just ahd enough time for some lunch and to try and get some photos on again. Then at 2pm Jai arrived to drive me 2.5hrs south of KK to the klias river. I had a welcome drink and some cake, then got given a life vest and was told to climb aboard! we had a rive cruise for 1.5 hrs, which was fun. we saw all the mangroves and quite a few probiscis monkeys in the trees (ugly looking things with huge long saggy noses and massive tummies - google it!) We saw a few other types of monkeys, and me with my david attenborough eyes spotted them all first making the boat turn round so we could all see lol. We didnt see any water buffalo crossing the river! we sped back during a brilliant sunset for some dinner, a malay style buffet - not great, but ok. Then it was night time, the moon was not too bright, and you could see lots of stars, and even the milky way, it was brilliant. We headed out quietly into the darkness. Then all of a sudden we saw them! millions of fireflys flashing in the mangrove trees, they looked like xams trees, it was really beautiful. Jai even caught one in his hands, when you put the torch on them, they are the size of tiny ants! but the light they give off is amazing. It was a great end to a good trip, just a shame it couldnt have been longer. We made our way back, whilst chatting to Jai about england, malay and lots of things.

And so here I am! I have a day off tomorrow to relax. Then the next day i fly to Sandakan. Mummy has kindly paid for me to do my 3 day tour in Sepilok. SO expect lots of cute photos of orangutans soon! Right I'm off, take care,

Amy xxxxxx