Given the state of exhaustion, I was fully expecting to get a solid 4 hours sleep in on the bus to Sandakan - unfortunately I got none. When we finally arrived I was in the worst mood ever and not prepared to be polite to any of the taxi drivers harassing us off the bus. Camilla's ear had not cleared up, and had even got worse since we had visited a doctor in KK, so we decided to head straight for the hospital to get it checked out before we headed off into the jungle for 3 days. It was quite an interesting experience, or would have been if I wasn't so hot, sweaty and exhausted, having been up since 1.30am! We argued a taxi driver into taking us there and wandered round the A+E section with lost expressions on our faces until someone pointed us to a kind of walk-in clinic downstairs. After about 20mins sitting surrounded by staring Malays and screaming kids in what basically looked like an NHS hospital - but grottier - Camilla managed to talk herself to the top of the queue and disappeared to see the Doctor. She re-emerged with a prescription which I obviously double checked for her - all pretty normal stuff! - and we headed off to pharmacy. After a wait which any Pharmacist in my department would be satisfied with we were ready to go, the whole thing for the grand total of RM 15. Bargain. This time, the taxi was not going to be quite so easy as we wanted to stay in Sepilok, to be ready to go early to the orangutan sanctuary. It was already dark and by the time we got out to Sepilok and realised the driver had no idea where the hostel was, we didn't have many options. He just drove us down many long dark countryside roads and finally stopped at the posh resort to ask directions. We arrived at reception minutes before it closed and grabbed a great room with en suite, settling down to a proper nights sleep. The stress continued in the morning as we needed the people from Uncle Tan's to come and collect us, but they wouldn't answer their phone, despite many attempts at calling. We finally got them to come and pick us up an hour after we were trying to and they took us off to the Orangutan Sanctuary. I don't know what I was expecting from this, but I think generally more! Obviously it is a place for wild orangutans to come though, so they can not guarantee hoards of them. We saw one at the feeding platform, which was pretty cool and apart from him there were thousands of long tailed macaques. On our way round the rest of the walkway however, we heard lots of twigs breaking and then saw two more, smaller ones, being plucked from the trees and carried towards the feeding area, so they were taken right past us which gave us a great view. We then watched a video about orangutan conservation and then were pretty much done, theres not much to see! On the way out I bumped into Ben and Becky, who I'd met in the Cameron Highlands and who I'd completely forgotten were going to Borneo. We were collected again by the Uncle Tan's bus which was to take us off to the Kinabatangan river to start our jungle camp. On the way I decided it would be a brilliant idea to try and sort out my original camera, which had broken again, by unscrewing hundreds of those tiny screws with the blade of my Swiss army knife - there were more than I thought and I had to enlist the help of Camilla to hold the screws whilst we bumped along the un-maintained road in the back of the minibus! I hadn't finished the job when we arrived at the river so abandoned it temporarily to wrap up my bags with bin liners and lug them into the boat. It was really hot so the spray off the water was quite refreshing as we sped up the river. After a while, the driver would start to stop and point out animals, birds etc, like long tailed macaques in the trees. Finally we stopped again, this time to look at an orangutan swinging in the branches - an actual wild orangutan - sooooo cool! We pulled the boat up to the mud bank and carefully and inelegantly slid our way up the bank to the grass, where we wandered right up to the tree he was sitting in and stood below it in our flip flops and buoyancy aids! Very surreal. We arrived at the camp, to find a hoard of friendly staff, mainly male, who showed us to our huts. The whole way there they had been emphasising how basic the accommodation was, but it was actually pretty good. Any jungle trip where flip flops are accepted as suitable footwear, to me, is luxurious! The entire camp is built around a network of raised wooden walkways with the huts all being on stilts and having mattresses and mossie nets (but no doors). There was even electricity in the evenings! After wasting most of an hour on my broken camera - and actually finally breaking it properly - I went over for the welcome meeting, then we had a great buffet dinner involving a whole load of unidentifiable meat and vegetable dishes. At this point it started to rain very heavily and we were warned by the people on their second day, that the night trip in the boat is pretty pointless if it carries on raining. It eased off after an hour or so however, so we kitted up - in waterproofs and life jackets and boarded the boat for our night wildlife boat trip. We were split into two groups that we were be in the whole trip - the orangutans and the proboscis monkeys - we were the latter. Our group had me and Camilla, Rob and Liesl from Ireland, two Swedish guys and an American couple. The others had three guys from Verona, two Dutch girls and two French. We saw some birds and a crocodile or two, but not a lot else and when we were pretty much at the furthest point from the camp, the heavens opened again and it belted it down. Our driver turned us round and sped us back as quickly as he could, only making the cold rain in our faces even more painful! After all this rain the river had risen so much we had to climb out on the old gangway - the new one being under water - which meant walking the plank at the top to breach the gap! The following morning we were up early for another boat trip - apparently this is the best time to see wildlife. They weren't wrong! We saw loads of birds - hornbills, eagles, kingfishers - and long tailed macaques. We even saw 2 more orangutans and had another muddy adventure climbing up on the banks to get a better view. This time, one of them decided to poo whilst we watched and the faeces landed like bombs all around us, luckily not on us! After coming back for breakfast we had another trip off in the boat to our jungle trek - which was more of a wander round a few trees in the baking heat with too little water! It was too hot for most mammals to be out and we only saw one pygmy squirrel, but we saw some pretty cool insects - spiders and cicadas - and some interesting plants whilst squelching round in ankle deep mud in our wellies. The afternoon was siesta time and all being exhausted we were out like a light for several hours - avoiding the heat of the Sun. We had another (sleepy) late afternoon boat trip where we saw yet more orangutans and a couple of gibbons - one carrying a baby. More hornbills, more eagles, more macaques. We were getting pretty used to them by now! Our final organised activity was a night hike, which was just in the trees around the camp where we saw some interesting frogs and a kingfisher or two as well as a scorpion, which our guide had on his hand while he talked about it. Luckily it didn't rain nearly as much on this occasion so we did not have the knee deep water that the previous group had had to contend with! The final morning we all got up early again - although I nearly missed the alarm! - and got them to take us on another morning boat trip, which was cool as its normally just the first day guests they take. There was more of the same on this trip but it was good to see some more orangutans and gibbons (by this time we barely even turned round to look at the macaques!) We then packed up all our stuff and head off on the boat back down the river again. Most of us were heading off to Semporna, so the Uncle Tan's lot sorted out a minibus for us, which we piled in and stayed in for several hours of discomfort for the trip down. Great trip, but with two broken cameras in my possession I have no photos to show for it!