Our last day in Balikpapan - and Indonesia - was spent both relaxing and catching up on 'admin' - emails, onward travel plans, laundry….all very glamorous. Also by this point we had heard the news that Prince George Alexander Louis had recently arrived, and catching up on some of the circus surrounding his birth in the UK and US media, we were bemused to see that news of this had even reached the locals in our small corner of the world: when dropping off our dirty jungle clothes to be washed, the owner of the small laundry place asked where I was from, and when I told him he proclaimed excitedly that I had a new baby. I was a bit confused, until I realised that the 'Josh' he was talking about was the newest addition to the royal family. Balikpapan is a decent-sized city but not visited much by westerners, so the last person I expected to have the 'new prince' chat with was the local laundry man!

Another amusing interchange took place that night, while dining at a local street food stall, where we were sat next to a local policeman who spoke some English. He proclaimed his love for Clint Eastwood, the boy bands Boyzone and Westlife, and asked us about the IRA. Certainly a change from being talked to about Premier League football teams, neither of which Simon and I can contribute much to.

So it was farewell to Indonesia, after a fantastic month there. With around 17,000 islands and with so many different cultures, peoples and adventures, there is so much to see and experience in this amazing country, you could easily spend a year there, so a month hardly seemed to do it justice…but seeing around 11 of the 17,000+ certainly gave us just enough of a taste to make it a 'must come back to' - if I can convince Simon to come back a third time anyway, I don't think that should be too hard to do.

Our next stop was Sabah, in the eastern part of Malaysian Borneo - although this wasn't part of our original travel plan, we decided to go there to get in some good jungle trekking that we didn't quite get in Kalimantan. We knew there would be good tourism infrastructure in the Malaysian side, which is maybe something we wouldn't have craved if it hadn't been for our time in Kalimantan - but the main draw also was to try and spot one of Borneo's more famous residents, the 'jungle men' otherwise known as orangutans.

We started off with a two-night stay at Uncle Tan's jungle camp on the Sungai Kinabatangan, Sabah's longest river at 560km whose riverine forest is teeming with wildlife. Founded by 'Uncle Tan', one of the earliest guides and environmentalists working along the river, the lodge was a great spot to explore the river, jungle and accompanying wildlife. Within 5 minutes of our boat journey on the river to get there, the boat's driver spotted a family of orangutans up in some trees on the riverside - mum, dad and junior. A wonderful first sighting, and even more amazing seeing them in the wild….the trip was already worth it!

The camp was a rustic jungle lodge on the side of the river with open rooms and wooden walkways meaning that you felt very much like you were in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by rainforest and all the accompanying wildlife noises. Accommodation was basic (mattresses on the floor under mosquito nets) as were the bathrooms (bucket showers a long walkway away over water) but after all, we didn't want to go from slumming it to total luxury.

The next few days were spent out and about on varying jungle safaris, by foot and by boat, exploring the area and seeing some wonderful wildlife, both night and day, thanks to the camp's great guides. We were lucky enough to see the orangutan family again (I could have gone home happy at that point), as well as smaller monkeys such as gibbons, long-tailed macaques and our familiar friends, the proboscis monkeys. We saw some majestic eagles, a beautiful owl, hornbills, storks and some amazing multi-coloured birds on one of our nighttime jungle treks, who let us get up close to them to take photos because apparently they were busy sleeping. Of the reptile variety we saw a baby croc and monitor lizards on the water's edge - small fry really compared to the komodo dragons we had seen in Indonesia - and some amazing insect life on our treks through the jungle, attached to some of the biggest trees and vines seen on the trip so far. Simon came top of the class with his sighting of a snake on one of the nighttime treks, later identified as a Blunt-Headed Snug Snake.

It was a wonderful couple of days, the perfect antidote to the DIY nature of our wildlife and jungle experiences in Kalimantan! We were happy as Larry with the rustic surroundings of our camp in the middle of the jungle, where we shared our lodgings with the local wildlife, the closest being some very cute turtles outside our room, and the monkeys scrapping in the trees above our rooms. Highlights included sitting and watching all types of monkey magic for hours on end, from the graceful orangutans to the noisy, chattering gibbons, and then the fleet of flying foxes (a type of bat) that flew in their hundreds, perhaps thousands, over our boat one evening at dusk, an eeiry sight as their dark shapes in the horizon never seemed to end. Wildlife 'lows' included the GIGANTIC spider I spotted on the loo roll in the toilet - just in time before I reached for it - which was as big as my hand, and made me give out an embarrassing, 'jungle newbie' shriek in the communal bathroom area. Another low was the proliferation of fire ants in this part of the jungle - a certain type of red ant which I discovered I was randomly highly allergic to, when I was 18 and on holiday in Miami with my boyfriend at the time. That holiday ended in a decidedly-unromantic and dramatic episode with the hotel emergency doctor being called to give me an injection in my bottom to stop the total swelling of my body, which had made me look like Will Smith's character 'Hitch' in the film of the same name during the seafood allergy scene. Flashbacks / worst case scenarios flooded my mind when I first learnt that the fire ants had come back to haunt me, as having never come across them since I have never really had need to carry any treatment, but luckily I jumped away whenever they were spotted and managed to avoid repercussions of that particular incident, no Epi pens / injections in my arse required - definitely best for all involved, I think!

(PS - if there are no pictures accompanying this blog post for a while, it is because access to our own blog is sporadic, thanks to us being back in China again and at mercy to sites being randomly blocked!)