Okay so during this part of the trip I felt more dirty than ever before!

We travelled 4 hours by bus to Kinabatangen River and a village by it, Mengaris village, batu puteh. We met a representative of MESCOT (model ecology sustainable community tourism) which is a program designed to stop locals from deforestation and encourage them to make money by doing something more constructive (based on tourism). They took us by boat deep into the jungle where we were to stay the night!! We set up our hammocks and went on an evening river cruise - we saw laods of monkeys and some birds also a monitor lizards tail (see pics).

In the jungle it is just so hot and humid, the air just doesn't move, you cover yourself in mossie repellent then you sweat then you move and dirt sticks to you! I was wearing trousers tucked into thick socks to try an aviod the leeches. There were bugs everywhere when I went to get in my hammock there was some big bug the size of my hand crawling up the tree my bed was tied to - under my hammock was at least 10 millepede's (I was assured this was okay as they don't bite or sting!!). We had a night walk to see more animals, lots of people got bitten by fire ants and that was properly painful judging by their screams but I got away unscathed. Went to bed feeling filthy and scared, the mosquito net on hammock was really good though so felt quite safe (I would of rather wet myself than go for a pee though!), the noise at night was deafening but in true form I managed to sleep rather well waking up with a very stiff knee but that's about it (couldn't move at all in hammock due to fear of being tossed out or worse undoing mossie net!).

We had breakfast very early and took another walk looking at the wild life. We then headed back to the jetti by the village (also like village hall) and got distributed out to the local houses - mine was okay as it was right near the jetti but there was around 18 children!! A lot of the mescot leaders came from here so we did have some English speakers to help us! They did however cook us fish for lunch which is a no go for me - sadly no translater around to explain that!

I desperately needed a shower but they shower in the toilet area and it just turned my stomach so I couldn't do it, I remained filthy and sticky I swear I have never longed for a shower so much before! I forgot to mention that due to their culture girls have to wear conservative clothing covering the knees and shoulders - great considering the 35C temperature.

After lunch we went back to jetti and were taken up to some caves (loads of steps lots more sweat) to see where they used to bury their dead hunderds of years ago, the coffins carved of wood were still there but the bodies had been removed (taken to museum). It seemed rather stupid to me to carry these bodies right up the side of a cliff like hill to the caves but there we go!

We then played a game of volley ball with the locals, I was pretty impressive due to Friday afternoon sessions at Hanley so we held them off pretty well, they won 2 games to 1 but they cheated! They all love football so I was pretty chuffed to hold my own in a conversation about that with them (first time I was grateful to Mark for making me sit through night after night of football), they all support Man U, Liverpool or Chelsea - I tried to educate them!

We then had a cooking course, I tried to get in on the cake group but was too slow so ended up on vegetables, poo. We ate our food (pretty good actually) then dressed up in village celebration clothes. The villagers performed dance and music for us then made us join in - somehow due to our western size we all look rather ridiculous!

We went off and stayed the night in our respective village houses, they did give me a net but I think there were bugs in the bed as I woke up with 14 bites on my back and I slept on my back!!!!