25th January We got up and left the village stay pretty early much to everyones relief (now very smelly and dirty) and drove to Sandakan. The journey gave us a good idea of the amount of rain forest cleared for palm tree plantations. On the way in to Sadakan you could see all these houses on stilts that were built over what can only be called a swamp of filth it looked hideous. I didn't like this town much, it was filthy and the malays stared at us and approa...

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 ...

Well on arrival we were slightly disappointed with the hot springs - we had pictured these lushious hot pools of water but actually found skanky baths that all the locals used and you just turned the taps on to fill them with water. It would take, I reckon, about a day to fill one up!!! I had a room to myself here which was good, it wasn't clean and I had a resident gecko but I didn't mind that as I was banking on him to eat all the bugs - there were thousand...

We drove over to Mount Kinabalu Park and stayed in dorm rooms which compared to other accomodation was pretty good - it was clean!! We were due to start the mountain early the next morning so we just walked on some short trails near the head quarters; we than discovered there were leeches!! I got one on me but managed to spot it early so grabbed it, then got it stuck to my finger then tried to flick it off and got it stuck to the other finger!!! Finally got it of...

Well I arrived in Borneo safe and sound and geeze after a relatively cool Thailand this place it so hot and humid - you can't walk to the end of the street without being covered in sweat! I flew into Kota Kinabalu and met my new intrepid group; 2 english couples, 1 australian couple and 2 Danish girls travelling together, and 4 solo travellers; me, Dave an English bloke (40 yrs old), Jodie who's australian and Siv from Norway. It's a good group, I like everyone...