Got up really early this morning with the hope of getting a cancellation on going to Pulau Selingaan - Turtle Island, for the night. We rang pretty much constantly from 8am till 9.30am but got no answer! Frustrating!

Oh well, plan B...

Hire a car again as what we planned to do yesterday - this time though we rang ahead and made sure they were open and booked a car!

We picked up our Kancil 850, sweet. It had done over 140k - maybe a little bit more as the dial was stuck,and the speedometre didnt work! The glove box also fell off when Dave touched it, the radio didnt work, the steering wheel felt as if it was about to drop off and it wouldnt go into 3rd gear - all for £15 though so cant complain. We named it 'Chug'.

Now, driving in Malaysia is a lot like driving in England, only a flashing indicator means either, 'I'm about to turn off' or 'You are safe to overtake' or 'I'm about to do something completely unpredictable' or just simply 'I've forgotten to turn my indicator off!'.

After driving to the turtle shop and booking the trip in person we started the drive to the Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary. We drove about 30km out of town on the highway and turned onto what the leaflet describes as a rough gravel road for 15km. We agreed with the length of the road, but as it took us over an hour to drive down, our description would be - Pot holed, mud filled, extremely bumpy, hazardous dirt track, only to be attempted by 4WDs or monster trucks!

But between Dave's driving skills and about to blow up Chug we managed to get to the monkey centre.

Proboscis monkeys are only found in the wild on Borneo. They are funny looking fellas with huge noses, pot bellies and the males have bright red willies!

In the sanctuary, there were also Silverleaf monkeys which are friendly and naughty maqaques, which Dave constantly kept on pronouncing wrong (like mackackee) and the guide corrected him every time.

We watched the Proboscis monkeys feed and play for a while before heading back before it got too dark to navigate down the ridiculous road.

Chug, again faired well for the start of the journey, not being bothered by the rocks hitting the underside of the engine and handling OK when sliding through the deep pits of mud.

At several points in the road the track goes in 2-3 different routes through the mud and you need to work out which one is the best to use. We chose the route that looked flat and had no tracks. It turned out to be extremely deep mud! Oh dear! Chug got stuck. We freed it for a split second to then get stuck again, deeper! So there we were, stranded in the middle of nowhere, about 30 mins from sunset, in the middle of Borneo.

A few people drove past us in tractors and trucks and looked at the stupid tourists stuck in their little car, but no one stopped to help. Just when we thought this was us for the night, 2 young workmen appeared in CAT diggers and although they spoke no English they managed to push the car free whilst Dave drived and Claire got stuck in the mud outside and couldnt move whilst the wheels of the car sprayed mud all over her!

After setting us free, one of the lads drove down the road in his digger and dug up the whole road and flattened it, causing a small traffic jam but ensuring that Chug would make it. It worked and we thanked them making it to the main road just before dark! That was fun!

Knowing that the rental company wouldnt appreciate Chug being returned covered in thick mud, we decided to wash him, of course there are no jet washes or anything in the small town of Sandakan, Borneo, so we went to a supermarket parked under a light in the carpark, bought a 5.5l bottle of drinking water and a kitchen towl and washed Chug down - well as much as we could do, we were unable to remove the streaks of brown mud from all over it! Ooops.

Dropped the car off at the airport, luckily the shop had already shut so we posted the keys and legged it!

What a fun day.