After scaling the heights of Mount Kinabalu I thought that a relaxing river safari would be a great idea. Tried to recover in KK with a massage and an early night, but unfortunately as always seems to be the way when travelling I still had to get up at 5.30am the next morning to get the bus to Kota Kinabatang.

Travelling along on the bus it was overwhelming to see the extent of the palm oil plantations. Where there had once been primary rainforest it was now all logged out and replanted with acre upon acre of palms.

At the pick up point (a kerbside cafe shack) I met a couple of other English people - Lottie and David Robinson who were also doing the river safari. After a couple of hours the minibus arrived to take us to the river lodge with another English guy, Matthew on board. By this point my legs had almost completely seized up... exiting from the speedboat with my backpack on was completely unsucessful as I toppled head first onto the jetty! Pleased that I didn't fall into the river, as much as I wanted to see a crocodile, I didn't want to be the victim!!!

Life was pretty relaxed at the jungle lodge, we started with a river cruise where we saw lots of monkeys - longtail and pigtail macaques, probiscus monkeys and a number of birds including hornbills. There was a night walk through the jungle at 8.30pm where we saw lots of sleeping birds - it's incredible how close you can get to them. The following morning was an early morning river cruise to see more birds and monkeys, followed by a jungle walk. The mossies were pretty ferocious on the jungle walk! We didn't see much wildlife it being the heat of the day, but we did see lots of plants with healing properties including treatment for asthma and malaria. One of the most impressive things was the only surving primary rainforest tree - sad to think that the entire area had once been like that. Both David and Matthrw got leached - Matthew was particularly happy that his leach had not travelled any further up his thigh!!!

The afternoon river cruise where we were joined by a number of new arrivals was definitely the highlight. After the usual monkey antics we were tipped off by another boat that elephants had been spotted further downstream. We set off in hot pursuit and were rewarded by 5 Borneo pigmy elephants munching through the bamboo grass at the edge of the river. They seemed completely relaxed in the presence of the boats and we managed to get very close to them. The jungle walk that evening seemed like a bit of a let down - more sleeping birds and some insects. Another group at the lodge did manage to spot a Malaysian wild cat though - very jealous!

The next day it was back to KK on another long bus ride. Annoyingly I went to the internet cafe and managed to get my iPhone stolen... not having music to listen to for the next 8 months is going to be hard! On a much more positive note, as I was having some BBQ fish at the night market with Lottie and David Sama and Mark found me! They joined us for dinner and then we caught up over a couple of beers on the waterfront. So nice to see them and funny seeing people from home in such an exotic location! Off to Bali via Singapore this afternoon.