A River, monkeys and swimming.

Kinabatangan river is the most popular and visited way to experience rainforest and see wildlife in Sabah. Everyone we spoke to along the way confirmed it was worthwhile, so we decided to go for one night and see for ourselves. Booking into a place called 'nature lodge', we hot-footed it to the pick-up point only to have to wait nearly four hours for the bus. So, not a good start, but on the positive side, a reminder that we have all adjusted well to humidity!

Anyway, we got to the lodge, J wide-eyed when shown the wrong-room (It was the dorm and it was rank), we gladly headed straight off on the river.

The Kinabatangan is a low-lying forest so not as impressive a rainforest as we've seen so far, but with this wide, lazy river river running through it, it was still a pleasure to be here. Monkeys galore swung in the trees, pig-tail macaques, long-tail macaques and the bonkers looking monkey, endemic to Borneo, the Proboscis monkey. With a permanent erection and a phallic nose, it is no wonder these monkeys are not commonly seen in zoos! One can only imagine school trip chaos! The males have an odd looking fur that really does look like a school-play suit with some old granny tights. Very odd indeed. Owen who by now was well and truly fed-up with wildlife slept through the proboscis sightings on this trip. (A sighting next morning did elicit the statement 'why does his nose look like a willy')

An orangutan sighting was of course wonderful, if not a reminder to us how lucky we had been with our guides so far. This guide, smiley and friendly as he was knew sod all about the animals - H and J knew more about telling the difference between male and female orangs and lent their binoculars to the guide!!

It was the first time in Borneo where we felt like 'cash cows' as this particular lodge really did just ship in the tourists for as much wildlife box ticking as poss, bed them in filth and then ship em off! Ok, lodge rant over - promise!

Missing out on a night walk due to an encounter with the guide who was a little 'scorpion mad' - " I like to pick them up and walk them on my neck - tourists like it" had H and J backing to the bedroom rather quickly, dragging a freaked out O who had had one too many green beetle land on him. It was beetle season on Kinabatangan and there were swarms of them - dinner in the open-sided restaurant did oft beg the question whether the 'curry' had bones in it or beetles!!! (hee hee!)

We rose early (H blaspheming it must be said!) for a 5am boat ride. It was beautiful with the rainforest mist and the awakening of the sounds of animals- monkeyed out however, H, J and O said goodbye to wildlife and rainforests and hot-footed it to the coastal town of Sandakan where a hotel with a pool was promised to O- and goodness did he enjoy it!

This was the place where O decided to remove the water wings and swim. After that moment there was no stopping him. Head down, grasping his breathing technique, he was off! Very proud parents stood speechless! We decided to stop here for a few days and just let O have a load of splashing, playing - and off course swimming before we head off to Japan.

We had planned to head off from Sandakan to a turtle sanctuary, but one more wildlife viewing may have turned Owen into an obsessive carnivorous hunter!!

Thoughts of getting to Singapore one day early to sort some stuff out for Japan were dumped owing to Iceland's little eruption -the prospect of hotels chocka with stressed-out travellers kept us in Kota Kinabulu an extra day - H pleased as there is a market tomorrow specialising in beads- J worried as there is too much space free in the backpacks owing to a severe dumping of stuff to make light bags for Japan!