Good afternoon everyone!

Well i last left you body weary having just come down from Mt Kinabalu so you would expect me to have perhaps rested up & taken it easy - wrong. I've had a busy 6 days or so but they've been fantastic!

From Pouring Hot Springs we got a bus to Sandakan & went to Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. We arrived in time for the morning feed but only 1 organutan turned up ( we were a liitle disappointed). So we went for a walk & returned for the afternoon feeding time to be greeted by 9 live orangutans! It was amazing, they were so cute & some of them were really putting on a show for the crowd, doing sommersaults & play fighting. One climbed onto a rope near the crowd & got himself into a ball & weed, it was hilarious but everyone took a nervous step back just to be out of shooting range! Most of the orangutans began to disperse after they had been fed but one took it upon himself to come into the crowd. It was so close & kept grabbing people's legs. It even stole a lady's fan & climbed up onto a man in the crowd for a hug, it seems to just want some affection. It was so cute but at the same time this is supposed to be a wild animal & should be discouraged from interacting with humans for it's own safety (and ours, they're so strong - the fully grown adult males are strong enough to rip a human in half! Gulp). I got some amazing pictures!

From Sandakan we then went on a river cruise on the Kinabatangan River where we saw various types of hornbills, egrets, owls, macques, probiscus monkeys & kingfishers in the wild. We got up very close with some cheeky monkeys, one had a bottle (no idea where that came from but it was certainly attached to it & carried it around with it). The cruise was along a beautiful river with tropical rainforest fringing it & clear blue skies that turned a dusky pink as the sunset. Beautiful.

After the river cruise we headed South to Semporna where we booked to go diving & snorkelling. Sipadan is the best dive site in the world apparently & is very popular - as we hadn't booked 2 months in advance we couldn't get booked to go diving there (it was also twice the price of diving on the other islands) so we went diving on Mabul & Kapalai islands. It was phenomenal. We saw real live wild sea turtles just swimming around - all i kept thinking when i saw them was Finding Nemo & them saying "totally awesome dude". There were 2 fish swimming underneath the turtles, which is apparently a common occurence, they try to get the left over food. There is a whole other world beneath the ocean, it is simply amazing to see & i'm so lucky to be able to get closer to the life down there now i can dive. There are lionfish, crocodile fish, scorpion fish, massive groupers, tiny glass fish, various clownfish, so many different colours flashing past & the coral is simply gorgeous - i didn't know coral came in so many colours & some of it is so bright!

The next day we went snorkelling to Sibuan (otherwise known as Sunburn Island, as Jo is now aware of). If you were to describe paradise you would come pretty close to some of the islands off the coast of Borneo - Sibuan being no exception. A tiny little island in a aqua-blue sea with sandy palm tree lined beaches. However, nasty sea urchins lurk in the shallows & if you're not looking where you're going (like me) you end up standing on one & have to endure an hour of a nice Malaysian man poking around in your foot with a needle trying to get them out :( Not fun. Despite this i continued with the snorkelling & saw lots of pretty fish but everytime i'm snorkelling i wish i was diving because you can't get close enough or swim fast enough!

We had a 9hr overnight bus journey from hell to get back to Koto Kinabalu - it was full of sick people (I defo now know what a death rattle sounds like) & small children being sick/needing their nappy changed & the bus driver had questionable taste in music that he played ALL night! It was also air-conned to the max so i was super cold. Anyway, we are flying to Singapore tomorrow then onto Australia on 5th September. Exciting times ahead. xx