We had booked a 3 day/ 2 night trip to Nature Lodge in the rainforest alongside the Kelibatangan River...for those of you who know about Kims fear of spiders this may seem a strange choice...

Dee joined us on the trip which was advrtised as a 'back to nature experience' with 5 river cruises, 2 night walks into the rainforest and a 3 hour day trek into the depths of the jungle. The trip was really good - the river cruises allowed us to see Orang-utans in the wild plus Proboscis mokeys with big noses which are only found in Borneo. The jungle trek was hard work - trails were very muddy and we had to wear wellies - Mark was cursing the fact that his boots were 3 sizes too small and one had a big hole in it!

We have to confess that we were both quite scared about the prospect of night treks...Kim had images of spiders raining down on her from trees and Mark was worried that one torch was running out of batteries and the wind up torch only lasted 3 minutes at a time! In the end we only saw two spiders (both safely on leaves) and these were small compared to the dinner plate image Kim had in her head and so were quite tolerable. We also saw a Civet cat, sleeping kingfisher, grasshoppers and stick insects and found a large milipede that smelled of marzipan. Quite a strange experience 10 people standing in the forest at night sniffing an insect! Mark was quite disturbed to discover a leech on his stomach when we got back to camp. Kim masterfully dealt with it, only narrowly avoiding it slipping down into his boxer shorts (that would have been nasty!)

All in all a good trip and we met some nice people including Claire and Dave, an Irish couple who gave us great tips about Cambodia and who were foolish enough to have booked to climb Mount Kinabalu the following day....!