After leaving Singapore I got a bus across the causeway into Malaysia to catch a flight out to Sabah in the Malaysian part of Borneo. Arrived in Kota Kinabalu (the regions capital) and found my way to a nice hostel. Kota Kinabalu (KK) is just like any other asian city and there's nothing much to do in the town itself. Spent a couple of days just relaxing and experienced a Borneo night club. I can't say it was very different to any other night club in the world but the lethal lemon gin we'd been drinking did mean I couldn't get out of bed for the whole of the next day! So after wasting a day in bed I was determined to do something so took a boat out to the island of Manutik in the Abul Rahman National Park. Takes about 20 minutes to get a boat to this group of islands an they are like paradise islands, except that you can sit on the beach and still see the city of KK. Spent the whole day swimming, snorkelling and chilling out. That night was the start of the harvest festival so the whole city was rehearsing for a big party the next day with trafitional costumes and dancing.

It was an early start the next day to go to Mount Kinabalu National Park. I got myself on a bus and ended up just sitting there for 2 hours, then to be told we needed to change buses from the nice air con one we were on to a beat up old thing. Grr! The driver must have been well over 100 and had a tendency to veer to the right. The bus had to go into 1st gear for even the slightest of inclines. All in all it was a long journey to the mountain, which was completely covered in cloud by the time I got there. I'd decided not to climb it as it's quite expensiveand spent the rest of the day walking all the trails at the foot of the mountain. From there we meant to travelon the next morning to a town called Sandakan. So we sat by the roadside and tried to stop a bus. We waited and waited and waited. After 6 hours we'd managed to travel just 20 km down the road. Apparently because of the festival all the buses were full. We ended up going back to KK for the night to try again the next day.

The next morning we just made it onto a bus thanks to 2 people not showing up. 6 hours later it dropped us off at Sepilok, the home of the orangutan sanctuary. We were staying at Uncle Tan's B&B which runs a jungle camp that we were leaving on the next day. The orangutans were just brilliant! About 5 showed up at the feeding time. They were there for a while before the food showed up playing and messing about. There were loads and loads of people there but I got so absorded in the orangutans I didn't notice them after a bit. They got fed milk and bananas and one of them tried to make off with the whole milk tray! Then the monkeys showed up and the orangutans ran off.

From Sepilok we went to Kinabatang, a river and rainforest area with lots of wildlife. We spent 2 nights at a jungle camp. It was pretty basic, just wooden huts with mattresses on the floor and a mosi net. The camp was also swimming in med up to knee deep in some places. But it was brilliant. We got to go on 3 river safaris including a night one, a jungle trek and a night jungle trek. The night trek was the best though a bit eerie at first. We saw scorpions, frogs, birds, millipedes, and a snake which is apparently quite rare to see. On the river safaris we saw lots of monkeys, including the rare probscis monkey with the funny big noses. Also owls, crocodiles, kingfishers...more than I can remember. But best of all was a family of wild orangutans, mum, baby and dad. That made my trip!