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Our hotel in Sepilok, Uncle Tan's B&B, was good preparation for our jungle camp! It was very basic and home to many creepy crawlies! We slept with one eye open to check for any unwanted visitors in the night.However, the location couldn't be beaten as we were just a few minutes from the Sepilok Orang-utan Centre. The sanctuary has been set up to help rehabilitate injured and orphaned orang-utans (mostly babies) and introduce them into the wild again. They also aim to educate visitors about the animals and how they can help save these wonderful creatures from extinction. It was once said an orang-utan could swing from tree to tree across the whole width of Borneo, but due to destruction of their habitat, to make way for palm oil plantations, many orang-utans are trapped in small pockets of rainforest too small for them to survive. As a visitor to the centre you can go to one of the feeding platforms to see the regular faces at the sanctuary. There are 4 other feeding platforms further into the forest that encourages the orang-utans further away from the centre and to find food by themselves. The ones that still visit the closest platform are the ones who have recently been let into the jungle. We got to see 4 of them on our morning visit.

After a few hours watching the orang-utans at play and learning about them in the centre, it was time for our genuine jungle experience on Kinabatangan River. We arrived at our jungle camp by boat and were shown to our rooms, which were huts on stilts with 3 walls but no door! On the floor of the huts were very thin mattresses covered by mosquito nets; this would be our bed for the next two nights.

Our first excursion into the jungle was a boat trip up the river just before dusk. This is the best time to see the animals as the jungle starts to come alive. As we drifted along the river we spotted Proboscis monkeys (the ones with the big nose), Silver Leaf monkeys, Long Tail monkeys, eagles and giant lizards to name a few. As day turned to night our guide used a powerful torch that illuminated the river banks. Night time is when many of the animals come out, but it also makes the experience a little scarier as you can't see your surroundings!! The guide amazingly spotted tiny eyes glowing up in the trees and after a while we were able to see what he had spotted. Our first spot, after dark, was a clouded leopard in a tree only metres away. These creatures are very rare; our guide had only seen one in the last year. We also saw baby crocodiles, frogs, owls and wild cats.

Back at camp, we settled down in our 'beds' to try and sleep! With only a mosquito net to protect us, the jungle noises closed in around us. At midnight the single electric bulb went out, leaving us in pitch black! It wasn't as daunting as it may sound, but sleeping in 30 degrees with 90% humidity made it that little bit more difficult.

We were woken up at 6am for our morning river safari and had our first encounter with a true wild orang-utan. It was amazing to see such a beautiful animal and as he looked back you could see how almost human they are (96.4% DNA match) and how important it is we try and protect such an animal.

Next was our jungle trek, which actually was more of a jungle walk as we really didn't venture much further than an 800m loop under the forest canopy! We were warned to watch our step, as the jungle floor is home to many snakes, spiders and scorpions - some of them deadly! This did not instil me with a lot of confidence! Only a few minutes in to our walk, the guide started poking around in a hole in the tree to produce, hey presto, a huge scorpion right under my (James') nose! He let it crawl over his hand and offered it to the rest of us; no one took him up on this, surprisingly!

Several boat trips later (where we saw many more monkeys) our second evening arrived and it was time for the activity we most dreaded…the night jungle trek! Luckily, the trek only involved wondering off the camp's board walk to do a short loop amongst the trees. In the end, the trek turned out to be quite fun!! Every time something moved people would jump. There were bats flying over head and spiders everywhere. We found some kingfishers perched on branches, which we had clearly woken up, but apparently their night vision is not the best, so they stay as still as possible rather than fly off!

The next morning we were up again at 6am for a morning boat ride, before we left the jungle. We were serenaded by the camp staff who sang to us, as we sailed off back to civilisation and hopefully, a shower! The small things like that made the whole experience brilliant - I'm sure at the 5 star lodges further down river, they didn't get that!