When we landed in Borneo the heat and humidity really hit us - made china feel really cold in comparison. We jumped in a taxi with an Aussie guy and headed for Sandakan, where we would spend the night before heading to uncle tans jungle expedition.

The next morning we arrived at uncle tans base camp where we met the people we were to spend the next three nights in the jungle with. After some lunch we were all bundled into 4x4s and taken on a very bumpy 2 hour ride into the jungle. We then boarded wooden little boats to take us to our campsite. On our way into camp, on the Kinabatangan River, we saw proboscis monkeys, a snake, kingfishers and macaque monkeys!

We settled into our 5 star huts, no windows, no doors, and a mosquito net over a mattress on the floor! The whole camp is on stilts, with boardwalks between the different huts. That night we headed out for night safari on the river. We managed to spot kingfishers, baby monkeys asleep with their mums and crocodiles! We slept surprisingly well and awoke at the crack of dawn to re-board the boats in search of orang-utans. They did not disappoint and within 20mins we spotted our first orang-utan. We also saw monkeys galore, and more colourful birds you can shake a stick at! That afternoon we chilled in our hammocks before heading out on our jungle trek. It wasn't long before our guide spotted a scorpion; he coaxed it out of the tree before handing it to Rich to hold...priceless look on his face as the scorpion crawled up his arm!

That evening we went on a night trek into the jungle where we saw a Malaysian civet cat...we spotted a second civet cat above our head in the trees. We were also lucky enough to see a black hooded pitta, which is a very rare breed and apparently bird watchers have been trying in vain to seek it out...it was a bit wasted on us, but a cool looking bird! The guide also taught us a trick - if you put a torch at eye level you can see thousands of little sparkles...these were all spiders' eyes looking up at you from the jungle floor! Shelly did her best but definitely kept her socks pulled up for the rest of the trek!

On our second night in camp the heavens opened, we have never seen or heard rain like it! Shelly was quick to wake Rich up when the thunder and lightning struck and lit up the whole hut...unfortunately this meant Rich then couldn't sleep for the rest of the night, while Shelly fell straight back to an excellent night's sleep! So we woke up (Shelly in a great mood after a good night's sleep but Rich looking a little worse for wear!) and today was our 3 year anniversary, it started with our last jungle boat trip.

One again we managed to spot soooo many monkeys, orang-utans and other jungle creatures including rhinoceros beaked hornbills (like zazu out of the lion king), an eagle, and the monitor lizard the size of an alligator! We then began our trip back to base camp, from there we jumped on a bus to Lahad Datu where we thought we could get a connecting bus to Semporna (best diving and snorkelling site in the world). Unfortunately the buses stopped at 4.30pm and we arrived at 5pm, so after consulting the lonely planet and realising we were in a seaside town which was still run by pirates, we made the best of a bad situation and checked into the only hotel in town! It turned out to be quite luxury by our standards and we had an excellent anniversary night of room service, bed picnics and as much ice cream as we could eat!

The following morning it back to the bus station to get a bus out of this horrible town and to the marine life of Semporna.