Although you could go back to the sanctuary often for your daily fix of cuteness we decided to leave and head down to Sukau and check out the river Kinabatangan, which is Sabahs longest river with a huge amount of wildlife on the banks....so we booked into our hostel, and after a bit of negotiation, signed up for an afternoon cruise, night cruise and a nice early morning one, all on a little open topped boat.....we sat down for lunch at 12 when the rain started....we weren't too concerned at this stage as we thought it would be the usual story of rain hard for an hour and then trail off.....so when 1pm came we still have 3 hours to the cruise so no problems...by the time 2 came we were concerned that we were going to be drowned in the boat....same by 3...luckily at about 5 minutes to 4, there was an ease in the rain...and it had stopped by 4.15....so lucky!!!

So we set off in search of wildlife and found snakes, proboscis monkeys (which are only in Borneo), macaque monkeys, an orang-utan and its baby, oriental hornbill and some other birds....all in all a good afternoon cruise. After dinner we set off for the night cruise, mainly in search of crocodiles.....which unfortunately eluded us!!! However we did get to see some kingfishers, owls (including one with a mouse in its claws)...and we had a close encounter with a 3 meter python!!! As we were sailing along it hit the side of the boat, giving us a heart attack!! We then saw it swim to the bank and climb up it where we went for a closer look!! It was crazy and definitely the closest you would want to be to one of them.

That was about it for the night cruise excitement so next up at 6am was the morning cruise....what we really wanted to see were pygmy elephants...but we weren't lucky enough....we did get to see another snake, more monkeys doing their morning monkey business, water monitor lizards and Shane got to have a morning, and much needed, pedicure from the little nibbling fish.

That was about it for our Borneo adventure, we had planned a snorkelling trip but the rain decided to visit again so that put an end to that plan!! Instead we had some really tasty local food, with our first try of roti cobra (a kind of pancake with curry and chicken on top) and laksa (a fish noodle curry) all too hot for Phil but Shane certainly devoured them!! We then were invited to a party in the hostel we were staying in and got to sample more local food and were surprisingly impressed by their ability to drink!! They must have put away 3 bottle of vodka in an hour...drinking it straight!!!!

Next stop Singapore