So we left the beautiful state of Sarawak and flew east to Kota Kinabalu, in Sabah, the smallest state in Borneo. Sabah is not as rich in culture as Sarawak is, but still has breathtaking scenery and weird and wonderful wildlife. We pitched up home in a very basic lodge and headed out to explore the city. We must say that it wasn't exactly the nicest of places. The road layout didn't make any sense, the city didn't have a hub or a good vibe about it. It was dirty and was the first place that we saw cockroaches!!! After discussing what we could do, that would involve getting out the city, we did a two night stay at a nature lodge which was by the river past Mount Kinabalu in the area of Kinabatangan. After a very nuasating 6 hour bus journey we were thrown off the bus at a pick up point in the middle of no where, where we had to wait for our guide to pick us up. I ordered some food at one of the cafe's and soon regreted the thought when i found a dead fly in my food! NICE!! (however this would explain the lack of people in the cafe we were sat at comparatively to the one across the way that was packed!? Thankfully the mini bus arrived with a batch of people and we were on our way to the Lodge. We got to the Nature Lodge, which was set in a beautiful forest and were shown to our chalet, which was defintly the high end chalet. We didn't have much time to get settled as the river cruise was off in an hour so we walked down the jetty and on to the boat for a wildlife cruise. We saw everything: proboscis monkeys, long tail macaques, pig tail macaques, a hornbill and a herd of pigmy elephants. The elephants were just so cute and absolutely beautiful. We then cruised back to the Lodge for dinner and a late night jungle walk, which Marcus and I kindly declined as the reason we gave was that we were tired when in actual fact I was not down with the leeches!! I'm glad we didn't go as the group of travellers we met were so lovely and we quickly made friends with a couple of guys who we plan to meet up with in Thailand (one Argentine and one American, both of which have a love of Brasil and speak portuguese).

We had an early start for another river cruise where we saw more monkeys causing mischief in the tree's and an alligator on the water side. We headed back to the Lodge for breakfast and then prepared ourselves for the walk to OxBow Lake through the jungle and the leeches!! After we donned our leech socks and wellies we trundled through the mud and the planting and a few feet in we dodged the most enormous spider web I have ever seen, which housed the biggest spider I had ever seen! we quickly moved on through the mud and came to a lovely rest area at Ox Bow Lake, where we saw an unusual bird that when fishing in the water looked like a snake bobbing up and down.....very odd. We rested our feet for a few minutes and put more deet on and ventured back in to the sludge.

We had some lunch when we got back and then had some free time to have a nap. When we got up we went over to the communal area and greeted more travellers new to the lodge who by the way were misreable as hell as it was pouring with rain. We then got ready for.....yeah you guessed it another river cruise.........although this one was very wet and we only saw monkeys!!! After having another comfortable nights stay at the Lodge we had our last river cruise where we saw otters, monitor lizards, pythons and more monkeys!!!! We then bid the lovely staff at the Lodge fare well as we looked forward to another nausating 6 hour journey back to the grim city of KK. I hasten to add that when we got back we very soon left for Bangkok!!!

In a nut shell Borneo was incredible and we are so glad we did it, but its definitely an adventurers dream....so come prepared (unlike us). It's expensive comparative to the rest of South East Asia, but still much cheaper than the UK. If you ever come here then you just have to use a city for a base then go on day trips or stay at a Lodge like we did, or indeed camp out in the numerous mountains and National Parks there are. The terrain is largely untouched and protected, so this makes it hard to get around. Islam is the main religion so public displays of affection are out and covering up a little if your a woman is advisable. I loved Malaysia, but I'm glad to be going back to a country I have been to and love so much, as there is still so much left to see in Thailand.