Leeches, Crocs and Primates

No ladies and gents, we're not in the Printworks on a Saturday night, we've been to the jungle!!

After leaving Semporna (the nasty town with unreliable cash machines) where we got back from diving, we travelled north to the town of Sandakan which was to be the springboard for our foray into the Borneo jungle. We eased ourselves in lightly with a trip to Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, where you get to see the orangutans feeding twice daily.

It was amazing to see them swing in on the ropes provided, in fact, they looked almost human!!

After the feeding we attempted to walk the nature trail, but as it's rainy season here in Borneo, the paths were flooded and we didn't have closed shoes on. We tried, but only got about 10m in before we had to turn back. We then watched a video for about 40 mins on the work of the centre, which was actually really good to see.

After the video, I looked down at my feet (shoes had to be left at the door) to see a leech sucking on one of my toes!!! In my version of the story the leech was about 4 inches long and drained a pint of blood out of me. In Caroline's version (reality) it was about 7mm long and probably to 1-2ml. Still a scary experience as the little sucker wouldn't come off!!

After the trauma of being 'leeched' it was then time for our real jungle experience - Uncle Tan's!!

Uncle Tan's is the real jungle experience, we had 3 days and 2 nights living deep in the jungle sleeping in open huts on the floor with only a mozzie net for protection! It was basic to say the least with no running water (just the croc infested river) and electricity for only 3 or 4 hours a day, but we had a great time and got to see orangutans in the wild as well as the probiscus monkey, (only found in Borneo) a crocodile and various bird species.

The camp was run by around 25 of the most enthusiastic 17-25yr olds we have ever seen, who all loved the jungle and its nature. They also loved to play guitar and sing 24/7!!

After we had emerged from the jungle, we took a 6 hour bus to the capital of Malaysioan Borneo, Kota Kinabalu (KK) where we stay until Sunday when we fly to Penang. There is still lots to do as we're white water rafting tomorrow then searching out the Poring hot springs Friday and Saturday.

Sorry no photos on this blog yet - the computer we're on is so bad, I can't even get the photos off, so we'll update this post as soon as we can with pics from the jungle.

TTFN, R&C