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Hello everyone!
Firstly, thank you for all of the birthday wishes, I had a great day but will get to that later!
After having a few quiet days of habitat analysis and night surveys, the last few days became a lot busier! On the 16th the three of us from Cardiff went with Mark and Budin to visit a plantation which had a small patch of forest within it. After getting up at 4.45am, 40 min boat ride and 3 and a half hours in the car we finally made it to the plantation. The place was huge, 55,000 acres. It was such a strange place and from seeing the vastness of plantations from the roads, being in one seemed like they were so much bigger. It had its own little community with villages, clinics, clubhouses, dormitories and mills all within the plantation, it was so strange. Also, driving along the dirt track roads with trees either side kind of made me feel like I was in Jurassic Park, I don't know why... We went to the patch of forest which compared to the plantation is tiny, only 100 acres, but the guy said that orangutans live in it. The purpose of the trip was to see how a plantation ran and to potentially go back and assess what is living within the forest there using camera traps and doing surveys. It was a long day and we got back at 10pm that night, but it was interesting.
The next day we were up early again at 4.45 to help Valou with her proboscis surveys and habitat analysis, but were back by 6am when it started to rain. After having a nap on the floor in main building and having some lunch we were back out to finish the plot! On the 18th myself, Josie, Becky, Valou and Frenchie all went to Sandakan as it was Frenchie's last day and Valou was going to KK for Christmas. We spent the day looking around Sandakan markets and in the afternoon visited an english tea house. Was on top of a hill looking out to the sea with really nice gardens and even a peacock. We had cream tea, apple pie, bread and butter pudding, sandwiches... So after we digested that, we had a game of croquet, I won of course. In the evening we went for a drink on the water front before going to the Nak hotel which has a rooftop bar. Don't worry, the events from Singapore weren't repeated. But we did have a really nice evening drinking cocktails (no singapore slings!) and eating pizza. It was a great way to start my birthday and for the rest of the day we came back to DG where it was a bit quieter with just me, Josie and Becky. It was nice though and we had birthday cake and they kindly bought me a new purse! So I had a really nice birthday, was so surreal with it being sunny and seeing crocodiles and an orangutan!
Now it is the 20th and it is a day of organisation before we leave for Thailand tomorrow! I've washed allll of my clothes and now doing some typing up of some data, too excited!
Hopefully I will be able to update you while in Thailand, but I will be with Sophie Miles so I may be having a little bit too much fun. I will try my best!
Happy Christmas,
Lots of love
xx
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