Hey there,

So I am sat with the 'The Old Grey Backpacker', as he likes to call himself, in an internet cafe drinking tiger and about to order steaks!

It seems like much longer, but have been with Pops for a week now. He arrived last Wednesday, during the time that we had the Wildlife Rescue Unit at DG darting proboscis monkeys for sampling and hopefully to collar another one for Danica, but they didn't get one big enough. The first morning at DG we planned to go up the canopy platform at 6am, but only remembered that morning that the guide lines to put the rope up had fallen down... So we did a long 2 and a half hour walk along the trails and saw a lot of proboscis monkeys in the trees above us and avoided waist deep water by excellent guidance by yours truly... Over the next four nights I dragged him out with me to follow one of the tarsiers and on the first night I think dad liked her, she was cute and moving quite a bit. He quickly found out that tracking a tarsier for 3 hours can get a tad boring at times as from 4-5.30 am one morning she didn't leave her tree! While I went back to bed, dad was straight out again after our 3-6 shift to batangan to see Becky and two photographers (who had made their own SLR camera trap) set them up at the top of a limestone ridge! During his stay we also went frogging with Josie in the palm oil plantation, crocodile catching (unsuccessfully...) and proboscis monkey surveying.

We then left DG on Monday to travel the four hours to Semporna (not a single thing booked at this point!) where we contacted Mark's friend who arranged for us to go diving on Mabul island. Bit of drama at the beginning as I had lost my PADI card and there was a powercut throughout the whole of Sabah, meaning I couldn't look up my diving number. They didn't seem too concerned though and let us go! The island was nothing like we expected it to be. We stayed in very basic accommodation which was situated on a wooden jetty protruding from the beach (the pic is of dad standing where we stayed) over the water. Although there were row after row of these jetties with different companies, it was so cool! We arrived late afternoon so we wandered around the town on the main part of the island and were casually invited to watch a wedding later in the evening which we did, obviously! It was crazy, in the middle of the street event with mostly kids watching! Was a little bit awkward when we were placed near the front amongst the kids, but later on we had to move back and more adults joined. We left after about 2 hours as it seemed more like a karaoke show with the bride and groom sat on the stage, two local, casually dressed guys singing and random girls getting up to dance and who were then handed money... It was good to see, but after a while we were too hot!

The next morning we both had to do a refresher dive as dad hadn't dived since 2005 and me 2009! Expecting just a sandy bottom while redoing the skills and going through the signals, we were surprised at how much we saw! 5 turtles, cuttlefish, seasnake eel thing, and so many fish! During the day we managed to do another 3 dives and we saw a gigantic green turtle! It was so so big, I didn't know that could get to that size!! We also swam at some artifical reefs which also had so many different fish, moray eels, stone fish, frog fish, trigger fish, lion fish, the list goes on!One of the best experiences was today though, we did two more dives, but on the first one we were swimming along a fairly shallow reef towards the end of the dive when we kept seeing so many turtles! I was watching one swim past me and then I turned around and had another come right up to my face before slowly swimming past me, was amazing!

So we're back to the mainland of Sabah now for our last night together; both a little red and tired! I have to get a 7.30 am bus back to the Kinabatangan tomorrow and dad off to Tawau ready for his flight to KL on Saturday.

Sorry for the little contact recently. The new internet was too good to be true and has now been down for the last 2 weeks or so and Josie text me today telling me it will probably be down for more so I'll update when I can, love to you all!

xxx