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so this is catch up that i will slowly update over the next few days .... im writing this on the worlds worst keyboard on which all the keys are stuck so it will be short!!! we arrived in a town named Sandakan, a few days after we conquered the mountain as our legs were paying the price chris got out of bed the morning after the descent and promtly fell over!!!! we got lots of sympathetic looks as we sported the well known 'kinabalu hobble' around town - lets just say steps, stairs, hills, up or down, were not on the agenda!!! sandakan was not the liveliest of towns, we really tried but struggled to find anything to do!!! the only highlight were the english tea gardens which were a beautiful spot for a good cuppa and some cake, and about 6 games of croquet (chris won them all!) and then topped it off watching the sunset from the gardens - beautiful and how frightfully english!!! so off we went very excited to Sepilok, the setting for the orangutan sanctuary which was a brilliant day - we had yet to see orangutans so this was a real treat! we watched two really good documentaries on both orangs and proboscis monkeys (fat belles, big noses, like to procreate at a startling rate) and saw the orangs at two feeding times, they were so close, about two metres away and they were amazing!!! so beautiful and so human! some of them really showed off and swung on the ropes and played upto us, some just made a nosedive for the food and milk (good call) and we saw a baby and a massive male, amonst 10 others! the centre was really well thought out and really set rond the needs of the orangs, not the tourists which i thought was great.Even though it is a process which can take years for the deserted or mistreated orangutans to return to the wild, the centres surroundings are just jungle with only one feeding pltform which is visible to the public, and there were so many success stories which were so lovely to hear!! this made us so excited to get into the rainforest so we headed off to Nature Lodge, on the great Kinatabangtan River which stretches for over 500 km across Borneo. The lodge was basic but lovely, and was run by a local family and had a real homestay feel to it!! The guides were amazing and so passionate about the wildlife around the river it was nice to see them taking their own photos and looking up the mammals and birds we spotted when we returned from river trips, treks and night safaris. The early morning river safaris were so good, we saw a wild orangutang on our first trip! i was so excited to see one, especially a dominant male (with the wide cheek flaps) as they are normally hard to spot. We sat and watched him eat breakfast for half an hour and then he swung off back into the jungle. We also saw scores and scores of pigtailed and long tailed macaques, they are very common, and cheeky! it was more like they were spotting us! We saw three different species of Hornbill birds, that was a real highlight for me. i think they are so beautiful and the colours are so vibrant! On the afternoon river trip we observed lots of proboscis monkeys, they are the strangest things! Giant honking noses for the males, the one with the biggest nose seems to have a constant hareem of ladies!! they also have fat fat bellies and sit in such a human fashion, with their hands on their skinny knees, staring at you and shrieking! The night safaris were so creepy and fun, our guides ding and louis (half magician, half scorpion whisperer) were great. walking in silence tripping over everything with a little torch was quite challenging, but its worth it as you see so much more. AS you can see from the photos, no rare sumatran rhinos spotted(!!) but lots of great birds (id never even considered that birds slept?!t was odd to see)and louis made it into a magic show making everyone turn off torches and then would suddenly shine his torch onto some rare bird asleep! he conjured scorpions (poisonous,might i add) out of trees with a stick and some of us held him, it wasnt actually scary but he moved quite fast! Ding had only started the day we arrived hence his expression at holding Mr scorpion!! day treks were great too, trekked to a lovely oxbow lake and saw a giant malaysian squirrel, seriously it was ginormous!! spent the evenings playing cards and relaxing, made some really good friends there, esp two couples from england, who we actually ended up spending the next week with at Sipadan. Kinabatangan was such a highlight of our whole trip, i didnt think it could get better but..... read the next blog!!!!!!!! XX
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