After showering the jungle off, we visited Newlands, the (re-built) house of Agnes Keith, an american author of 'Land beneath the wind', about life in Sandakan during the Japanese occupation. Motivated me to read her books. We took a quick peek at the English tea house, with it's croquet lawn but unfortunately didn't have time to take afternoon tea. The War Memorial, on the site of the WW2 POW camp, was our next visit and, as you can imagine, was a reflective o...

Welcome to the jungle! Our MESCOT guides greeted us on arrival at the village of Mengaris on the Kinabatangan river, with some yummy pancake things. We then cruised the croc infested water to our jungle eco-camp. Our itinerary was to be a wildlife spotting river trip and night walk but the torrential rain had other ideas. I have to say I was somewhat relieved about the latter :0 and the river trip was rescheduled for the next morning. So after a few rounds of th...

Ouchy! Woke up to incredibly tight calves and thighs that felt very sorry for themselves! Hobbled round like Pinocchio taking his first steps as a real boy. But made it to the canopy walk which was high and wobbly, the lovely butterfly enclosure and the waterfall where we put our feet in for a bit of a nibble by the little fishes. We were also treated to a viewing of a 7 petal Rafflesia in it's 3rd day if bloom. I got a picture for you mum :) Yummy dinner follo...

I did it :) I made it to the summit of Mt Kinabalu - the highest peak in SE Asia, at 4095m. It wasn't as 'cuddly Disney character' as it sounds, it was tough going. The first day consisted of a 6km hike (mostly steps) upto 3200m over 5hrs followed by an overnight in the mountain guesthouse. The real fun began at 3am when we set off for the summit. We donned our head torches and hauled ourselves up the 2.7km route via ropes. I reached the summit at 6:30am, shortl...

After recovering from the birthday hangover with room service in a luxury suite near Phuket airport (complete with private roof terrace!) I Arrived into KK via KL and put myself up in the oh so local Novotel for a nights rest before joining the tour the following day. It appeared to be the hotel of choice for Air Malaysia's elegant Air Stewardesses plus the Miss Sabah candidates, which was being held at the attached Borneo1 shopping mall. I felt a tad scruffy in ...