Borneo...

is SO expensive. (like, Canada expensive) But it has definitely been worth it!

Our adventures began in Indonesian Borneo in a city called Tarakan. We were mainly just there in transit (although, it didn't really seem like there was alot to see anyway). From there, we hopped on a boat with some crazy friendly Indonesians who were travelling in a massive group for a weekend holiday in Kota Kinabalu). They shared their food and water with us and some of the guys taught Andrew how to play a local card game! We arrived on the Malaysian side and caught a bus straight up to our first stop; Semporna.

Most people visit Semporna for the world-class diving on the islands just off its coast (particularly Sipadan)..and we were no different. (actually, we only wanted to snorkel -same same!) However, we arrived to discover that we were supposed to have booked snorkelling on Sipadan 2 weeks - 1 month in advance. Oops. The island is a national nature reserve and the government limits the number of people visiting the island to 120/day (and charges a heck of an entrance fee as well!) Luckily, there had been a cancellation and 2 spots opened up for 2 days after we got there. Unfortunately, because we're crazy, we didn't have 2 extra days to wait about Semporna so in the mean time we hopped on a bus (5 hrs) to Sepilok to see Orangutans, spent the night in Sandakan and hopped on another bus back to Semporna the following day. It was a lot of bus.

Sipadan was SO worth it. Since it's a protected area, the coral and fish are incredible! The water is crystal clear and the marine life is overwhelming. We swam alongside huge sea turtles and up to schools of hundreds of fish. (There were a few bazillion itsy bitsy jellyfish as well, to which I sacrificed my arms and legs). We also saw a shark or two. It was absolutely brilliant-if anyone has the chance to go, do it!

After snorkelling we jumped on a very squishy night bus to Kota Kinabalu (K.K.) It was a 9 hr ride with the bonus of a flat tire, but we arrived safely.

The original plan in K.K was to climb Mt. Kinabalu which looms an impressive 4000 metres above sea level. We only had 3 nights in K.K before flying into the jungle to go trekking. Since it takes two days/one night to climb I decided to spare my sanity (and likely Andrew's as well) and gave the mountain climbing a miss. Andrew went up -apparently it was absolutely spectacular up there. But he had to climb to the summit and all the way back down the day before we woke up at 4:30am to catch a flight into the jungle. I did enjoy a few lovely days of coffees on the seaside, meandering through local markets, and exploring different corners of the town. I'll have to come back one day to conquer Mt. K...maybe...

Ok, following K.K we flew to Gunung Mulu National Park (no leeches to report!). It's in the Southern province of Malaysian Borneo. (Sarawak) The only way to access the park is by airplane or a boat journey up river that takes a full day. For those of you who are familiar with the series Planet Earth, the park is featured in one of the episodes, primarily for the impressive caves found in the area. We, of course, visited several of the show caves. One of them, called Deer Cave, is the 2nd largest cave passage in the world (it was the first, until a larger one was discovered in Vietnam last year). In addition to being massively impressive, it is also home to about 3 million bats (and, I should add, a lot of bat poo). Craziness! Most days in the early evening (5-6ish) you can see an incredible Bat Exodus as thousands of the creatures fly out in spiralling wave formations to hunt for food....We saw them!!!!! It was SO cool! (Don't worry, I have about 500 pictures of the little black dots in the sky to show you when I get home :)

We visited about 6 different caves and they were all very different and impressive. The park offers adventure caving too but it must be booked in advance (no way around it this time :( There were also lots of creepy crawlies. I saw the largest beetle I've ever seen in my life. (I didn't even know there was such a thing) Seriously, this thing was HUGE. It had horns. It was in our dorm. Fun times.

There were also large flying things of sorts, huge centipedes/milipedes, geckos and lizards galore, giant snails, and nasty looking spiders. Everything is so big there that sometimes I felt like a character in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Slightly disturbing at times, we mostly had a series of wonderful adventures.

We're now back in K.K, getting ready to fly to the Philippines tomorrow! It should be good -I can't believe we have less than 3 weeks to go!

Argh

I just spent a good 30 minutes writing a lovely update for you lovely people on our Borneo adventures....and then Blogspot ate it. :( Actually, it just booted me out and didn't save anything. So after considering rewriting and then considering sleeping...I've decided on sleeping. It's okay though -it just means it'll be that much better when I actually write the post. We have a flight into the Malaysian jungle at 6am tomorrow. I hope there aren't leeches.