One challenge at a time

  Coming home I love travelling, seeing new places, experiencing new cultures, meeting people with lives so different from my own... but here's the thing.... I love coming home too. Day 13 marked the beginning of wending my way back home. Since my flight back to Kuala Lumpur was from Tawau, I had to first make my way back there... Another 5 hour bus ride. Admittedly I hadn't planned it the best way as I had travelled halfway to Tawau to go to Kinabatangan yesterday but that's how it is with travelling sometimes... you only find out the best way to do things once you get to your destination. Usually I leave wiggle room but as this trip was short it was easier to book the hotels and plan so I didn't waste time. So another early start and Sam, the taxi driver that had picked me up from the bus a few days ago, arrived at the Sepilok B and B at 0630. He had already checked out the bus times for me and I had plenty of time to get the 0730 bus... Arriving at the bus station co...

The river runs through... I woke up this morning to slightly grey skies. It had rained heavily overnight and the ground outside was very muddy and full of puddles. My shoes, which had been immersed in muddy water yesterday had not dried out, nor had my last pair of dry socks! Putting wet socks and shoes on wasa mildly unpleasant start to the day. Hopefully it would improve. Today's main course was a trip to Kinabatangan River with an afternoon cruise along it. It didn't leave until 1pm so I had some time to kill and decided to head back into the jungle one last time. I had a leisurely breakfast and the strolled the 400m to the rainforest entrance. Despite the grey skies it was still pretty warm (sorry to those back home, don't worry alI will get my comeuppance when I freeze on my return!)and it was a pleasant stroll down the road.  Once in the park I decided to try the Lakeside trail as Jaity said I may see the langur monkeys there. But all was quiet.. nothing stirred, not ...

  My first full day in Sepilok and I had a mission. My request to join tomorrow's day excursion to Kinabatangan River had been accommodated and so I had today to get as much accomplished in Sepilok as possible. First up was a morning visit to the orangutan and sun bear sanctuaries. They both are centres for rehabilitating wildlife back to the wild and as such did really important work.  The orangutans were first up as I knew that the feeding time was 10am and I wanted to look around, see that and then move on to the sun bears. I figured this would be the busiest place I would encounter and so set off early for the 15 minute stroll from my b and B. It was a warm morning and pretty soon I was sweating buckets. I arrived at the sanctuary just before opening time and pretty soon went in and followed the walkway. Visitors were not allowed in the indoor nursery bit where young, abandoned and orphaned orangutans were brought. Here they were given medical care if necessary, watched ro...

  Day 10 was one of those days when you have to get from A to B, but in this case I was also managing to squeeze in a visit to a place I always wanted to go ever since I read a book about it when I was younger.... but more of that later. It was at the ridiculously, eye blearingly early time of 0545, that I stumbled to the parking lot to meet Mr Wong who was taking me to the bus station for my early bus to Sandakan. The bus I had booked for was the bus to Kota Kinabalu and therefore didn't go all the way to Sandakan but dropped people off at the junction known as mile 32. From there Shavez had arranged for me to be picked up by Sam who would take me first to Sandakan for a quick stop and then back down the road to Sepilok, my home for the next few nights. The itinery was a bit squished and since I have been in country I discovered that there are much better ways to organise the next few days but as I'd booked the b and B, so it was to be. That's the way it goes sometimes whe...

 Today was my last day in Tawau Hills. I was going to miss the peace of this place. I was well aware that Sepilok, my next destination, would be more touristy and contain waay more people. I intended to cherish every moment today. For my morning walk, Ledumin was my guide. I may have said before, so bear with me, but Ledumin is a former poacher. As such, his tracking and animal spotting skills are second to none, as evidenced by the epic night walk when we saw so much.  This morning his plan was to hike back up the hill towards the big tree to see what we could find. I didn't tell my legs... or my feet for that matter... they might have become petulent and refused to move. I decided to let it dawn gradually on them in the hope they would only realise once we were so far up it was pointless to turn back. Legs, like the mind, have to be tricked into performing every now and again.  Our first point of call was just behind our accomodation. The crashing of trees indicated tha...