More from Borneo

Hello again from Borneo,

After getting down from Mt Kinabalu we headed South to Sepilok and the famous Orangutan sanctuary. We stayed there for a few nights so that we could go to more than one feeding. (we ended up getting addicted and going to 4 in the end) The Orangutan are incredible. They are so gentle and we were surprised to see that they were really scared of monkeys half their size. There is a feeding platform and twice a day the park rangers bring out fruit from them to eat. The monkeys try to steal the food so the rangers have to stick around for a while to make sure the Orangutan get their fare share.












On the left is a photo of a mother and baby. We were really lucky to see the baby a few times. At one feeding we saw at least 8 Orangutan and 20-30 monkeys. It was quite a sight.
The other photo is of a monkey sneaking around a tree to steal some food!

After Sepilok we then headed to the Kinabatangan river and jungle. We stayed in a pretty basic jungle lodge with all sorts of bugs running around outside. The guide found a scorpion just outside our room. Thankfully the only thing that actually made it in to the room was a teeny little frog.

It's rained quite a lot since we've been here so the jungle was a giant mud swamp. We hired some wellies and leach socks for the trekking, but Matt still managed to get a leach attached to his hip. Here is a photo of his wound. It was quite a surprise how much blood there was!!

Fortunately it wasn't all trekking in the mud, we did have some very beautiful boat trips down the river. We saw Orangutan, Elephants, Proboscis monkeys, and a giant monitor lizard (and a ton of other stuff) The best bit was the really early morning trip for sunrise. Photo below.

We're diving all of this week so will be back to tell you all about that in a few days.

Hope you're all well :)

Falan Falan Jalan Sueann!

Hello.

So we have begun the Borneo leg of our trip. We are planning on spending the majority of our time in the Sabah region because of Mount Kinabalu and the tons of wildlife to see.

In case you are wondering the title of this entry is a badly spelt bit of Malay which was a great piece of advice while trekking up Mount Kinabalu. It means 'slowly slowly walk'.

Okay, firstly we arrived in Kota Kinabalu where we planned to organise ourselves for the next few weeks. Instead we discovered that our bank cards didn't work and we were running out of cash fast. It turns out that the bank fraud office had cancelled all the cards because it was out of the ordinary that we were using them in Malaysia. This would usually be a good move on their part, but on this occasion we were about to go to Mount Kinabalu, which has no ATM's, and it was to late to exchange any money. We had a word with the bank and they said they would be able to get the cards re-activated in 24 hours, then a nice person at the hostel dragged a money exchange man away from his dinner to change all of our spare pounds and dollars. We had just enough to get us through the next few days until we got to a town with an ATM again.

The only rooms available at the park at the base of Mount Kinabalu where deluxe rooms. It was lovely, more like an apartment really, so we booked into our deluxe room again for when returned from the climb.

The first day involved a 5 hour walk to another accomodation 2km from the top of the mountain. We ate a bunch of food, watched an amazing sunset from above the clouds (picture below), and tried to get some sleep.














We were due to get up early the next morning for the final climb so we went to bed at about 8pm. Firstly the room was like an oven, but luckily the heater shorted out giving Sueann a small fireworks display of sparks. The other people in our room decided to get up at this point and have a chat in the corridor. Rats where running about above the ceiling. I still managed to get a few hours sleep but Sueann had altitude induced insomnia so didn't sleep a wink.

We got up at 3am (half an hour after most people) had a cup of tea and set of to climb the final 2km by torch light. We don't have any pictures from this stage as most of our brains were taken up with putting one foot in front of the other and trying not to fall asleep. Some parts of the climb involved pulling yourself up steep inclines with ropes not knowing how far away the ground was if your were to fall.

After a hard slog we reached the top as the sun was coming up. There was no dramatic sun rise, which most people hope for, but it didn't matter. The mountain top and the surrounding view was breath taking enough. Here we are at the top of the top, 4000m above see level.














As we were just forgetting the pain of the assent we started heading down. The scenery was amazing. Here's me with an amazing rock formation thing in the background. It may look like I have drifted off to sleep but I'm pretty sure that was a blink.












The rest of the day was spent getting all the way down to the bottom. Sueann had a dodgy knee from all the downward climbing on the Inca trail and within a kilometre she was feeling it again. It took us a while to hobble down but it was all worth it for the view from the top. For a few days afterwards our legs ached quite a bit and we avoided walking down stairs where ever possible.

Then we moved on to Sepilok to see some orang utans...

news

Hello all,

This news is slightly delayed as we had to wait until Christmas to tell my parents but we are both very happy to let you know that we got engaged while we were in Japan.

After 10 years of being together Matt finally proved that he has some romance in him. We were staying in the most beautiful ryokan when he got down on one knee and proposed. I was gob smacked..... he even had a ring!! It was a really perfect moment until he informed me that he'd kept it hidden in socks for the past month to make sure I didn't find it!

We haven't got to the point of thinking about the wedding or dates as we're too busy traveling to world. We'll think about that when we get home :)

Here is a photo of us looking happy and another one to prove I have a ring :)

Happy New Year from Borneo!

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you all had a great festive holiday.

We had a very lazy couple of weeks in Jomtien, Thailand. My parents rented us a really lovely little apartment in the same complex as them. We had a huge swimming pool right outside the door and the beach was a 2 minute walk away.....bliss!

We managed a day of diving while we were there but the visibility wasn't too good. It was still great to get back in the water and it was a nice easy couple of dives to get started with.

We had a really lovely Christmas day in Pattaya with Lobster and Sea Bass sitting next to the sea. It was our first taste of Lobster and it was cooked to perfection :)

Sadly I was a bit under the weather on New Years Eve so we ended up staying in. Luckily Mum and Dad's apartment has an amazing view (see sunset photo below) and we were able to see all of the fireworks from there. We have video footage of it but for some reason the blog doesn't seem to want to upload it :(

We are now in Kota Kinabalu in Borneo and it's very humid indeed. We are heading to climb Mt Kinabalu tomorrow so we'll let you know how that goes in a few days!

Bzzzz

Brian Blessed!













Biker / Neo-Nazi.











Shaved off. Time to start all over again.

Cambodia Part 2

Hello!

Since we spoke to you last we have waved goodbye to Cambodia and hello to Jomtien in Thailand (near Pattaya). Let me fill you in on the last half of our Cambodia trip.
We spent a few days in the capital Phnom Pehn taking in the sights. One day we visited the Killing Fields and S21, both vile examples of the Kymer Rouge's cruelty. The killing fields is a site where the Kymer Rouge killed 17,000 people and buried them in mass graves. S21 is a school converted into a prison where people wear held and tortured before being sent to the killing fields. Quite a depressing day out that one.

We spent the rest of time visiting the palace (the first picture - which includes a miniture model of Ankor Wot in the foreground) and wandering around the city.

Next we headed south to Kampot which is a lovely sleepy place beside a river (second picture). We used Kampot as a base for visiting a few nearby sighths. The third picture is of the Bokor Hotel in the Bokor hill station, a creepy abandoned town on top of a hill. We visited a cave which we were guided through by five chatty kids, and Kep, a small pretty seaside town where we ate crabs and paddled.

Our last stop in Cambodia was Sihanoukville, the major beach destination of Cambodia. The original plan was to spend a good few days there and do some diving but the accomidation was overpriced and we were informed by several sources that the diving was crap. We spent a day by the beach before making the 14 hour bus journey here.

We are staying in a fantastic apartment in the same complex as Sueann's mum and dad. We are planning to go for a dive then eat some lobster on Christmas day and until then we are chilling out and planning the Malaysian leg of the trip.

If we don't do another entry for a while then Merry Christmas :)

Hi from a very sunny Cambodia!

Hello all,

We have been in Cambodia for a week now so we thought we'd better give you a little update.

We had a very interesting trip overland from Bangkok. We heard loads of horror stories about 'Scam Buses' taking tourists across the border and dumping them at random hotels in the middle of the night so we decided to take the local transport. Despite having to get up at a ridiculous time in the morning and being a little conned by the immigration guards at the border (all too common) we made it to Siem Reap in record timing.

Sadly the border crossing at Poi Pet doesn't give a great first impression, but thankfully that doesn't last long. The people are really lovely here and there is loads of great stuff to see.

We started our stay in Siem Reap by visiting the temples of Angkor. Wow there are a lot of temples. We spent 2 full days traveling between as many as we could fit in. They are pretty amazing. We really loved Angkor Thom. The trees are growing through the temple and it makes quite a spectacular sight.

Once we got slightly templed out we made our way to the stilted village of Kompong Phhluck. It's set next to a huge lake and spends most of the year under water. The houses are all raised up on 7m high stilts. It's just the start of the dry season now so a tiny bit of land was showing.
We spent the day there and had a fantastic lunch in one of the houses.

We also went on a little dug-out boat through the flooded mangrove forest. It was so peaceful and really really beautiful.
This photo doesn't quite do it justice.

After Siem Reap we headed on a boat down the river to Battambang. The boat trip was one of those '3-8 hour journeys' and of course it took 8 hours. There were are lot of bad rumors about the boats breaking down but it is meant to be one of hte most scenic boat trips in the country. You pass floating villages, wet lands and not to mention really narrow waterways where you get battered by all of the trees on the way past!!

Battambang itself is pretty run down and doesn't see much tourism. We did manage to do a cooking course and made 3 delicious courses of Khmer food. (which Matt is looking forward to testing out on some of you soon!)

The photo is our cooking instructor buying fish at the market. All of the fish are alive and they just kill and sell them on the spot. We have many more interesting photos from the market, including a couple that we'll need to keep far away from the the frog crazy Selina.

We arrived in Phnom Penh yesterday so will save that for the next entry. We are heading the the Killing Fields tomorrow so our next entry may not be quite so cheery.

We keep forgetting that it's Christmas soon. Hope you're all getting in to the festive spirit!!
Take care
Us x