In a few minutes we're off to the fabulous Kota Kinabalu Int'l Airport on the Eastern side of Malaysian Borneo. Had a great time here and everywhere and will have plenty of pictures to develop. We did a count yesterday - 13 or 14 rolls and over 400 pictures. I'll figure out howto post them onto the website somehow (Help, Mike!).
We spent ourlast 3 days at an eco resort just off the coast, facing the South China Sea and the S.S. Eversink, a ship that sat in the harbour and seemed to sink a bit more each day... I think it's being turned into a wreck dive. Nice place situated on a quiet little bay. We went snorkelling and lazed on the beach, a good way to end off the trip.
Our flight to Taipei will take somewhere between 3 and 4 hours. Our transit will be about 40 hours: 19 or so flying and 20 hours waiting. Since it's the 18th here and we get back on the 19th, it will take us 2 days to get home tomorrow. So, if anyone wants anything for today, I'll have two chance to get it.
Looks like the Canucks are doing pretty lousy. I hope they win game 5 because that will guarantee at least one hockey game for me to watch. Go Canucks Go.
Sadly, our journey's coming to an end. Even more sadly, I think nobody picked up my "Friendly Giant" reference in the last weblog.
We've had a great time in Borneo so far and think we'll come back here as there's so much to do. We saw Mount Kinabalu, but didn't climb it due to time contraints. Instead, we hiked around the base, through mist and huge trees. We almost needed a tape recorder more than the camera - the sounds were incredible. Kacey thought she saw a Raptor (from Jurassic Park) while I was continuosly trying to attract monkeys with my monkey calls - to no avail. It was nice to be away from the heat and humidity for a while. I was lucky to get a picture of the peak of the mountain during a brief repite in the clouds... in fact, climbing may not have been much fun as clouds surrounded the area for the two days we were there.
Kota Kinabalu is like most other south-east Asian cities we've visited. Kacey thought of the two words that should be compulsory in schools here: waste management. Aside from that, the malaria pills I've been taking led to a sunburn somehow... seems I'm photosensitive, malaria-free and have 5 mosquito bites on my forehead from sleeping near some stangnant jungle water.
All's well that ends well, though. We're staying two nights / three days at a resort near K.K. http://gayana-ecoresort.com . Looks fun AND educational, but I don't know how much I'll learn while I lay in the sun.
Tally Ho,
Graham
P.S. Congrats Bruce for making Team Canada AND your team thumping a female goalie to make it into the playoffs - good luck & beat the Mammoth.
We had an incredible experince yesterday at the Semengoh Wildlife Rehab Center outside Kuching. We took a minibus into town around 11:00 am and caught a 45 minute rickity bus to the sanctuary at around 1 pm. On arrival we walked about 20 minutes (while sweating) through a boreal preserve with all kinds of jungle trees with names like gigantea something-or-else palms and so on. Eventually we got to where the rehab center was and took a trail to try and see some orang utans. For about 5 or 10 minutes we walked under the jungle canopy, saw some flying lizards and something looked like a squirrel the size of my arm. We found some benches where I hoped I would stop sweating, sat for a while, looked some more.
[url]http://www.sarawak.com.my/travel_features/national_park/semengoh/introduction.html[/url]
We got up to leave and walked about 50m down the trail before we heard some noise. Kacey and I looked up, wayyyyy up, and saw something rusty. About 100 or more feet above us a mother orang with its baby on its back were swinging from tree to tree, well, they were crashing from tree to tree - the mother jumping, the baby hanging on. I suppose they heard us and figured it was feeding time (we were there 45 minutes before the scheduled feeding of bananas). It was quite incredible. The mother watched us from above, the baby still clinging relieved itself in our direction (directly down), and another juvenile orang approached from the other side to see if any food was available. Kacey and I were able to watch these creatures for about 15 minutes before a group of four others came through, and then with them another 10 or so minutes before a tour group came with the people who brought in the bananas. We continued to watch, although now the orangs seemed to act a little less "real" - they were more aware of the people than they were when only Kacey and I were there. I took a whole bunch of pictures with the zoom lens and, luckily enough, found some 1600 ISO (very fast) film.
With my monkey quota filled for the trip, we headed back, had a good sleep, took a flight to Kota Kinabalu on a Fokker 50 (propeller plane) through some turbulence, landed, checked in to a not-so-clean (cramped, overpriced hostel and we're moving on tomorrow) hostel, on to the internet place, checked the Canucks score, nearly choked, wrote a weblog.
Goodnight, good morning, good afternoon,
Graham.
After much investigating I have come to this conclusion: no headhunters in Borneo. I did manage to see a couple of skulls and some wooden idols, though... spooky! Kind of like a real-life Hallowe'en.
There was an amazing storm last night, thunder and lightening and heavy, heavy rain... but nice today. The humidity here is amazing. 110% Humidity and I sweat continuously. We're off to see orang-utans today and visited the Sarawak Cultural Village: www.sarawakculturalvillage.com , yesterday.
Will catch up in Kota Kinabalu.
We sadly left Dubai yesterday and need to again thank Nadine and Richard for such a good time. We were greeted in Kuala Lumpur by rain and that funny city smell we had forgot about in the desert. We're here for today, then fly out again tomorrow, likely to sit on a beach for a while.
Kacey and I ended up going back to Wild Wadi Waterpark before we left and had more fun than the first time. You see, seems everyone thought there was some sort of war going on, so they forgot to visit Dubai and, as such, missed out on the waterpark. The reason Kace and I had so much fun was because, as before, we didn't need stairs, but the weather was better and the only wait we had was getting ourselves into the tubes. That's it. Fun indeed.
We'll miss Zoe the Wunderkat at Nadine's apartment, the fuzziest cat ever with the sandiest voice to go with it. We didn't figure out if it was the desert sand or her constant meowing that made her sound like Louis Armstong, but she was always there to greet us with her scratchy voice.
We'll also miss the great business names, too: The Golden Fork Restaurant, The Eat and Drink Restaurant, Happy Burger, Lime and Spice, Golden Burger, and my favourite... Travel and Walk Car Rental.
We'll also miss the sand, the cars (along with the traffic) and the people.
Everyone needs to go to Dubai.
Today we went out early to the desert before the heat would get to us to do some 4x4ing on some sand dunes named "Big Red". When Kacey, Nadine and I got out there it ended up only being me on the quad. At first I was a little tentative, but as the ride went on I had a little more fun, taking jumps of smaller dunes and doing doughnuts on the slopes. It became really hot, really fast. My ride started at 10:00am and ended about half an hour later and I was exhausted. But, fortunately, I had enough energy to hoist myself onto a camel for a short ride with Kacey in the "front" seat.
I don't think either of us had enough water yesterday because we were sort of feeling a little lethargic today. We spent the rest of the day lazing around and not doing much. Yesterday, and the day previous, we visited the Jumeriah Beach Club (as guests of a friend of Nadine's), which adjoins the Burj al Arab hotel. It's has 3 or four pools, some waterfalls, a health club, a sailing club and so on. There weren't many people there and we plan to go tomorrow to hopefully have the run of the place again.
All for now.