So, I am sitting in Kota Kinabalu, wondering what I should do with my limited time. The first thing I did was book my accomodations at Mt. Kinabalu, for the 21st and 22nd (I'd come down the 23rd and leave the 24th I decided). After that I inquired about some diving. The first place I went to was for the Island of Sipadan, on the South East Coast of Borneo. As soon as she showed me the brochure of the resort with EXTREMELY nice accomadations, I knew this was WAY out of my price range. At first she offered my a price of about, ohh, $700 CDN, but said if I got my own flight to Sandankan (a town near it), she could give me a special price of $500, yippee. Well, I politely told her this wasn't quite what I was looking for and left rather quickly.

After finding some local dive shops, and reasonable prices ($75), I almost booked a dive. But then I remembered that there was a place I had seen on the web before I left called Uncle Tan's that did a 3 day 2 night jungle camp experience with river boat rides and safaris for virtually the same price. You can guess what my choice was.

Now, as I mentioned in my KL post, I have no digital camera at the moment, so I have no pictures, if you want to get a general idea of what it was like, you can check out their website at www.uncletan.com, it has some pics, if you check out the wildlife photo gallery, it has some cool images. Anyway a couple that I met there said they would mail me some digital photos when they got a chance, I'll post 'em when I get 'em.

Okay, so I just catch the 2 pm bus, and head off to Uncle Tan's B&B, hoping there is space and with just an address of Mile 16, Gum Gum. So, after a 6 hour bus ride, I tell the guy to drop me off at Mile 16, Gum Gum and he replies, oh, Uncle Tan's, so I know I am going in the right direction. So, at 8 at night, I get dropped off at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with a decrepid looking bus stop in front of me. I ask the guy getting my bag, where the office is, and he points "over there". Okay, so I set out walking "over there", where all I see is this long 2 story building that looks like a warehouse. Great!! So I start walking across the parking lot to the only place that has a light on, when this large dog starts barking at me. Super! So, maybe I'm gonna go around, I remember what you are supposed to do when confronted with large dogs, and watch slowly backwards back towards the road. Luckily, there was a guy in a car in a driveway at the other side of the parking lot. I asked him where Uncle Tan's was, and he pointed "over there", right to the light that I though it might be. I then said there are large dogs in the parking lot, he nodded and said "over there" again pointing to the same building. After trying a couple more times to reinterate that there was a large canine between here and "over there" I realized that he had no idea what I was talking about. Alright, maybe the dog doesn't come to this side of the lot. Luckily I was right, and I checked into Uncle Tan's B&B and they gave me my first of many large delicious meals.

The next morning they took me to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre to see the Orangutans. This place was really incredible. Basically, they take orphaned, abandoned or injured orangutans and try and rehabilitate them with the ultimate goal of releasing them back into the wild. Most of the baby's that arrive here had their mother killed, and are quite frail and fragile. They are quarentined first and then, taught the natural skills that their mother should have taught them. Once they are ready, they are release into the jungle area with 4 feeding platforms on it. The first is the only one open to public viewing, and since the Orang Utan have just had a lot of direct human contact, the indirect human contact they feel is not too bad, and it give them a chance to educate the public (like me). After they are gradually moved back further into the jungle and given less food and encouraged to search for their own. After they feel the Orang Utan is ready, it is then released back into the wild.

So, now that I told you what they do, all I have to say is that it was amazing seeing the Orang Utans. They climb across this network of ropes for 2 feedings a day. That day there was about 9 that came as well as a whack of monkey that tried to steal the bananas when the Orang Utans weren't looking (so cheeky). I have a ton of pics (probably too many as I was used to a digital where you can shoot and delete), but they will have to wait til I get home.

Okay, back to Uncle Tans and then off to their jungle camp. It's on the Lower Kinabatagan River, and not that posh, but I wasn't expecting it or wanting it to be (but a little nicer than I expected). So, on our boat ride in we saw a ton of wild animals. Long tailed Macaque monkeys all over the place (they were actually right in our camp and stealing our stuff), some crocs on the side of the river and we were extremely lucky and saw 3 elephants just off the bank (they are usually only here in April and August, but this group must have been trapped for a while). I was already happy then, but I hadn't even started...Now, the beds here were matresses with mosquito net around them, in wooded huts raised on stilts. They had a kitchen, and eating area, and a volleyball net set up on an area in front of the dining room. Oh yeah it had 3 squat toilets and a large container of water with a scoop in it if you wanted a shower. There was a generator that ran from 6pm to midnight so we had light for dinner and the evening if we wanted to hang out.

The first thing we did was have dinner. The meals were were fantastic, an all you can eat buffet, usually with rice, one veggie dish with eggs, a chicken dish and 2 pure vegetable dishes (for those who wanted a vegetarian option). Oh man the food was so good, even the vegetarian dishes, they claim you will not go hungry here and they don't lie. After dinner we went on a night boat safari, basically a guide with a spotlight took us out and looked for critters in the dark. I don't know how they do it, but we managed to find some probiscus monkeys, some sleepy macaques, a croc, a kingfisher (such a beautiful bird), and an owl (the people the night after us saw a python). Not too bad though.

After this we went back to camp with the others that were here, it's a really nice atmosphere, and the main guide, Lan, usually hangs out too. My group was me and 3 couples, two of which were a little older and didn't really hang out. The other one was a British couple (can't escape those Brits), Sam and James, who just spend a year in Australia, before traveling through Borneo. They were really cool, and great to chat with. Anyway, the three of us and a bunch of people from the night before hung out til about 12:30 and then went to bed as we had to be up be 6ish. The people here, at least while I was there, were great. They were the type of travelers who want to come spend three days in a jungle and go trekking, and so you met some really interesting people.

Anyway, the next morning we went for another boat trip, pretty much the same as the night before, but in daylight, so we too could spot the animals. After breakfast, we went on a trek through the jungle to look at some of the trees and learn some basic survival skills. Lan, who has been the main guide there for almost 7 years, was really knowledgable. He could tell us all about he trees, bugs and frogs we saw. He somehow managed to spot a frog about the size of my thumbnail, don't ask me how. He also showed up how to drink from a vine if you ever need H20 in the jungle, and some of the poisonous plants and centapedes we should avoid. He also used the phrase "Hard Core Borneo Style" and "Small but Spicy" a lot as well.

At lunch, this qiant 2 meter long Monitor lizard came waltzing through camp, apparently a common occurance. After lunch, we went on another boat safari (as morning and afternoon are when they are most active). We saw 4 kinds of monkeys, a couple more crocs, some hornbills and a couple of otters. Our last trek was a night jungle walk were we looked at frogs, insects and spiders. This probably was my favourite trek, cause we actually got to spot things with our flashlights and they were all over. On almost every tree you looked at, there was at least one frog. By the end of the night, I could identify most of hte 8 species we saw. We also saw a couple wolf spiders (there was actually one in my hut, but that's what mosquito net are for, Dad I'm sure you would have loved that), as well as some cool insects.

Basically, that's all for my entry, sorry it was so long, hope I didn't bore you too much, but I didn't have the aid of photos and I did quite a bit in those 3 days. We left camp at 10 am, and I took a bus to Mt. Kinabalu to start my climb the next day. I'm a little tired, so I am probably gonna leave that entry til later, and I have another to post in the mean time.

Cheers,
Drew