Photos!

I haven't got long because it's taken soooo long to upload these pictures! These are a few from our 'holiday' between the field course and starting our projects.

Above, from left to right, James, myself, Becky and Verity at the military festival thingy. For some reason everyone wanted their photos taken with us. Very odd, but nevermind!

One for the cadets... here's the Royal Malaysian Air Force band. They danced whilst playing. I don't suppose they refer to it as dancing, but that's what it looked like!

A shelter at the Jungle Survival stand.

Me, complete with leech bite on right leg, at Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary. There are some very small orangutans in the background if you look hard. (The orangutans aren't really very small, it's just the picture.)

An ostrich. Not native to Borneo, but I like ostriches. We found him at the zoo.

Rafflesia - biggest flower in the world.

I don't know what this sign is supposed to mean. 'Don't wash eggs, feet or stripey flags', perhaps? Found at Poring Hot Springs.

And a waterfall!

That's all for now folks!

x

So, we’ve been back at the field centre for a week now. Even in such a short time people have been coming and going all week. Milena and Dave have been finishing up their project on monkey poo, Farina and Harriet have been following a group of elephants near the centre for almost a week and there have been visitors from Cardiff and Birmingham Universities carrying out various field research, as well as members of organisations from this area coming together to discuss new projects.

Now Chloe and I are more or less on our own again, well, almost. We’ve got Harriet here until next week, and the family that live here are lovely. The language barrier is slowly being cracked, which is rather helpful, although it’s more a feeble chipping away with a toothpick than smashing it with a sledge hammer. That said, whilst the three young children were running rings around me (quite literally) this evening, I said to myself “If I had any idea what you’re saying, we could play a game”. At that moment Amoi tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘stuck!’ before running off to hide behind a table. Fantastic! For the last week, I’ve just assumed that they’re running around in circles hitting me, when in actual fact they’ve been trying to play ‘stuck in the mud’! They must think I’m a very slow learner, but at least now I can join in rather than standing like a clueless grinning idiot.

Unfortunately I couldn’t really participate this evening as I was still wearing a bright pink dress, decorated with black flowers. This isn’t something I’d brought with me to the jungle. Eja, the young girl, had brought in three brightly coloured outfits whilst we were munching our noodle soup at dinnertime. After dinner, she appeared with Adong who also lives here, both in beautiful flowy outfits. Adong’s husband, Mus, took photos of us all with Chloe’s camera, and if the internet will let me, hopefully I can put the photo on here!

This week Chloe and I have been reading article after article about orang-utans as background reading before we start our project. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be reading about, and it’s definitely better than most of the things we have to read back in Cardiff, but it feels a bit odd sat reading in a building in the forest, so we’ve been taking lots of jungle-breaks! I went on one walk with Chloe, Dave and Harry on a particularly hot day and ended up coming back covered in mud almost up to my waist. It was entirely my own fault, but it still meant spending the afternoon cleaning my boots, which I hadn’t really thought about beforehand… I suppose that’s what happens when you jump onto a muddy riverbank thinking it looks like a soft landing. If I learn nothing else, at least I’ve learnt that mud on a riverbank is squishier than mud in the forest!
The event of the week has definitely been the elephants. On a couple of occasions we’ve joined Farina on the boat to look for them in the evening. One evening we’d been out for nearly two hours, watching a group of them rolling in the shallow water at the side of the river. On the way back to the centre though, we spotted something that most people don’t get to see – it was a first even for Farina, who’s been studying them for several years now. One by one, the elephants were making their way across the river. They were crossing as family groups in single file, and making their way up the muddy bank on the other side before disappearing off into the forest for the night. As the sun set behind them, the silhouettes became harder to count, but we managed to get a total of 108 before it was too dark to see any more. The herd that live in this area is thought to be of around 150.

Still no internet at the centre, so I’m sending this from Sandakan. It took an hour on the boat and a couple of hours in the car to get here (and it’s the second attempt, as the town’s internet connection was down for the day before!), so I’m really hoping it’ll work this time! Not sure when I’ll next have the chance y’see!

I hope you’re all keeping well – good luck to Jenny for the move to Geneva!

Video Diary from the Field Course!

Okay, so I can't watch it myself due to lack of speakers/dodgy net connection, but apparently there's a video diary one of our lecturers took during the field course!

It can be found here:

http://cardiffuni.typepad.com/borneodiary/

Splendid! Hope it's not too terrible, though I think I managed to avoid the camera quite a bit!

And then there were two...

We waved cheerio to Becky, James, Verity and Zoe this afternoon. It was sad to see them go, but as Chloe rightly said over dinner, now we have to get on with it. Or ín other words 'man up and get a grip!' We head back to the field centre tomorrow after a 475ish-km bus journey to Batu Puteh where we'll hopefully be picked up and taken the rest of the way 'home'.

We splashed out a bit on our meal this evening. After a day of speeding around KK in search of everything we might possibly need until we're next out of the jungle, this probably wasn't the wisest move, but it tasted good. We went to......*drum roll please*..... PIZZA HUT! Okay, okay so we gave in. I've avoided home-type foods for over a month now, so we decided it was perfectly acceptable to get a pizza. Naturally I got distracted from the usual favourites by the utterly odd new choices presented on the Malaysian Menu, and ended up munching pizza topped with tuna, onion, mayo, cheese and pineapple. It was surprisingly tasty.

I think we're both still quite tired from yesterday's adventures at the moment. We went white water rafting for the day on the Padas River. We opted for the harder Grade 3-4 rapids, and it was a fantastic day! Our rafting-expert, 'Snoop' (assumingly because he looked remarkably like Snoop-Dogg), was especially good at pushing people out of the boat, but he soon came in handy when we realised that one of the other boats contained a Welsh party. Naturally a pirate war commenced and we spent the rest of the 19km journey down the river avoiding/trying to overthrow their boat. We pretty much lost, but there were more of them than us. That and the fact that James found it more amusing to join forces with Snoop and eject the rest of our crew from the vessel at every available opportunity! There were several hilarious falling-over moments, and Verity excelled herself once more by not only falling INTO the boat before we'd even started, but also by stepping through the boat-peoples' polystyrene-box drinks cooler whilst climbing into the motorboat to return upriver. I don't think they were too impressed, but it seemed like the perfect way to end an amusing day.

Chloe managed to top that today, much to everyone's surpise. In KK there's a 'garden of poles'. Í really have no idea what it's supposed to be, but it looks like somebody started putting in the foundations for a skyscraper and thought better of it, leaving assorted height poles in perfect formation. Now they form a curious park, with trees, grass and several paths heading in various directions. We realise now why the paths exist, as Chloe managed to step into one of the smaller of these half-hidden hollow poles up to waist height. Thankfully she wasn't seriously injured - a few scrapes here and there and some soggy trousers as they're full of rain water, but I imagine it was still a bit of a shock!

Anyway, we'll be more careful of seemingly innocent pole-parks now.

Jungle-time tomorrow... goodness knows if there'll be internet access by the time we get back, so I'm sorry if this is becoming a regular time-waster for you, but there may be quite a break before the next update! Please keep checking back from time to time though - you never know!

Hope all's well, it's been lovely to hear from people!
Unil next time,
Rachel x

One for the cadets...

We woke up this morning to find a military recruitment festival had brought itself to the playing field behind our hostel. We'd had our hearts set on roller skating, as read about in our guide-book, but alas it seemed nothing more than a misprint/joke on behalf of the editor, for no matter how we tried to describe 'roller-blading' in the appropriate shopping centre, no-one had any idea what we were talking about. Unfortunately 'roller-blading' doesn't seem to have a direct translation, and asking "Dimana..." (where is...) followed by a sliding motion over the tiled floors got us at best, directions to a shoe shop, and at worst some severely worried looks.

After exhausting our attempts to find the rollerskating place, we decided to go to the recruitment thingy, which I was muchly pleased about as it looked quite interesting! Most of the stands were the usual recruitment-type tents, fairly similar to the ones our forces throw up at public events, but we had the added bonus today of fruit-carving, a Naval ice sculpture and a model of a chicken made entirely out of butter, I kid you not. There was also cake-decorating, with a helpful man who turned the Malaysian sign around to read "Cake Decorating" in English for us. Just incase we wondered why he was adorning a cup-cake with swirly icing. In actual fact we were wondering why someone from the Army was icing a cake, but there didn't seem to be an English sign to explain that one.

I soon homed in on the Air Force stand, with a display of various uniforms and posters that I couldn't read. I could understand the aircraft poster though, and discovered that the Malaysian Air Force also use the Hercules C-130 and the Hawk as a fighter jet. Up until recently, they also trained with the Bulldog. I later chatted to a pilot who could speak very good English and asked him if there were any air cadets here. After a slightly confusing but manageable conversation, we managed to astablish that there are no 'Air Cadets' as we know it, but you can become a cadet for three years before deciding to join up good and proper. There's also three months National Service that's been brought in within the last few years for people who've just finished high school, at about the age of eighteen. There were an amazing amount of familiar bits and pieces scattered about - the Air Publications looked almost identical to ours, and the pilot's last commanding officer happened to be an R.A.F. squadron leader, which surprised me. One difference I noticed was the survival kit stored within each aircraft. If you go down in a plane here you get a comprehensive 'Jungle Survival' pamphlet, along with various hammocks, machetes and 'scary-animal-avoidance-measures'!

There were displays from the dog unit, with Rottweilers to accompany the usual Alsations, and a parachuting display. I was a little apprehensive in the run-up to the jump, as Mr.Pilot from earlier on had told me that there was only a 30% success rate! I said I hoped he meant a 30% failure rate, but alas he said "No, 70% are bad jumps..." Half-expecting three squished jumpers, I was quite relieved when three of them missed the field and landed in nearby trees. One landed in the right place, so he was almost there with the 30%.

The display-of-the-day for me though, and one which I'll never forget, was the Air Force band. I have never before seen a military band play, sing, 'dance' and keep a straight face whilst two ghosts, a man dressed as a woman and a flag-wielding maniac on a bike danced around them. I have now. I wish I could describe it, but it would be stupid to try, so I'll try to put a video up on the internet at some point - it has to be seen!

This evening, after climbing up a hill to a viewpoint for sunset over the city, we returned to the festival for 'cultural entertainment', which turned out to involve being harassed into dancing on stage. Verity and I agreed in the end, as the man was quite persistant and the others didn't look like they were going to budge. It was quite amusing, though the song seemed to go on forever. There was a young girl and a mental middle-aged Malaysian lady up there with us, as the cabaret-style lady belted out a song I couldn't understand. After a while I ran out of generic silly dance moves and we had to result to the Macarena and eventually air-guitar. Depressingly, Malaysians don't seem to like clapping at these events, so the end of the song met with a stony silence and a motionless audience. It wasn't just us being awful, we were the only people clapping the rest of the acts throughout the evening, but it was somewhat unnerving. If you're ever in a band doing a world-tour, don't expect an applause!

We did walk away with a goody bag though, so all is well!

A Traveller's Fortune Telling

We've just arrived back from the island of Mamutik. It's a small island, smaller than Brownsea back at home, but large enough to provide adequate exploring ground for a day. I managed to walk/climb around the outside of it in an hour, without getting my mp3 player wet, which I think's just right for a rock-pooling trip! There was something that made me turn the music off though, and that was the strange scuttling sound that seemed to follow me around the island. Visions of alien-crocodile-monsters initially came to mind, but it soon transpired that every time I stood on a rock, hermit crabs hurried away in all directions in an attempt not to be stood on. They needn't have worried because the last thing I wanted to do in bare feet was to stand on a crab, but they obviously felt threatened. As a result I tried to tread more lightly for the rest of the journey, hoping to see a bit more wildlife. I got the jackpot with two enormous lizards, smaller than a monitor lizard, but much larger than the average creature we'd find at home. In addition, there were jumping fish and all manner of rocky-shore critters that I'd hate to try and identify, (though there was definitely a dogwhelk or two - those days spent down at Kimmeridge with the school weren't wasted...). As for the hermit crabs, well they still dived for cover well before I arrived on their rocks, but I suppose they're quite shady characters anyway so I didn't miss much.

James made us a campfire that lasted long after we'd cooked up our pasta and sauce. I think I must have fully acclimatised now because despite Chloe's fabulous field-cooking, I was actually missing the malay noodles! A man from the island brought out his guitar later on and we played for a while on the beach, which sent everyone to sleep. He left his guitar with us to borrow until the morning, which was nice, and I didn't feel like sleeping early on our one night on a desert island, so we played some more and I took a walk with Zoe in search of crabs. Kota Kinabalu looked completely different from across the water. Infact, it quite resembled Bournemouth or Poole when looking out at night from Studland. In the end I decided it was far too warm to spend the night in the tent, so I joined the others on the beach and woke up to the sun rising up behind Mount Kinabalu. Pretty damn perfect really. We managed to get a swim, breakfast and a game or two with our inflatable ball in before the boats of day-visitors arrived, and I was quite glad that the sea had washed away our sand-creations before groups of irritating tourists trampled all over them. The previous evening we'd made a sand monkey, elephant and gecko, and judging by the way people were mindlessly trampling over the coral (okay so much of it was dead anyway, but even so...), they wouldn't have lasted two minutes.

Our boat drivers appeared during the afternoon to have a swim before taking us back to the mainland. One of them had a grandfather with SEVEN wives! His family had passed down the art of palmistry, so naturally we all had to have our palms read. Mostly, this was quite fun, and although I don't pay toooo much attention to these things, I shall let you know what supposedly lies ahead for me.
He predicted that:
-In a couple of years I will have a good, high paying job, (get in!)
-I'm currently wishing to be a great and interesting person, somebody significant and well known (well, doesn't everybody from time to time?)
-When I return home, somebody that I like will have been missing me, but ultimately whoever I marry (which by the way, is expected to be at the age of 27), will really be in love with somebody else (What a cheery thought.)
-I will however, have two "amazing" children though, so I shouldn't complain. They better like monkeys, mind.
-(Now here's the killer, quite literally) He reckoned my life-line is worryingly short. Apparently I only have until forty at the most, probably thirty, maybe less. Probably not a lot less though, logically speaking, not if I'm getting married at 27. So there we have it, what a future to look forward to - although it does sound potentially quite exciting. If all he predicted comes to be, then in the next nine years I should get an interesting, well-paid job, two "amazing" children and a husband who's in love with another woman. But at least now I know that, I can arrange a quick divorce I suppose...

We're back at the hostel now, and I'm sat typing this with a complimentary cup of Nescafe coffee with real sugar rather than condensed milk and wearing my fantastic (Elena and Helen should translate this as horrendous, but I think everyone else will love them) red and green tie-dyed trousers with funny patterns and fish printed all over them! Well on the way to becoming one of the irritating 'travellers' we keep coming across with stupid travelling trousers, big hair and guide-books coming out of their ears. Need to get back to the jungle soon, I think!

Laters, Rach x

Land Ahoy!

We've decided to go back to our pirate island once again. This time we're taking a tent and a treasure map - 'this time next year Rodney we'll be millionaires.'

Over the last couple of days we've been busy busy with a trip to Poring Hot Springs. I've got to say that the Hot Springs were possibly the weirdest thing we've found. I'm not sure what we were expecting really, but what we got were hundreds of tiny swimming pools with taps to fill them up. As it was absolutely pouring with rain, we decided to explore some of the trails first though, and ended up on a canopy walkway. I've honestly never seen rain like it - even in Madagascar, but maybe that's because we weren't caught in a storm whilst in the forest there. It could be the trees that amplified the effect, but it seemed like the heavens had literally opened and someone had forgotten how to turn the tap off. The walkway must have been 50m high, and was one of those 'wobbly bridge' type structures. Absolutely brilliant - if ever you want to witness things from a monkey's eye-view, this is the place to do it.

We were also lucky enough to see the Rafflesia in bloom. It's the world's largest flower and only opens for a couple of days a year. The taxi driver had asked if we'd like to see it, and it was very cool, but not cool enough to pay the rather large amount they requested on our return to the main road. Thankfully Verity haggled them/bullied them down to a more reasonable offering and we scarpered fairly sharpish. (Having met the smaller group of Cardiff travellers yesterday, we found they'd been well and truly ripped off, so we did rather well in the end!)

Anyway my fellow pirateers are awaiting my presence, and so I must depart for fresh shores. Ta-ra me hearties!

I hate banks.

When your debit card won't work abroad, you assume they've blocked you from using it in an unusual country. So when I rang Lloyds last week and finally got through to a real, live human being, I thought they'd be able to help me. Incorrect. Infact, not only did they inform me that there was nothing abnormal with my account, they patronisingly requested me not to call the credit card helpline for debit card enquiries. They then kindly put me through to the right department (incidentally, the phone number I rang was on a webpage entitled 'USING YOUR LLOYDS DEBIT CARD ABROAD...'), who also told me there was nothing wrong. Nobody seemed particularly bothered that despite having a note on my file to state I was in Malaysia for a year, I still couldn't access any funds, or that the card wouldn't bloody well work. In the end, they suggested that I move my entire banking over to Barclays.

So why, if my account is perfectly useable, have I just had an email from Mum to say that the fraud department have been on to her?

I've just been on the phone to the UK for another half an hour, to find that they blocked my card two weeks ago because 'I hadn't informed them I would be in Malaysia', with the added comment of 'perhaps you should have rung sooner.'

Unimpressed. I may start trading in bananas or something much less complicated.

Lok Hawi Zoo!

Today we saw an orang-utan riding a golf buggy.

I must say we were a little surprised a) to be faced with a golf buggy coming towards us at a zoo, and b)that it did infact have an orangutan in the passenger seat. I've quite honestly got no idea why it was hitching a lift, where it was going, or whether the driver realised he was carrying an ape around, but it was still quite entertaining.

Other animals in the wildlife park that particularly caught our attention were the gibbons jumping about as if they'd had one too many espressos, the evil-looking western tarsier with its scarily large eyes peering out of the cage, and one of the few remaining sumatran rhinos, although obviously it would be nicer if they were in the wild!

Laura had a plane to catch back to the U.K. this afternoon, so we'd arranged for the Bas-Mini (mini-bus!) driver to collect us from the park at two o'clock. We weren't running too tight for time, but we still didn't really have enough spare for the driver to disappear off into the zoo for 45 minutes 'looking for us' whilst we waited by the taxi, which is exacty what he did. Thankfully Laura got away from the hostel with enough time to spare, so hopefully she's on a plane now!

After re-assessing our budget this evening, we went out on a mission to feed ourselves nice and cost-effectively. We managed to pick a small place without a visible menu and caused utmost confusion as we tried to communicate with the owner. In the end they brought out six plates of fried chicken rice and we ate for 26RM (about four quid for the six of us!) Nicely done!

Off to find Poring National Park tomorrow, so I'll hopefully be able to recount any adventures in a few days time. Laters x

Pirates and Guitars

It must seem like I'm constantly on the internet, but I can't resist tapping out a quick update when there's a free computer in the hostel!

Yesterday we commandeered (hired) a pirate ship (small boat) and sailed the seven seas (across the harbour) to a desert island (that bit's true). Using our high-tec diving gear (snorkels) we swam with sharks and killer whales (pipe fish and parrot fish), and sat plotting to take over the world (fell asleep and got sunburnt, damnit!) To summarise, it was a very nice day on a sandy beach with warm sea to swim in! There was also a very satisfying moment whereby we used our skillz to hand-craft a volleyball net from driftwood and grass to 'out-game' the group of 'World Challenge' teens, who'd been forced into a ridiculously organised beach olympics for the whole afternoon. We'd bought a beachball in town, and with the emergency whistle for added referee effect, we definitely had the edge!

We met up with the others from Cardiff in the evening and headed to a bar called 'Yesteryears' where an open-mic night happened to be taking place. After much peer pressure, and I mean a serious amount over a period of about two hours, I finally cracked and did a quick 'Big Yellow Taxi' to shut them up. Unfortunately I didn't really suceed in that attempt and a couple of beers later saw a new-found partnership between the dreadlocked singing genius and some merry Brits working their way through the Beatles back-catalogue and many more besides. Need to learn how to say 'no' to these things.

In other news, I am utterly convinced that a ghost is occupying the room opposite ours. All day and all night since we arrived at the 'Stay-In Lodge', there's been a woman in white floating around the corridors. Now I know that some of you had wagers on how long it would take for me to lose my last marbles this year, but I assure you that there is a ghost-lady in our hostel. She's constantly dressed from head to toe in a brilliant white dress witha veil-like headscarf. She's never been seen outside of the hostel, and I imagine that her pasty white features would fry in an instant if she tried. She never utters a word, in any language, so none of us can tell where she might be from. She glides over the floor as if her feet had been replaced by wheels, or my preferred explanation, as if she were hovering above the ground. I can't fathom for the life of me what she could be up to all day, floating about in a trance with a fixed, vacant gaze somewhat reminiscent of something I've seen in a horror film at some point, and so we conclude that she is infact a ghost. If anyone can prove otherwise, that'd be great as it's really rather creepy!

Pictures!

I thought it was about time to put up some photos from the last couple of weeks!

The Kinabatangan River at dusk.

A Proboscis Monkey settling down for the evening.

The black-backed kingfisher
(probably the best-coloured bird in the world, ever, surely!?)



Orang-utan ...

...and finally... me. My first leech bite, spectacularly positioned to look like a gun-shot wound. I did consider labelling this as 'The Final Straw', given the massive knife in my hand, but thought that might scare the parents a little. It really was just a leech, Mum.

Until next time...

Caves and Orangutans

Well it can't be a bad life. It's five to one in the morning and I'm sat in our latest hostel in Kota Kinabalu (KK). We arrived this morning after a 5 1/2 hour coach journey. The journey itself was fairly uneventful until Verity walked past towards the back of the bus to use the toilet. The next thing I hear is a "Oh sorry!" followed by "Oh no, I just sat on a man!" The hazards of moving about on public transport, eh?

KK's pretty much just a bigger Sandakan. It's by the sea and it's a town, but it's fascinating! We had a bit of a chance to explore this afternoon, but we'll delve deeper in the next few days. This evening we found a completely empty bar, where the owner let us in charge of his iPod over the speakers, which was pretty cool. That, however, is nothing compared to the Kareoke Booths we found earlier on. Imagine a shop which is composed entirely of a corridor of brightly painted booths. All you can hear is horrific squawking in a foreign language and equally awful pop music blaring out from the speakers. Now take seven amused students and let them loose and you can imagine the musical carnage that followed. Meatloaf and No Doubt will never be the same again. On the kareoke theme, I got caught by an open-air kareoke team on the way back to the hostel. Ended up singing that 'Duffy' song - 'Mercy' or 'No Mercy' or something. As I can't remember the title even now, it was obviously quite rubbish, but still quite fun!

The last few days have been hectic. The others haven't got long left so we're trying to pack everything in before they fly home. We've been up to our ankles in bat-poo at Gomantong Caves, climbed an exceptionally steep mountainy-cliff thingy to watch people collect birdsnests for a soup delicacy, been to the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary (purposefully not going to start writing about it!!!) and got leeched again. I don't understand it - they seem to find my blood very attractive, stupid creatures.

One last thing for this evening though does relate to Sepilok. We were sat having lunch in the cafe, when a pig-tailed macaque popped his head around the door.Looking over his shoulder, he signalled to his mate, who came flying into the shop, straight for the biscuits. First he picked up a green packet, considered, thought better of it, selected the purple packet and fled to the door with a quick chuckle at the astonished assistant on the way out! Incredible!

Hope all's well, Rachel x

Sandakan

So, we're in a town called Sandakan. We're staying in an awesome little hostel near the sea - Sunrise something it's called, and the lady who runs it is absolutely lovely! She potters around us over breakfast bringing out her personal supplies of home-made marmalade and tea, because we are "like her second children", and constantly pops up to check that we're not home-sick and to remind us that this is our "second-home"! As a result we've decided to stay in Sandakan a little longer and make the most of the hospitality!

Yesterday we explored the town by attempting some of the 'Heritage Trail'. It took us to a museum absolutely full of photographs from various points in the town's history, (including a succession of street photos with all sorts of classic cars Dad! No Austins spotted yet, but a Standard Vanguard was almost cerrtainly identified.) We then climbed, or tried to climb, the '100 steps'. This task would have been much easier if said steps weren't in such state of disrepair that packing rock-climbing equipment would not have been an over-preparation. The top of the hill gave us a sight worth seeing though, with a view over the whole town and the 'English Tea-Roms'. We didn't quite give in to the croquet and scones, but secretly I could have killed for a good cuppa. Instead, we visited Agnes Keith's house (first white lady in Borneo who wrote several books including 'The Land Below The Wind', and spent more than enough time in a Japanese p.o.w. camp), and were hoping to find the Japanese War Graves. It was only Zoe, James and I that wanted to take this extra little trip, but something in our navigation must have gone amiss, as we ended up walking around the suburbs for quite a while and only managed to return to town thanks to a helpful six-year-old and a taxi driver who didn't charge us. That said, he did drop us off another kilometre away from town!!!

This is the second time I've been quite lost. The other was on the way back from seeing the elephants last week. I only stopped to take a photo of the elephant poo (I thought it would appeal to some of you back home?), but everyone seemed to have completely disappeared when I looked up! Cue fifteen minutes of wandering around with only my camera, my watch and a pen. Not the best survival kit, I must say. However, the watch came in very handy as I recalled how to use it as a compass, enabling me to find North. I knew that the river was North of my current location, and that shouting in the forest doesn't really work. So off I trotted usign my watch as a compass, whistling The Wombles theme-tune (whistling's easier to pinpoint than shouting), and made my way to the river. Unfortunately I ended up along the river but nowhere near the others! In the end I found them, and saw lots of interesting things along the way, including a black squirrel. Dont panic Mum, I'll take my compass and whistle out next time!

Anyway best be off as we're going to see some caves today, hope all's well on your side of the world, take care,
Rachel x

An extra note...

... there's someone in this internet cafe who's been playing Blondie. That's quite cool.

Argh I wish I could tell you everything, but I just can't - next time dudes.

The Field Course

Hello!!!!

I hope you're all well back at home!

Basically, the internet at the field centre hasn't quite gone as planned, as in there isn't any (yet)! But hopefully it might be sorted soon. I'm sat in an internet cafe in Sandakan, Sabah, having just dropped off half of the group at the airport. There are seven of us travelling around this area for a week before heading up to the capital to rejoin the others for another week of touristy-fun (can't be bad eh?)

The last two weeks have been amazing from start to finish. I know I can get quite easily excited about things, but I'm not sure I've ever had such a sustained 'wow-factor' going on!

The field centre is alongside a river which must be at least 500m wide. It's the colour of tea because the river bed's a sort of orangey brown colour. The forest is secondary rainforest (most of the tallest trees have previously been removed), and absolutely full of wildlife.

The field-trip started with a week of getting used to our new home, and a chance to have a go at working with trees, catching and ringing birds, small mammals, studying butterflies and conducting a primate survey along the river. Amazingly they let me continue on the monkey-lines for the second week of project work, and so I've spent the last week setting off on a boat at 0530 and again in the evening to survey the monkey-life along the river. MONKEYS!!!!

Mostly, the monkeys are long-tailed macaques - cheeky little things that like to steal small mammal traps and eat the fruit left out for the butterflies. However they also have a habit of strolling along the river bank in the evening before settling down for the night, making them easy to count and snap with the camera. It also helps that they seem completely fearless and not disturbed in the slightest by the boats on the river. Less so for the proboscis monkeys. They're the ones with the massive noses which you might have seen on t.v. if not in a book at some point. They don't look like they should be particularly agile, but as soon as a group of macaques decides to take roost in their tree, they're off flying through the air despite their pot-bellies and ridiculously un-aerodynamic design.

The other primate commonly seen in the area is the Silvered Langur. I wish I'd brought my pen-drive out this afternoon to show you a photo or two, but for the mean time try to imagine a punky-monkey. They have their hair 'brushed' into the middle to create a mohecan effect, and they like to sit, chilled out, in the tops of the trees! Their fur is a dark grey colour, but as a baby they're bright orange! These are rapidly taking the place of my 'favourite monkey', especially after seeing a white one!!!

Nothing, however can take the place of the great ape we were all hoping to track down at some point. It was well into the second week before anything more than a nest had been spotted, and typically it was the one day I'd felt a bit groggy and decided to take a mid-day nap. I could hear Helen shouting about a sighting, but naturally I assumed it was a wind-up. After all, we were still in the field centre - why would one come so close to humans?
I lay there for another five minutes, listening to what sounded like a heard of elephants stampeding by, before deciding to go and investigate. It's a jolly good job I did get up, because believe it or not there was an orang-utan ( a real, proper, wild one!!!) sat lazily munching on fruits just a few metres down the path! I can't possibly begin to describe how cool it was to see a wild orang-utan, but I can tell you that however nice the 'Monkey World' enclosure is, it just doesn't quite do this magnificent creature justice. This particular animal was an un-flanged adult male, but two days later along the river we saw a large male with full face flanges and a beard! I really will put up a photo when I remember to bring my photo-stick-thing with me to a computer!!!

On top of all that we've seen crocodiles, monitor lizards, elephants, hornbills, you name it!

I'll write more soon, otherwise I'll just ramble on about the animals forever!

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Rach x