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