13 FEB 09

After a tense 48 hours last week wondering whether or not the snow would lift enough for Heathrow to begin operating like a normal airport again, Mum and Dad walked into the Arrivals Lounge of Kota Kinabalu airport.

The last eight days have been so busy that I've not had time to write anything, but I'll highlight a couple of our momentous points before the cafe who's internet we're using closes. It's just taken Dad over an hour to type three emails because he's not used to this laptop and has been repeatedly deleting and re-typing them. At least it's nice and warm outside; I imagine that sitting outside a shop at midnight typing an email in England is the last thing most people would be doing in the current weather situation.

Today we visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. For me this was the third trip in seven months, but orangutans never get old. Well, they obviously get old but not 'old'. Mum and Dad loved it (I think), and we watched several orangutans feeding on the specially built platform.
There was a young orangutan who seemed intent on winding up the adults in any way he could. This started with a mild pestering of his mother when he'd had his fill of bananas . Not getting anywhere he opted for swinging away from the platform along the rope, designed to protect the nearby saplings from the hungry mob twice a day, and bounding back onto the platform to stand over 'Mum' expectantly. Seeing that 'Mum' was still engrossed in her fruit-feast he chanced a tug at her fur, which resulted in an unimpressed look and Mum turning to face the other direction. The little one then turned to face Dad who was concentrating on a particularly juicy looking piece of lunch and climbed on top of him. Dad shook him off and gave him a very definite 'Do that again and I'll clock you one' stare. He went back to hang around on the rope for a while before getting fed up and swinging over to wind up a family of macaques who were patiently waiting for any leftovers from the great ape feeding session.
The next time I saw him swing into view he was holding a branch twice as long as he was tall in his left foot and trying to maneuvre back to the platform with his prize. I'm convinced he wasn't trying to be awkward, but like so many small children his intentions went misunderstood, and hitting his mother on the head with it whilst trying to drag it onto level ground didn't go down very well. She grabbed him by the arm and wrenched him back to a behaving, sitting position. Sulkily he snatched an entire bunch of bananas and retreated to the rope with the bunch grasped in his feet.
The 'eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome' soon set in though and he flumped down next to Dad in search of attention. None came his way, so he started poking his father. This, understandably, was as appreciated as accidentally hitting his mother on the head with a tree branch and resulted in a wrestling match with Dad, who must have been at least four times his size and weight. As we left, the little one stood up looking very proud of himself and probably would have been able to walk away with his head held high, but he chanced one last swipe at Dad and the fiasco recommenced, just as the park closed and we were ushered away from the feeding area.

The jungle's been flooded since the day Mum and Dad (human versions) arrived and it's been touch and go as to whether we'll be able to get there or not, but fingers crossed...

02 FEB 09

It's been over six months since I left Britain to come to Sabah. With five and a half left to go and an awful lot of work left uncompleted I'm starting to see my remaining time disappear faster than a chocolate bar in an ants nest. It doesn't seem possible that in the time I've been out here one friend has moved to work in Geneva, Christmas has come and gone without any mince pie consumption, friends are applying for 'proper jobs' and panicking about being an authentic grown-up and my little brother will have finished his first year at university before I so much as touch down at Heathrow Airport...

...however I'm still very much here and enjoying every second of it. Although we haven't spent a lot of time in the jungle recently, we have had time to get to know the charms of Kota Kinabalu. We've become semi regular attendees of Amir Yussof's open-mic evenings at the 'Office Pub' and invaded more than one game of badminton. Playing badminton on a real court rather than outside the field centre using the path as our net, and regularly tripping over tree roots and rocks, has been really good fun and I'm confident that less shuttlecocks will end up on the roof of the centre when we return. The fact that we're beaten by two thirteen year olds every time should probably be overlooked, but we're thankful that they let us play in the first place so Ellie and Nathan must get a mention!

After an extended deadline I've finally handed in my primate project from the July fieldcourse and sent off an article for our student newspaper 'gair rhydd'. Not very exciting stuff to tell you I'm afraid, but it's nice to have a sense of completing something without the mad rush that all too often accompanies that feeling back in Cardiff. Maybe it's the place, the lack of other things that 'have to be done' or maybe it's the weather, but had this week occured in Cardiff I would have ended up the coffee-fuelled, stressed-out, sleep-deprived wreck that multiple deadlines on the same day have a habit of creating out of otherwise average students. This time the only similarity is sleep deprivation, but that can be attributed to having the internet and trying to stay in sync with Europe on MSN and Facebook.

Rather bizarrely, on Thursday night I shall be picking up my parents from the airport. It's strange because it seems like a complete parent-child role reversal. Thinking back to all of the guide camps, school trips, cadet expeditions andthat adventure to Madagascar, the amount of times Mum asked whether I'd remembered *Insert useful/useless object here* and Dad quizzed me on drop-off times are uncountable. The last few days have been the complete opposite, with me sending emails to ask whether they've remembered things like a hat and suncream which probably seem ridiculous items to pack if you're sitting with frost on the windows and a cat that refuses to go outside because of the freezing temperatures. And however many times I tell myself when the plane gets in, I still have something in the back of my mind that asks whether I've got the right day/month/year/country. I have visions of Mum and Dad standing in arrivals at Kuala Lumpur airport wondering why I haven't turned up yet...
...but we'll see.

December and January in Pictures

I know it's time to put up some more photographs because I've run out of room on my camera again, so here they are!

This is Zainal laying out our surprise Christmas meal on the 23rd December; we were so surprised because nobody else at the centre celebrates Christmas!

This is the family after our mission to cook Christmas dinner in the kitchen of the Sunset Hostel in Sandakan... Below is the beach on Koh Lipe: a very welcome sight after the travelling to get there!Amazingly, and not through any planning of our own, the owner of our bungalow also ran the 'Monkey Bar'. Some things are just meant to be...This is just a shot for anyone who wishes it wasn't quite as cold in Britain right now... hehe!
I know this is stating the obvious, but it's amazing to think that wherever you are in the world, if you look out to sea it's the same piece of water that everyone else can see, if they also happen to be looking at the sea. That was a very long-winded way of writing something very simple.
New Year's Eve saw lots of lanterns being let off on the beach. It also saw a fair few flop into the sea and one man dramatically drop to one knee in front of his girlfriend as the fireworks went off, all of which was quite interesting...

Back in the jungle I discovered that Santa Claus had brought me a hammock. Eager to try it out I attempted to put it up in the studio, but predictably the table leg wasn't strong enough and all I suceeded in doing was lying on the floor. I actually managed to sleep in it last night outside my boss' house in Kota Kinabalu. Well, I say 'sleep', what I really mean is 'suceeded in not falling out until daybreak', but either way it stayed up all night so my knotting ability has far surpassed my expectations.

These are a few examples of our other boss' sword collection and a boat in the background. You'd be forgiven for thinking that there was one less Pirate in the Caribbean.

One Sunday morning Haji took me to the market at Kota Belud along with her friend Min. Here we met a travelling Canadian who not only made for interesting conversation but also came in very handy when we went to push Benoit's dead car out of the driveway later that morning.

This is Mount Kinabalu. Chloe and I are intending to climb it before we come home in July. I think it may be more a case of her hauling me up the mountainside, but we'll see.

And lastly some fish...

Rachel x

24 JAN 09

I've been in Kota Kinabalu for a little while now, a city in the north of Sabah. We've got deadlines and things looming, so we're here to use other people's internet connections, laptops and houses, although there was a little confusion about that to begin with.

On arrival in KK we were met by our friend Farina who's been keeping an eye on Boss Benoit's house over Christmas. Chloe and I could become joint Queen of 'The Land of Confusion and Misunderstanding', because we'd asked if we could stay with Farina, who we thought was staying at our Boss' house. She wasn't. So we ended up living there on our own. Naturally, Benoit was a little surprised to find this out, but he kindly let us stay and water the plants anyway. Just as well really as I'm not up to date with current squatters' rights in Malaysia.

Since then we've swapped houses, been to the jungle, returned to the city and swapped houses again, but it's not worth going into details! For the last couple of days however, someone has trusted me enough to drive their pick-up truck when we need to. To be honest I'm quite amazed, but very grateful as the house we're in is a little way out of town. There are, of course, several differences between driving a 2006/7 Toyota Hilux 4x4 in Sabah and driving a 1965 Austin A35 van-conversion in Dorset, and I'll try my best to summarise them...

1. Morphology (to use a biological term). The Austin is simple. I know where the handbrake and indicator switch are - they're in the right place; on the right and in the centre of the dashboard respectively. The Toyota prefers to conform to modern social ideals with a handbrake on the left and the indicator switch on a stick. A stick which I've been known to confuse with the windscreen wiper controls so that the wipers go into overdrive when all I really want to do is turn left.
2. Size. Ozzie the Austin is small. He's a van, so larger than his saloon counterparts, but he's small all the same, and that's marvellous for fitting into tight parking spots in Bournemouth. The Toyota is not small. Driving the Toyota feels like driving a tank, although I'm assuming that the Hilux is easier to maneuvre than a Challenger II. The saving grace is that the roads themselves also seem to be wider and longer, so relatively speaking I suppose there's no difference.
3. Other drivers. There are bad drivers everywhere in the world. The thing to adapt to is the different types of bad driving. In Vietnam it's the 'stop for nothing and no-one approach' that worries me. They swerve around obstacles forcing the person behind to swerve around them, which forces the person behind to swerve around them and... you get the picture; it's one big swerving mess. In the U.K. it's the combination of impatient drivers and those with such a lack of common sense that I'm sure if somebody were to remind them that they were in a moving vehicle they'd probably take the central reservation out in surprise. Here, and this is a generalisation based on my journeys to date, there seems to be confusion over the purpose of indicators. I'd been under the impression from a very young age that indicators were there to indicate, or signal, to let other drivers know what you're about to do. It's an ingenious concept which has the potential to stop people from crashing into each other when changing lanes, overtaking, leaving roundabouts and joining a main road to name but a few. Yesterday I was amazed to find that not only do a lot of people ignore the little sticky-out thingy that produces orange, flashing lights on the side of their car, but some go as far as to put the bloody things on after the event. We were forced to screech to a halt on a dual carriageway by a car with one headlight making a U-Turn into the fast lane we were travelling along. The daredevil Perodua in question very nearly entered in a puff of smoke with a loud 'bang' as accompaniment, but another plus point for the Toyota is that it has very good brakes. Anyway, the point is that this guy only decided to indicate once he'd joined the flow of moving traffic and I'd recovered from my semi heart attack.

The fact that I don't know the city very well hasn't caused too much of a problem. We've had a few hiccups, like a 12 mile diversion to Tuaran and back and driving around the block three times to find entrances to places, but other than that it's not been too bad, thanks to Google Earth which is always consulted before setting out. Last night I was on the verge of being lost (or at the very least confused) when I drove through a tunnel that we certainly hadn't encountered on the way out. 'Ah well, tiada masaala, pas de probleme, no worries!' I thought as I joined a queue of very slow moving traffic. I always think too soon.

A gaggle of policemen were pulling over cars of their choice into a little coned-off area at the side of the road, and of course they chose me. 'Okay, calm, I have my licence, insurance documents and a small amount of Malay to work with, just don't panic!' I muttered to myself, or Chloe, whoever was listening. I rolled to a standstill next to a slight but intimidating man in a blue uniform and wound down the window. Except that there's another difference between and A35 and a Hilux - the Hilux has electric windows and the switches are all next to each other. And it was dark... so the driver's side rear window opened perfectly and the wall of glass betwen me and the unamused policeman remained firmly in place. I smiled apologetically and pressed the other switch. I still wasn't able to talk to the policeman, but there was a nice breeze of fresh air flowing through the newly created thoroughfare between the rear windows. Oh dear. I eventually found the correct switch and handed over my documents. Not entirely sure what they were looking for, and trying to salvage what I could from the situation I thought I'd ask for directions for a particular road. The policeman looked confused, said 'yes' and waved me on. I don't think he could be bothered with the stupid tourists anymore...

...I'd only gone and asked him for directions to the road we were travelling on!

A Jungle Joke

Not Borneo-related, but still in the wildlife vein...

One day in the jungle a chimpanzee invented some tools to eat his dinner. One tool was a flat stick sharpened along one edge, this he used to cut his food.

The other was a stick with four smaller sticks attached to the end each sharpened to a point. He used to spear his food and place it in his mouth.

The chimp was very proud of his inventions which he called his one point tool and his four point tool. One day he awoke to find that the four point tool was missing. The chimp was distraught. He ran around the jungle trying to find his precious tool.

First he came upon the lion. "Lion, Lion!" he cried, "Have you seen my four point tool?"

"No." Replied the lion, "I have not seen your four point tool."

Then the chimp came upon the gorilla. "Gorilla, Gorilla!" he cried, "Have you seen my four point tool?"

"No." Replied the gorilla, "I have not seen your four point tool."

Then the chimp came upon the jaguar. "Jaguar, Jaguar!" he cried, "Have you seen my four point tool?"

"Yup!" replied the jaguar, "I've seen your four point tool."

"Well where is it?" inquired the chimp.

"I ate it." Said the jaguar, smugly.

"Why would you do that?" Cried the chimp.

"Because," replied the big cat, "I'm a four point tool eater jaguar!"

You have to laugh...

The Twelve Days of Christmas (part 2)

On the first day of Christmas...we left Sabah in search of the Thai border in order to renew our visas. We left Sandakan at 8am and by midnight we were still travelling North, having flown to Kuala Lumpur and found a coach to take us to Aloe Setar where we hoped to catch a connecting bus to Thailand. We filled the time between arrival and departure on the bus by playing snakes and ladders and chess in Starbucks. A lady on the plane requested my orange peel, which she sniffed until we landed in KL.

On the second day of Christmas...we were still travelling. At 4am we were dumped in Aloe Setar where it became apparent that no connecting buses to Thailand existed. It was here that we joined up with two students from Singapore on a similar mission and caught a taxi to the top of Malaysia, walked across the border and managed to find a minibus that would take Malaysian Ringgitts to get us to Hatyai.

On the third day of Christmas... we lleft Hatyai and moved to the island of Koh Lipe. Conveniently we find a room at the 'Monkey Bar'.

On the fourth day of Christmas... we were offered a kitten in a cafe made from bamboo. Chloe was very tempted but pointing out that crocodiles probably eat cats seemed to do the trick. In her defence it was a very cute kitten. We also met a French man with a handbag who was extremely odd and apparently owns several clothing factories in Bangkok, a middle-aged man from Portsmouth and a group of New Zealanders who were all very interesting characters.

On the fifth day of Christmas...we realised we'd accidentally stolen all of the New Zealanders' money after being asked to look after it, so spent the morning trying to locate them in order to return it. It was thirsty work so we had to buy a fruit juice on the way.

On the sixth day of Christmas... we snorkelled in the rain and swam in the sun! I saw a family of 'Nemo' clown fish before they all disappeared, leaving me to wonder why fish hide in the rain when they're already fairly wet. It was New Year's Eve and not only did I find a bar playing a U2 DVD and so managed to get a quick musical fix before the end of 2008, but we also found a bar with many bongo drums which I commandeered shortly after the midnight fireworks had been set off on the beach.

On the seventh day of Christmas... we woke up two minutes before the taxi boat was due to leave from the beach to get to the floating jetty to catch the speedboat. We grabbed our belongings and ran out into the baking morning sunshine, thrusting our remaining Thai Baht into the bewildered owner's hand before jumping into the first boat we could find. The taxi boat took us to the wrong jetty and by the time we'd communicated that fact the speed boat, which we had to be on in order to catch out fight later, was already in motion. For some reason I found this all quite entertaining and didn't feel at all stressed whilst jumping up and down in the tiny wooden boat, shouting 'STOP! STOP!' and waving my arms about like a lunatic. Amazingly somebody noticed and the boat waited for us to catch up with it. We clambered aboard mid-ocean and made the two hour trip back to mainland Thailand.

The minibus was caught without a hitch and I even managed to find 5 minutes to check my bank balance online after losing my card on the 27th. I only noticed on the sixth day of Christmas when I tried to get some cash out. The minibus took us back to Hatyai to catch a coach, and whilst we were waiting, I had time to ask in the hostel with regards to my card...

"So it's blue and plastic and it's a bank card, but it's no use to anyone because if you don't have it then I'll ring and cancel it straight away..."

"Ah! A Card? Like money card? Ah we no have. Maybe."

"Pardon?"

"See lady cleaner cannot read English. So maybe card in rubbish because writing not in Thai."

"Okay, so you've thrown away my debit card?"

"I do not know. Cleaner does not remember."

And that was all I was getting from the helpful receptionist. Unfortunately, said card could not be cancelled from Thailand due to a mobile phone network problem, but what's another 24 hours when it's been missing for 5 days already?

The coach journey to Kuala Lumpur was almost uneventful, but true to form something had to liven things up. The ten hours of freezing under broken air conditioning on full blast required some form of break, especially seeings as my jumper was left safely at Danau Girang, so the opportunity to stop at the Duty Free shop on the Thai-Malay border was very welcome. The coach driver (we are convinced) said that we had 35 minutes before departing again, so imagine our surprise to find the coach had left the carpark when we came back after 20!!!

We spotted it driving off towards the second border, ran across the carpark and managed to get the French couple who had been sat behind us to stop the coach. Apparently he was just going to leave us there! I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing, but at least we managed to get back onboard before it left the checkpoints!

A further communication complication meant that we didn't arrive in Kuala Lumpur at the ETA of 2200, but 0100, making it completely pointless to go to the hostel we'd previously booked when we had to check into the airport at 0500 to catch our flight back to Sabah. The train stations nearby were closed, but eventually we managed to find a taxi to take us to the central station to catch a coach to the airport! At 0430 we entered Kuala Lumpur airport completely exhausted but early for a change and were able to make a stress-free flight back to Sandakan on the eighth day of Christmas!

On the ninth day of Christmas we were in Kota Kinabalu, which is a six hour coach journey from Sandakan. Farina, our elephant friend, met us at the bus station and we stayed with her for he weekend. The tenth, eleventh and twelth day of Christmas were spent getting some satistics work done for my monkey survey as part of my second year course and exploring KK with Farina. I even found time for a haircut - exciting stuff!

And that was my Twelve Days of Christmas! x

The Twelve Days of Christmas (part one)

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
An orangutan in a fig tree.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Two silvered langurs and an orangutan in a fig tree.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Three french men, two silvered langurs and an orangutan in a fig tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Four calling gibbons, three french men...

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Five rambutan...

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Six flying hornbills...

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Seven crocs-a-swimming...

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Eight proboscis monkeys...

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Nine giant geckos...

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Ten thousand ants...

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Eleven bleeding leechbites...

On the twelth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
Twelve million mosquitoes...

(Music: traditional, Revised lyrics: R. Henson)