BorneoBlog

=The Borneo Blog= =Wednesday 25 June, 2008=

toc

Melbourne – KL – Kuching – Miri – Bed
Hi everyone! No guarantee that we’ll be able to regularly update this (or that our seplling adn grammer wont be atroschous), but we’ll try and post something on here when we get the chance. So guess what? We live! Through the 8 hour flight to KL, the 4 over stop over, the 1 1/2 hour flight to Kuching and then the jump off the plane, run through a room, get passports stamped and jump back on the plane for 1 last hour to Miri. And then? Climb to the third floor of your hostel, wearing a mix of hot weather gear and Melbourne-warmth clothes in 30+ degree humidity. Bit of a change to Tuesday night? Just a little!

Everyone’s handled everything really well – Matt was our leader and Mitch was our assistant leader for the Longest Day Ever Taken On Public Transport, and everything’s gone off pretty well. We’re all now in our hostel in Miri, having feasted like kings for not very much money (we’re not sure if Sarah L and Jared should be called kings for eating their way through most of a ‘chicken’ dinner before figuring out it was pork – the enormous bone in it was the give-away. We might make them eat like common people).

We’re feeling like it’s 9:30pm, even though it’s only 7:30pm Miri-time, getting ready to fall into bed, before checking out some awesome caves tomorrow, with Mitch as our leader and Nick as assistant. The hotel is in a good place, is staffed by a very helpful lady, and even has three kittens wobbling around learning how to walk. We’re all steering clear of the kittens – not that they are sick (they’re very well cared for), but to stave off the inevitable day that one of our 16 pairs of feet accidentally squishes one of them!

That’s it for now. We’ll try and update when we can, but remember that if you don’t hear from us, that’s a Good Thing!
 * -D Caroline H

=Thursday, 26th June=

Niah Caves, Hawaii Beach,Taman Selera Beach
Selamat Sore, friends and families! We have arrived home from a HUGE day out, and everyone is safe and healthy. We left this morning at aprox 7:30am after a quick shower and breakfast at the hostel. Our rooms were really well air conditioned, so our first official night in Malaysia was a good one. We took a 1 1/2 hour bus trip to the Niah caves, where we crossed a small river by boat (SO much fun!) and then began our 4 hour hike. It was very hot and humid, but through a beautiful tropical jungle. This lead to some amazing caves that we were able to throughly explore, before viewing the 40,000 year old cave drawings discovered in these parts.

The hike throught the caves was just beautiful, and we all got some great pics! After our adventure (and another long hike through the Jungle) we took a bus to Hawaii Beach, which noone eles was using when we arrived (always wanted a private beach!!) The water was warmer than we expected, but was plenty to cool us off. We had a great meal (unbelieveably cheap!!) at a beach closeby, before walking bnack to the hostle. We are currently preparing for a 6:00 start to the Villiage in Brunei, which in total should take about 4 hours, including the boat ride.

That's the lot for now, we'll update the blog the next time we get a chance! Rachel S

=Friday 27th June - Wednesday 2nd July=

Kampung Melilas
Hi all, We're back!!! We have just spent the last few days in the remote village. Boy weas it interesting. And absolutly terrific. Probably most of you all at home have never seen a long hose, so this is my description of it: two netball courts end to end ( 'bout 60 m) one netball court wide ( long side)...... if you don't know much about netball courts use a basketball court instead. the long house is divided into smaller housing rooms for the locals and an area that is in front of all these, which is inclosed, that wer slept in. The actuall long house was made in section, and its very obviously done. The living area and the houses kitchens were done in one section, the outer living area was the next, the bathroom was next, then the outer hallway and the veranda done last. The veranda was kinda scary because it was very loose and falling apart. One part was covered and the women cooked there. The people were amazing. They were so tolerant of our lack of language skills and they tried to speak english to us. We got there by boat( you all should know that) and the brunei media met us at the docks. It was very interesting that they were so interested in us (try find us on the internet). On the way we saw a crocodile and some other interesting wildlife. We set up and then they took us to where they have their fishing nets. we collected some fish and ate them for dinner. The villagers then danced for us and tried to teach us (there is film of this). The next day they took us to a local hot springs, but we never got there. The walk took longer than expectede and after a few rickety bridges and many cases of leeches, we all wanted to turn back. Oh, i haven't mentioned the heat. The humidity was soooo different!! the first two days we all seemed to melt. The next day (sunday, if my calculations are correct) we started our project. we built a platform in a clearing for people to come and camp there. we had to gather trees which were being cut down by machettes (giant knives) and tie them in place. Very hard work. Hot work. THat afternoon while all the others want down to the river to wade, I stayed back to watec the women weave( more n that later). The next day( that phrase is getting boring isn't it) we went to the school in the village and painted the bridges that took us there. we had to and them down( with dead machettes) and then paint them. A few of us may be returning home with blue paint still on them. That night, the women brought some reeds in and started to teach us how to make baskets. I got the hang of it in the end. The following day we split the group into two. One half stayed in the kampung organising the thank yous and the other half ''attempted" to clear a path from the platform we built earlier to the village. We only made it half way before the heat took its toll. In the afternoon the group that stayed in the longhouse went to the veggie patch.It then started to rain.( I forgot to mentioned on nearly everyday it rained at 4.30 pm) the rain or the heat? I prefer the heat. That night we danced for the longhouse and handed over the money we raised. We also learnt how to weave a fan. I plan on making one out of paper and writing down how so if our fans are taken off us i can make us some more. Next morning we were up earlyready to lave at 7 am. We went down river to a larger school and spent a few hours there playing with the kids and planting. We then rode back to the dock an caught a bus over the border. ( there willl be a lot of stamps in all our passports)

the food was amazing and always very different, but i can say that when we finally got into Miri, all we wanted was something that wasn't in the village. NOTE: From Miri it is about an hour to the border, 2 hours from the boarder to the boats and three hours by boat to the village. Long time to be sitting, getting a sore bum. Tomorrow we need to be up at 4.45am, too early for most. Talk to you all when we next can, and don't worry, we haven't killed each other yet.

Love Gabriella

 Check us out [|on the news]!

=Thursday 3rd July - Saturday 5nd July=

Miri – Sepilok – Sandakan – KFC – KK
Hey guys, Matt here, Just going to do a quick update on what has happened in the last few days.

We left Miri on the plane way to early in the morning for me, the plane was delayed around half an hour, then we finally got on it, sat for a while, then hopped of in KK (Kota Kinabalu). Then we hopped on a glorious 7 hour bus trip to Sepilok, which is were the Oran-hutan sanctuary is. We spent the night there, before waking the next morning to make it to the first feeding time for the orangutans in the sanctuary. Since our resort was literally 1 minute away, It wasn't a very early rise and everyone coped ok. After the orangutans, A small group of us went into Sandakan, which is a decent sized city close to Sepilok. There wasn't much to do here, except we were able to finally have a normal, non-rice meal: KFC!!!! (*the crowd cheers*). The next day we went to the Sandakan POW camp memorial, which was built to commemorate and thousands of Australian and British troops who died on the Japanese death marches in this region. It was very interesting here, as I didn't even know it existed. After this, we bused back to KK, another 7 hours, to our hotel where we will be spending the next 3 days. Tonight we had Italian for dinner, and tomorrow we are going to go shopping all day.

Thats all for now, because I'm getting bored and want to check my emails. Matt

PS
Matt was being all modest, and forgot to mention that after seeing the morning feeding of the orang utans, all the year 12 Indo students stalked Cecelia, the center vet, and interviewed her in Malay about her work there. Great job! While Matt and the others were in Sandakan, the rest of us snuck back into the orang utan rehab center for the afternoon feeding. We were armed with LJ the Monkey Mascot, determined to have him stolen away to go and live with the evil macaque monkeys who fight the orang utans for food. We tried our best, and one of them even sniffed and poked at him, but it wasn’t to be. At the morning feeding, we only saw a couple of orang utans, hanging out on the platform. But in the afternoon, we got there before the hordes of tourists, so there were macaques wandering around on the boardwalk that protected us from the leeches. We did laps of the boardwalk, LJ stuffed up Mitch’s shirt, so that a passing monkey wouldn’t attack it, but no luck. But then we came across Boy. Boy is an orang utan in rehab, and he was hanging out on the boardwalk. We’re talking close enough to reach out and pat, except that some chick tried patting a macaque and it turned around and thought it was Mitch so got all aggressive on us! We solved the problem by huddling in a group and running away like little girls. Anyway, the orang utan was ten times bigger and could probably rip our arms off, so we kept a respectful distance. There we were, one meter away from a one-armed orang utan, who couldn’t care less if we were there or not. We stalked him all the way back (and through) the visitor centre – it was fantastic! We decided not to try and give him LJ, just in case it made him sick! Oh, and apart from all that, I've been instructed to write that we also got to see what monkeys do when they think they’re alone. Ha!
 * -) Caroline

=Sunday 5th July - Tuesday 7th July= Naomi here, well our travels have been amazing for the past few days which we have experienced the culture of Kota Kinabalu ( Kinabalu City) .On Sunday morning we split into groups and went off with leaders, shopping and touring. Everyone went to the Sunday market. It wasn't extremely busy, but it was very good. We got some good bargains and yes!! my bartering skills are improving!! YAY Afterwards we headed off to the hotel to drop off our shopping, then to Burger King for a quick lunch before we went to City Park to catch a bus. We wanted to go to the City Mosque but the bus went to opposite direction so we ended up going to the State Mosque. Of course it was still amazing though. Then we went shoppping to the markets and the shopping centres! It's really thrilling to organize everything ourselves as we are slowly becoming more independent. The culture of the Mosque visit was really eye- opening, we had to wear the jacket and headscarf which they gave us. The artwork and arabic writing was very good. On Sunday night we went shopping at the markets again and had dinner at a place where there was soo many different types of asian foods. I got Hong Kong noodles and Toni found some spring rolls!! As we were separated into groups it was good that everyone could do what they desired as long as they are in a group of at least 4 people. Malaysia is just awesome and the weather is sweet!!! On Monday we walked to Jessleton Pier to go on a boat to the islands!! the day was filled with snorkelling and swimming. I loved sleeping on the beach. The snorkelling was really cool, Rachel and I saw clownfish!! I snorkelled for 1 1/2hrs then we went from Mamutik to Manukan Island for swimming. The views off the islands were spectaclar and when we has to leave I was sleeping on the beach !! ahah.