Singapore- Home Stretch

So we are now finally up to date with our posts, we had no internet in Borneo so that is why some of them have been delayed.

We arrived in Singapore yesterday and had dinner with Julia's uncle. Right now we're sitting in an internet cafe...and soon we'll be going our seperate ways, and our incredible blog will be finished. This makes us really sad....well...haha no kidding.

Sorry.

Anyway, now if you want to find out about our lives you'll have to call us because we ain't giving you no more free stalking passes.

Hope you enjoyed the story of our travels!

Au Revoir ,

Hanna and Julia (The Immense Mountain Climbers and Travellers of the World)

Sepilok- Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre

Sepilok is a protected area of rainforest north of Kota Kinabalu in the Sabbah part of Borneo. A UK charity together with the Malaysian Government have started an Orang Rehabilitation Centre in this protected part of the rainforest. It is designed to help orphaned baby Orangs learn the skills they need to be able to survive in the forest. Skills they would ususally learn from their mothers but haven't had the chance to.

Orang Utans can only be found in Borneo and Sumatra, and they are nearing extinction due to the fact that thier rainforest habitats are being destroyed by excessive logging or that they are being replaced by palm oil trees where they can't live. If an Orang Utan mother can not take care of her baby she will abandon it so that she still has a chance of survival, or if twins are born one of the twins will be abandoned. Many villagers do not understand that Orangs are an endangered species and having a baby one as a pet is very appealing. The Sepilok Orang Utan Reserve helps educate villagers as well as rehabilitate the Orang Utans in order to try and save them from extinction.

Part of the rehabilitation process is open to the public to create awareness about the situation of the Orangs and this is what we got to witness. Every day at ten and three the reserve carers lay out food for the Orangs on special feeding platforms so that the ones who have recently been reintroduced into the rainforest can come back to the centre for food incase they can't find any themselves. It was amazing to see the Orang Utans so close and was one of the best experiences of the whole trip.

Kinabatang River

Kinabatang river is a river that flows through Borneo, I can't really tell you much more about it because I wasn't listening to Omar when he was telling us facts. So I'll leave it up to you to google it.

We were taken for 5hours by Man and his bus through kilometers of palm oil plantation to a muddy road. A road where we infact got stuck seeing as we were in a 20 seater bus that was basically two wheel drive and Man really didn't have much off road driving experience. No fear Omar the Superman waded away through the orange mud and bribed a plantation worker to drive us in the back of his fourwheel pickup truck. So we all climbed off our struggling bus and hopped, or rather fell ungraciously covered in mud, onto the back of Mr Plantation man's truck. After about half an hour Man managed to free the bus from the mud and we all got back on to be driven to a jetty, where some people decided to wash their muddy feet in the crocodile littered waters of the river. A boat took is to Kinabatang Jungle Camp which looked a lot like Nuts Huts apart from it wasn't as nice.

Stuck in the mud

Heather, Lee, Crusty and Lynn

We stayed there for two nights and went on loads of boat safaris down the river. We saw so many wild animals, like Proboscis monkeys, Crocodiles, Kingfishers, Snakes and a WILD ORANG UTAN. Do you realise how incredible that is?? Orangs are nearing extinction and the chances of seeing a fully grown dominant male in the wild rainforest is extremely rare. So we were really lucky.

Proboscis Monkey

Crocodile.. yes we were this close

Cool bird

Giant lizard

Oscar and Renee in the back. The four of us were the "people from cold countries crew".

Diving

We both felt that it had been far too long since we had done any form of work or learnt anything so both decided to get a dive certification. Hanna went for her Open Water and I took the Rescue Diver course. This involved many hours of reading, video watching and skills. Hanna got buddied up with a round American named Ben. They got on swimmingly... or not. Luckily she could vent out her anger in swedish and managed to refrain from slapping his bald head.



This is Kaye who I had to save from various different scenarios under and above the water.

The dive group

Enjoying some mango between dives

This is Ben

After getting certified we did a wreck dive together which was loads of fun. We descended straight down to twenty metres and swam through the captains quarters.

Borneo- Mt Kinabalu

Uknown to us until the day before arriving in Borneo, we'd signed up to climb a mountain. Not just any mountain but South East Asias highest mountain...as in 4000m above sea level, and we were climbing it. HAHA!

This is before I knew

We met our group in Kota Kinabalu, they seemed lovely and there was even a Swedish boy by the name of Oscar who we became really good friends with. We all set off towards the mountain, with our guide Omar in a bus driven by a man named Man. Man had his own walking stick business as well as being a bus driver, so on the morning of the ascent he loaned us all a walking stick whittled out of some wood. Wonderful.

Our Group

You might think that climbing a mountain isn't that difficult, well at least that's what we thought. We'd have just spent the previous six weeks lazing around on beaches and trains and god knows what else, we certainly haven't done any exercise and get winded trying to climb a normal flight of stairs. Can you then imagine us climbing 8.5km worth of stairs? No? Well we did, because that's what the climb consisted of, 8.5km of just upwards, and the staris were uneven and normally higher than our knees. It was probably the most difficult thing we have ever had to do. The sweat was literally dripping off us and soaking everything we touched. We got blisters on our hands from the walking sticks and bruises on our collarbones from our backpacks. We had decided to climb at least halfway before stopping for our lunch, and nearly fainted from lack of food before we got there. Once we did stop the will to start again was minimal. We ended up eating our lunch and then rolling around on the side of the mountain in fits of laughter as we couldn't understand why we EVER thought it would be fun to climb a mountain.

Finally after seven hours, three liters of water, one million biscuit and banana breaks we reached the restaurant at the top...only to be told that our room was 100m higher up. 100m is a really long way if you've been climbing for eight hours already.

View above the clouds

The idea was that we'd go to bed at 7pm and then be woken up at 2 30am to continue our climb for 3km to the summit in time for the sunrise. Obviously neither of us could sleep all night on the pillows shaped like bricks, so when Omar came to wake us at 2 30 we were bleary eyed and hallucinating from lack of sleep. He fed us white bread with jam, and tea for a breakfast. This was supposed to give us energy for the climb but instead just lay in the bottom of our stomachs like a lump of lead. We started our climb anyway in the pitch black with head torches and a bottle of water, wearing hats and gloves because believe it or not it was freezing cold outside. After about 15 minutes it was clear that we could go no further...Julia was dying (not actually) but the lack of sleep, extreme physical exertion, lack of food, lack of water, lack of light, earache AND altitude sickness was a slight barrier and made her feel like she was about to throw up. I wasn't really up to climbing for two hours up some steps either...so we turned and went back down. Down aaallll the way to the bottom, it wasn't that bad, we ran down in three hours. But 8.5km of going down steps is believe it or not nearly as hard as going up them. Our legs felt like jelly by the end of it, and continued to do so or about three days after.

It's ok though, because we came withing 500m of the summit, and that's pretty incredible. We are Julia and Hanna the Immense Mountain Climbers....but if we ever decide to set out on another such quest slap us round the face and tell us not to be silly.

Boracay....Paradise

Finally we arrived in paradise, well deserved we felt after having done all that trekking and train riding and stuff. A week on a beach was exactly what we needed.

Got slightly too enthusiastic about sunlight... lobster is a good look though

We got tattoos... sorry mum