The penultimate day at the Myne resort and we had plenty of events planned, largely because our night cruise had be moved to the next day. This meant a cruise in the morning, a cruise in the afternoon, a night cruise and a night walk! Nearly enough to keep even me satisfied.

The morning cruise yielded more birds, but frustratingly still no sign of a wild orangutan. We were beginning to wonder if, just as we were hornbill magnets, we may be orangutan repellents.

Now we had a few hours spare in the middle of the day, and that was just irresistible for me. Yesterday I'd been on a forest walk, which was great but you're only supposed to do them accompanied by two resort staff. Presumably to protect you from snakes, rogue elephants and pig-tailed macaques. Well that was never going to apply. Since I'd been on the walk I'd been planning how to sneak back there on my own and figured out a pretty sneaky route. The afternoon would be perfect for it.

I did my runner, clambered to the top of the hill, carrying my trusty macaque whacking stick and was rewarded not just with a view, but also a chance encounter with a gibbon. The ape looked as surprised as I did and after giving each other a good solid stare, he turned tail, or rather didn't, as apes are noticeable bereft on the tail front. Our first freaky-arsed gibbon! (Though I believe the correct, less colourful name is Bornean gibbon).

That afternoon we went on another cruise, again seeing plenty of wildlife but again we were orangutan repellents. I pitied the poor people who shared our boat, except for one obnoxious gent who got exactly what he deserved.

The night cruise though, would pay rewards of a different kind. This was our one and only evening trip and it was brilliant, cruising up and down the river, spotting creatures by torchlight. We didn't score an orangutan, though this was so par for the course that we hardly even noticed. BUT we did see a civet cat. A beautiful creature, clambering among the tree branches. I would have done my civet cat happy dance if I'd had one prepared (and if we weren't on a boat).

Actually we did have the night walk, which was cool, though all it really produced was a couple of leeches. One amusing aspect to the walk - it is resort protocol for one staff member to walk at the front and one at the back of the group. I was second last but the staff member at the rear decided he wanted to chat to the tour guide so he wandered up front and stayed there the whole time. Now I was at the rear and though I'm prone to take my time searching for wildlife I must confess that finding yourself standing in a dark jungle with the others well ahead of you is a remarkably good cure for dawdling.

An awesome day, including a gibbon and a civet, but only tomorrow left to see an orangutan in the wild!

So it's been two full days since the last entry and we have spent this at the Myne Resort. Our program has been a mixture of cruises and walks. I don't think there's much point in giving a blow-by-blow description of exactly what we did. Better to mention the highlights.

First of all, there is the scenery. Whilst I'm pretty much here to spot animals I have to be honest and say that the real experience is cruising down a jungle river on dusk or in the early morning light, the only sound the hum of the motor and the foreign cries of birds and monkeys. This is plain awesome.

Of course, if there weren't animals I'd still be pretty miffed, no matter how much awesome scenery. Fortunately, we've seen plenty. Curiously,this seems to have turned into primate and hornbill bingo. Early on we saw orangutans, pig-tailed and long tailed macaques. We added to this silver langurs, proboscis monkeys and red leaf monkeys. As far as hornbills go, we've now seen 7 of the 8 species, including the rare helmeted hornbill. Now, like a kid collecting football cards I'm desperate to spot the missing hornbill - the wreathed hornbill. I honestly wasn't expecting to be this keen about hornbills. We also saw a couple of cool crocodiles and basking monitor lizards, along with a plethora of other birds and some cute squirrels. There was one squirrel in particular, the least Pygmy squirrel. As you can guess from the name it was tiny, but it moved like greased lightning. The little bugger looked like speedy Gonzales on red cordial. Oh, and I also got dive bombed by bats that were in a large hollow tree my guide took me into. That was pretty cool as well.

Our second trip back to Gomantong Caves is worth a mention. We went there on dusk to see the bats exiting, which they duly did. Apparently around 2 million leave the cave each night. Not a bad effort. Around the cave the hawks and eagles circle trying to catch a meal. This was cool in itself, but we got an added bonus, courtesy of our bingo game. Lo and behold, this was where we saw our one and only red leaf monkeys, followed shortly by a flock of bushy hornbills who turned up in a gregarious mob, landed on a branch and then bunched up like crows on a wire and made plenty of noise. To top it all off, as we were watching this the rare helmeted hornbill flew overhead. And we only went there to see the bats. We are, indeed, hornbill magnets!

Three more memories from the night. The first was driving home in the dark. On a pretty narrow and atrocious road we came across a herd of cows. They blocked the road and coming the other way was a police vehicle. Our driver said the best way to get around them was to stay quite but the police decided otherwise and proceeded to honk their horn and use their siren. It all had a slightly jumped-up-bureaucrat feel about it, and it was with great satisfaction that we watched the frightened cattle relieve their remarkably full bladders at the front of the police car. I guess the police could say they were keeping the piss.

Then there was the night cruise that wasn't. We got out on the river, had just spotted some wildlife when the heavens opened, just like they'd done in the amazon a year ago. I guess that's why they call them rain forests. Though this cut short our cruise it did leave one lasting memory. The glow of the resort lights on the water were transformed by the rain and the whole river took on a beautiful silver sheen. Never seen anything quite like it before.

And the final memory. Our chalet (a strange name for a building so far from snowfields but that's what they call it) is up a hill side. Walking back after the rains I came face-to-face with a herd of wild boar who were sheltering under a chalet down the hill from us. The only thing separating us was a piece of rope. I looked at them and they looked at me and we came to some sort of arrangement where I'd just walk nonchalantly by and both of us would pretend I didn't really exist. Worked a treated and as far as I could tell neither party wet themselves.

Yesterday was remarkable. Long and exhausting but so so rewarding. We began early in Kota Kinabalu, feeling fairly ragged-arsed as we hadn't slept much because we needed to rise at 4.30. Things went to plan though and we caught the flight to sandakan, arriving at around 8 a.m. Where we were picked up by our new tour guide Remy.

Remy took us to the sepilok orangutans sanctuary, which was plain awesome. We saw three orangutans and then two families of macaque monkeys turned up - one lot were long-tailed macaques and the other pig-tailed macaques. The names pretty much tell you how you can tell them apart. It was primate central and the macaques literally wandered through spectators. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that no amount of superlatives can do justice to, so let's just leave it at awesome. We also saw a pretty cool viper too.

Little did we know that the awesomeness would continue almost unrelentlessly., with the exception of a 2 hour car trip through palm oil plantations. At the end of this drive, with Kate and I drifting in and out of sleep (the scenery did get monotonous - like driving through wheat fields), we arrived at the Gomantong Caves. Most people probably wouldn't know these by name but they are famous. They featured on a David Attenborough episode and they are better known as the birds nest caves. Locals come here, climb ridiculously long ladder and collect the nests for soup. The good news is they do this sustainably. The walk into the cave was breathtaking in its beauty. Throw in thousands of birds and nest and thousands of bats and it becomes something else again. To add to the weirdness, the floor of the cave (which you don't have to walk on thank heavens) is covered with cockroaches, spiders and this weird-arse multi-legged critter.

On the way back our guide figured we liked seeing animals so he took us off the beaten track, making our own way through the forest. This was just about as challenging as you could imagine but we did come across a family of pig-tailed macaques. This was cool up until the point the guide indicated they were getting a bit excited and might just attack us. OK. Hasty retreat time, which wasn't necessarily that easy stuck in the middle of the jungle. Still it was brilliant and we made the day of some locals who watched us stagger out of the bush at the other end.

And then we got to our accommodation - the Myne resort. By now it was about 2:30pm and we hadn't eaten since about 5:00am. we were hungry but certainly didn't expect to be sat down to a three course Malay lunch the minute we arrived! We finished our late lunch and were then told that afternoon tea was at 3:30pm. We'd barely put our bags down before we were popped on a river cruise. Talk about squeezing plenty in!!

he area is truly picturesque and cruising the river in the late afternoon was just wonderful. We saw more macaques, some langur monkeys, but the highlight had to be the proboscis monkeys. They travel in large groups of which there are two types; one being the harem group, made up of females with one dominant male, and the other being the bachelor group, made up of young males that roam the forest. These are really colourful creatures and the way they leapt from branch to branch was amazing to see. We also saw a couple of big monitor lizards.

To cap the night off, as we were sitting in the covered area eating dinner a pack of wild boar came out of the woods and we were able to feed them. You know you are in a totally different place when walking back to your room you get dive bombed by small bats chasing insects whilst wild boar are crashing through the bush around you.

It's hard to remember a fuller and richer day. We crashed into bed.

Day 1
Yesterday was the dedicated traveller day. From 8 in the morning until 1.30 at night (which was actually 3.30 if you took into account the time zones) we were either in flight, on the road or wandering around an airport. For 19.5 hours! The flight with Air Asia X was better than we expected. We had booked inflight entertainment which came in the form of a Samsung tablet preloaded with movies. A novel experience especially when the battery started running low just as the end of the movie was approaching. Did the butler do it? We'll never know for sure.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur ahead of schedule but when you're aiming for a connecting flight all this buys you is more time at the airport. Still better than missing a connecting flight. Around 7 hours, an outrageously quick trip through customs (ie there was no one there to check anything) and a taxi ride later we were airborne again to Kota Kinabalu. Before we had taken off though Kate realised we might have an accommodate challenge. She noted that we were booked in at our KK motel for Monday and Tuesday night and though we were arriving on the Monday morning (early at 1.30 am) were we actually covered for Sunday night? Turns out not, though at least the travel company we had booked through did have somebody waiting to collect us. Mind you, you do have to wonder why nobody noticed that though we were getting collected we didn't actually have a roof over our heads. Of course, we were just as guilty of this, though the final booking details hadn't been provided to us until 24 hours before we were flying out.

The good news is that the motel (Novotel) had a spare room so we didn't have to sleep in the foyer.

I guess I should say that a fairly likely source for the booking problem is the way the whole process was contracted and sub-contracted out. We booked through flightcentre, who used their Borneo Agent, Adventure World, to book through Malaysian Trails, who subcontracted that out to Exotic Borneo. Classic Chinese whispers material.

Still, a bed was found and everybody was very helpful. So ended our first night in KK. A handful of hours later, our first day awaited us.

Day 2
So now it looked like we may have booked too many nights in KK and I was on the cusp of trying to juggle flights, accommodation and transfers to sandakan because our itinerary indicated that somewhere along the way our visit to the sepilok orangutan sanctuary had dropped off the radar. This would be classic me. Change everything to try and squeeze something else in.

The good news is that when we did speak to our tour guides later it turned out the sepilok sanctuary was on our itinerary, though not actually written on the one from flightcentre. So now we could relax and enjoy KK, having even more time than we had thought we might.

Because we arrived so late at night we didn't know where we were and it felt like we were out in the boondocks. I asked at reception where the nearest shopping centre was and the the women who was serving me actually laughed. It turns out that our hotel is right at the front of the 1Borneo hypermall, presumably just about the biggest shopping centre on all of Borneo! We just hadn't happen to notice that in the dark and in the wee hours.

Anyway, we shopped there and then caught a free bus into the city and did even more shopping there. Well worth the experience and the bus trip was an eye opener too. The challenges of how some people live!

It can be quite entertaining reading business names that just don't come across well in English. My favourite so far was the Yung Fat Scrap Yard. At last a solution to childhood obesity - just stick it on the scrap heap.

This evening we booked into a cultural tour. It involved visiting a village that had preserved the traditions and bulildings of the 5 different people's that originally settled in Borneo. Though this had the potential to appear quite plastic and fake it was all done so well and at the staff involved seemed to simply enjoy participating so much that it totally delivered. We jumped on traditional trampolines (lol - I jumped highest, though I seemed to be the only one who listened to what they told us to do), wore traditional garb, blew blow darts (I even managed to hit the target first dart) and Kate got an awesome henna tattoo.

Just brilliant.