On board a full flight to Manila which is reassuring to see everyone else still wants to go as well. Wondering if we are going to see any flooding and devastation. Our pilots name is Altitude hahahaha.

Landed and it was instantly apparent that what ever water there was had long since evaporated in this heat.

Got a bus from the airport to Manila center that took 3 and a half hours thanks to crazy Filipinos smashing into each other. Once there we walked through the now dark streets to get on the LRT. The woman wanted to search our bags before we got on. You have got to be kidding me, right?!? Nope, contents searched x4. Managed relatively easily to walk the rest of the way to the guest house and only struggled at the end when we walked past the concealed entrance three times. Was pretty run down and expensive but the place over the street was full and everywhere else was going to charge more.

Now are you ready for this? Went across the street and Victoria had a coke, 39Php. Jeremy had a bottle of San Miguel…… 31Php that’s just £0.39 woop woop!

Hungry we went to get some food. Then tired we went back to try and book onward travel and sleep. Failed at both slightly. The room was god dam noisy and started to smell of piss at around midnight. Again so tired it didn’t matter after a while.

Not sure if it was because we were hung over or if the waitress’s English couldn’t quite manage but it took us a while to get plain toast. Sat on the jetty with Mal and Belinda discussing how great it was all to be getting the same ‘chunder’ boat together. Made it to turtle island with stomach contents intact were we had a briefing that was everything but brief. The Russian family had the right idea and declared that they didn’t care about the briefing and left to go snorkeling. So I’ll let you go now….. Because it’s almost 11 o’clock….. And you’ll want to get snorkeling…… And i don’t want to waste your time…. Remember you can….. ok pal we got it.

Went down to the beach and swam. Victoria determined not to admit she’s destined to be a pasty Ginger forever attempted to catch some rays. Lunch saw her turn a lovely crisp red and admit defeat.

Chilled out in the afternoon, played cards and walked around the entire island. Then went to the VCD room to watch an awfully interesting film about sea turtles. We sat with Mal and Belinda for dinner and let the un-PC conversation flow. Think we insulted just about everyone on turtle island. From the Mc Nerds to Full fat coke.

Then the waiting started. 4 hours we waited for someone to announce it was ‘turtle time’. Just when we were appreciating how we couldn’t think of a better group of people to spend our turtle time with, the ranger came in and uttered the fabled words. The keenos made a bolt for the door determined to have turtle time before anyone else.

The mother turtle was 120 odd cm long and just under 90cm wide, which was actually quite impressive. Laid 84 eggs. But the most exciting part was to come: we were given the chance to see an empty hole in the hatchery for a ridiculously long amount of time. We dos, however, see a bunch of baby turtles be released back into the wild. It was cool to pick up the tiny turtles, putting them straight when they were scampering left right and center. 12:30 now. Night.

Ps no photos because battery ran out

Having spied a cool little (5 room) guest house that was empty and clean we transferred there. Took a walk to the tourist office where the woman was trying to convince us that she was a shy person, it was hard to argue as we couldn’t get a word in edge ways. On to pay for turtle island ready for tomorrow and had a speed briefing about what was going to happen. Not really sure what happened. Jumping on a bus to Sepilok (the Orangutan center) we met an Aussie and a Brit couple that were pretty cool. Getting married in December. They traveled across Europe to Russia then down through Mongolia and China to get to Malaysia pretty cool trip. Orangutans were entertaining, was quite touristy but we had fun. Highlight was watching the Bird watchers, they asked one of the girls working their what species of bird was out there….. ‘erm I…. Don’t really know’ aka THIS IS AN ORANGUTAN CENTER YOU FRICKING WEIRDO!

Got the bus back that happened to stop out side the bar so we did the polite thing and drank. Four of us sat and drank healhy amount of beer then went to get some food (and more beer). Jeremy knew something had gone wrong when Victoria made the comment about Stella causing people to ‘fist’ each other. Hangover is in the post. Played a lot of ’shit head’ (cardgame) and drank like a fish was good fun.

Brief taxi ride took us to the bus for Sandakan. 6 hrs passed relatively slowly due to the subzero conditions caused by the ac, the insistent shit movies (g.i joe, b13 etc), the smell of piss coming from the toilet and the uncomfortable seats. Still, we remembered traveling in India and swiftly snuggled down.

Found cheap dorm and had food, quick walk then beer. Jeremy had an interesting conversation with a drunk Malaysian man. Well it may have been more interesting if jeremy had any idea what the hell this crazy man was talking about. Tried desperately hard not to laugh in his face as he tried to understand what was meant by (what sounded like) ‘one horse race’ and ‘tattoo’. When there was a pause jeremy felt the need to tell him that he was from England, just in case this wasn’t clear but also because he was pretty sure that a question had been asked. The Malaysian looked drunk and confused. Time to go.

Went back to our all-girl dorm (jeremy fitting in nicely) and continued to edit videos/read violent crime books (3 guesses who did what).

P.s. Lots of gays here.

Victoria got excited about watching CSI and did a book swap. Managed to swap one violent crime book for another whilst jeremy wet his pants over Google Analytics. Luckily opposites attract right?! Sorry Jeremy has just corrected me, it’s meant to say Google Adsense. Silly me.

Flight to miri was cool-amazing scenery.

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First checked out Lang cave, named after the explorer who happened to pull back a bush and find an enormous cave, chances hey. It was lit really well and for the nerds out there you could see perfect Stalagmites and Stalegtites. Deer cave next, stank of Guano (bat poop) home to 1.5 million bats, so that’s alot of poop. Some of the pictures are hazy because of the amount of ammonia in the air, that’s how much there was. Poop eating insects cockroaches etc were everywhere writhing in the stuff. Oh and I forgot to mention Deer cave was the largest cave in the world (fitting 5 St Pauls Cathedrals in it) until May this year when some guys in Vietnam stumbled across a bigger one. Not sure how u ’stumble across’ the worlds biggest cave but it happens.

Bats aren’t like birds they can’t hop in the air to start flying they have to drop from a great height, open their wings and hope for the best. So the picture of the bat we got hanging off the hand rail (looks like Benjamin button) was well and truly screwed. Apparently he will die within a week and be eaten by the bugs. Nice. Good picture though. Once outside we waited for dusk and for the bats to pour out of the cave. Sat for half an hour watching them fly out in steady continuous streams. Cue nerdy fact no.2: these 1.5 million bats will eat 15tons of insect a night. So all the mozzies that were devouring us before the bats came out got eaten, ha.

Back at the ranch we had dinner with Emma (from the rough guide) and played some cards. She had tried to stay in the dorm but was forced to fork out for a nice room which happened to have four beds. To cut a long story short we ended up snuggled in to 2 of her spare beds. Thanks for having us to play Emma!

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We finally arrived at the longboat after 3 and a half hours walking. Don’t think we have ever been so happy. Sped down river coming to terms with what we had just put ourselves through (in pain, but alive). Staggered to our dorm, then hobbled on to finally get some food! Woo hoo. When we had showered and collected ourselves we decided it would be suicidal to do that trek again so headed to the airport to book a flight out in a couple of days. We were informed that it’s much cheaper to book online and that the posh Royal Mulu Resort (10x more expensive then our room!) has satellite internet. At the posh resort (complete with swimming pool-a rarety in malaysia, let alone in the middle of the jungle) we paid a hefty sum to use the Internet but saw a sign saying ‘beers 3Rm’. Sweet, cheapest price in mulu! We were quietly told by a starch-shirted waiter that it was 3Rm to BYO. 18Rm for a beer. Ah.

Shuffled away like the dirty backpackers we are and got the shuttle (a man and his car) back to the park. After our pretty intense trek we couldn’t help but ask the man how he got his car to mulu as there are obviously no roads. Very casually he replied: “well, I bought it in miri and drove it as far as I could until I got to the river where I built a ferry to float it across”.

“Woah! Backtrack! You built your own ferry to float your new car across!”

“well yeh, the only other option is to get helicopter to fly it in and that costs a ridiculous amount Rm4000″

I think I would fork out the extra £700, but then I’m not sure how good my boat making skills are.

Crashed into bed in dorm by 9pm.

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