We set out early this morning with our guide, Omar and boatman, Basri (who we think lives in the little village of Abai). Omar is pretty sure that the elephant herd is still close by so we cruised past the area where we saw the bull yesterday. And suddenly, there they were, crossing the river…

The traditional gift for a 30th wedding anniversary is pearl.  As we tend to be a bit unconventional, we have given each other leech socks!  Leeches secrete an anticoagulant into their targets so their blood doesn’t clot while the leeches are drinking it.  There are two kinds of leeches in Borneo; Brown leeches tend to…

Our first stop today was at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center, a rescue and rehabilitation facility. The Sun Bear is the world’s smallest bear, found only in Southeast Asia.  In the wild, sun bears control the forest’s destructive population of termites.  They also eat fruit and are particularly fond of honey. They have a…

Alfred drove us the 2.5 hours back down the bumpy, dusty road from Deramakot this morning where we said goodbye to him and Mike. A taxi was waiting for us at the main highway to complete the 1.5 hour drive to Sepilok. We had a moment of unease when, at a routine police stop, our…

We started this afternoon’s drive with another orangutan sighting! Mike was very happy to find a female with a baby. The pair hung out and swung lazily from the branches for a little while before moving deeper into the trees to build a nest for the night. Orangutans typically build a new nest out of…

Our driver for the morning, Vinod, picked us up from Mount Kinabalu and we took off for the Deramakot Forest Reserve to start our many days of wildlife safari.  Three hours of curvy and bumpy pavement highway brought us to Telupid for lunch. Dave keeps asking for spicy food, and their chilis are spicy but…

Luckily, it seems those two days we spent in Singapore have helped with the jet lag.  We are no longer waking up in the middle of the night and are able to get through the day with minimal yawning! We started the day with an expansive breakfast buffet at the Shanghai-La hotel. Kris was treated…

Our Air Asia flight to Kota Kinabalu was supposed to leave just after noon. However as anyone who has traveled recently knows, airlines often have other ideas. We were able to rebook onto Scoot, the low cost airline of Singapore Airlines for their 630pm flight. Ironically the original flight we booked months ago with Scoot…

We ventured out on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) network again today.  The metro in Singapore is quite comprehensive but easy to manage.  Not surprisingly, smoking, eating and drinking are not allowed on the metros.  A little more surprising is you are not allowed to bring durian on board. Quite a stinky fruit, durian is…

Well, this was not an auspicious start! We arrived in Singapore really early this morning in a lightning storm with some pretty serious rain and wind. The flight was fine but we had to circle a bit to find a hole in the weather to land. The baggage handlers apparently don’t work in the rain…