Going to the Jungle!

Once again up far to early, cold still trying it’s best to take hold but I refuse to let in. When we got to the ticket counter at the airport, the lady said sorry the gate is closed…  Please book another flight…  Yes we were running a bit late, but it was still thirty minutes till the flight was supposed to take off, so I thought we had at least four minutes until the gate closed, and it was a tiny airport.  Great so we have someone picking us up at the airport, and no flight…

Luckily she didn't know what she was talking about and someone else radioed in, and all was good.  It definitely got my heart rate up; note to self don’t forget about potential traffic, and jerk in front of you at the hotel taking ten minutes to bitch about something while you sit there waiting knowing time is running out for your flight.  But in the end all was good, and we were on the plane, and I was passed out in about thirty seconds after sitting down.  And slept all but the last five or so minutes of the flight.

We found our ride easily, but the ATM still wouldn’t let me get money out since I maxed out my withdrawal limit for the day yesterday evening to book the next few day’s adventure.  And technically it’s still yesterday in the states so my daily limit is still going against me.  But we still had RM15 (5 USD), so no worry's, just not picking anything extra up until we find an ATM.

The ride to the first stop was about an hour, and I slept most of it too, sweet sweet sleep… So we arrived an the orangutan rehab, watched a movie, and got to see lots of monkeys trying to steel the orangutan’s food.  But none of them tried from the camera, since I know to give them a good hard stare now, and they keep there distance.

After the feeding, we got another nap in the van for about an hour or so.  There was probably lots of interesting stuff, but I have no idea needed some more beauty sleep.

I woke up just in time for lunch at a local restaurant where we ordered some honey chicken, and seafood fried rice with egg. Then off to more sweet sweet sleep, followed up by jungle!

As soon as we were dropped off, we headed to the room for some more rest, and a 3pm river curse.  So another hour of sleep, sweet sweet sleep…. The rooms were very nice, power 24 hours a day, our own shower, and a fan to help keep the heat away.

We didn’t actually end up sleeping, but went down to find out if they had free WiFi so we could work on Nataly’s stuff for her visa to Singapore.  Yes Russians need to apply for a visa there, so we have to book travel in and out, along with a hotel.  Then send all the info off and hope everything goes well. We should find out in a couple days if we’re good to go.

Before we had much of a chance to get everything finished up we were off the a jungle cruse.  In hopes of seeing, birds, monkeys, crocodiles, and pigmy elephants.  We were in luck and saw a ton of stuff, but no crocodiles.  We did get to see a ton of monkeys and quite a few pigmy elephants. And on the way back right before dark we saw at least 50 huge fruit bats flying out for the night.  So we ended up seeing the world’s largest bats, and the world’s smallest elephants!  All in all a great trip with a very small amount of bug bites.

Then a quick dinner, finished up the visa process, and a jungle night trek!  Forty minutes walking through the jungle at night in search of little critters.  Oh, and if you ever do this, and they offer to rent you some boots, RENT THEM!  The jungle is not a fun place to walk, a good portion of the trek was in six inch or so deep mud, there’s no way my shoes would done anything against the mud. The couple that went with us didn’t see anything the night before, but we did great!  We saw a dogged tooth cat eyed snake, some random bugs, a deadly scorpion. Our guide sounded very jumpy at the scorpion and make sure we didn’t get within fifteen feet of it, and wouldn’t get anywhere near it.  He said they can be very aggressive, and to stay back.  We were promised to be covered in leeches by the end of the trek if we didn’t apply enough bug spray.  We did, lots o fit, and had to tuck in our shirts even.  We made it out without seeing a single leech, which I guess is a good thing, but I kind of wanted to see at least one, but we our group was 100% leech free.

After the trek we went straight to sleep, thinking we’d be asleep early, but it was already after ten.  And we get to wake up at 5.30 again tomorrow morning for another jungle cruse and a day on a bus.