Sexual Assault by an Orang Utan among other things from Borneo, KL, Singapore and Bali

Following our 10 days of relaxation we boarded the plane to Kuala Lumpur. Upon arrival here we were met by one of Ems work friends, Kogi who kindly took care of our large bags whilst we went off to Borneo for 3 days. It was great to see Kogi and catch up having not seen her for over a year! A couple of hours later we took a flight to Sandakan where our tour would begin the next morning.

Early in the morning we were picked up and delighted to find that we were the only two people on our tour!! We took a boat trip to one of the three islands within the Turtle Islands Park.

The day was spent relaxing and exploring the island, with all the fun to come in the evening. Before dinner we took a look at the exhibition centre and watched a DVD which helped us to understand the programme better. After dinner we all had to wait outside until the first mother turtle came ashore to lay her eggs. Hearing the words 'Turtle Time' everyone rushed to where the ranger was on the beach. We were first to the scene as the Saga tour hobbled along behind, many aided by walking sticks! When we arrived the mother turtle had already dug her body pit and hole for the eggs an begun laying her eggs. It was very interesting to watch and she laid 71 eggs in total before resting for a few hours. We then watched the ranger transplant the eggs into the hatchery before releasing some hatchlings into the sea. This was an incredible sight as the newly born baby turtles ran helplessly to the sea by instinct.

The following morning we took a boat back to mainland and headed to Sepilok Orang-utan rehabilitation centre. Here we watched another video about the programme there before heading to the viewing platform which overlooked the feeding platform.

To begin with there were about 4 smaller orang-utans happily eating away. Then the big dominant male with large cheek flaps appeared. Apparently he is a rare sight and our tour guide had only seen him twice in four years. His arrival to the feeding platform quickly resulted in the other orang-utans leaving. We were luckily enough to get up pretty close to some of them as they walked along the edges of the board walk. Unfortunately though some people did not listen to the warnings and one man got a little too close. This resulted in the orang-utan enveloping him and trying to obtain some sexual gratification (by shoving his genitalia in the mans face). This was all amusing until the orang-utan refused to let go of the man and started becoming aggressive. Everyone was quickly ushered behind the gate however ourselves and a few others did not quite make it in time and ended up trapped at a dead end for a rather scary 5 minutes as the ranger tried to get him to go away. All in all it was an interesting experience!! From here we headed up to Bilit Rainforest Lodge, where we would be spending the night, and went on an evening river cruise. Whilst on this we saw maccaque monkeys (with the long tails), proscerus monkeys (with the long noses), orang-utans (a rare sight!), monitor lizard, viper, king fishers, hawk bills and white herons.

For our final day in Borneo we firstly visited the G caves which are where thousands of swiftlets live and build both black and white nests using their saliva and droppings. The white ones are used in the Chinese birds best soup! The caves were interesting but smelt horrifically of guano and were covered in cockroaches....we didn't stay there long! For lunch we headed to the English Tea Rooms perched on the top of a hill overlooking Sandakan city. This is the poshest meal we have had and enjoyed home comforts of fish cakes and chicken, bacon, mash and gravy. As our first English meal in over 2 months, they were heavenly!!

To end our tour we visited the water village, a Chinese Buddhist temple and took a look round the local market.

From Borneo we flew back to Kuala Lumpur where we spent 2 days visiting the local sights. On the first day these included Batu Caves, Merdeka Square, Central Market, National Mosque, National Monument, Islanic Arts Museum, Botanical Gardens, Chinatown and finally the fountain show outside the Patronas towers.

After walking miles the first day, we decided to get the hop-on-hop-off bus round the city the second day. Our first point of call was to see the Patronas Towers in the daylight and wander round the surrounding gardens. From here we headed to the KL Tower which gave us some awesome views of the city from 186m up! This was an I retesting experience as Em doesn't like lifts and James is petrified of heights - a great combination!! But we made it up there and it was definitely worth it! From here we jumped back on the bus to the butterfly park before heading to the station for our overnight train to Singapore.

Our time in Singapore was also limited to 2 days but we managed to squeeze a lot into this time. We started off by heading out to the Bird Park, followed by the botanical gardens and Orchard Road. Orchard Road is the Oxford Street of Singapore and this was our first sighting of true Christmas decorations and we even heard a number of Christmas songs!! Although we still don't feel like its almost Christmas at all. Following a walk down this road we decided to go and splash out on a Singapore Sling from Raffles. This hotel is just awesome as was the cocktail! And throwing peanut shells all over the floor just added to the experience. Our next stop was the Singapore Flyer which provided excellent views over the city and after much persuasion James actually stood up!! From here we headed back through Chinatown night market to our 12 bed dorm.

The following morning we ventured over to Underwater world on Sentosa island. This was good but not quite as good as we were expecting. The island is basically an array of theme parks where one could quite happily spend a few days if you have sufficient funds. Our next stop was Little India which is completely different to the rest of Singapore and smells so good everywhere! Back to Chinatown and we took a look round the Buddha Tooth Relic temple which was very impressive with lots of gold everywhere! That evening we decided to defy our age an visit the night safari. This was awesome and exceeded a expectations - definitely worth it! This ended our time in Singapore on a high before we flew across to Bali the following morning.

On arrival to our hostel we had the pleasant surprise of our 4th free upgrade of the trip from a standard to a deluxe room. However, Bali was not what we were expecting. For the first time all trip we may have chosen the wrong area to stay in. Where we are staying is like the Australian's version of Ibiza and considering the Aussie schools have just broken up the place is crawling with 18 - 21 year old Aussies!! This made James in particular feel quite old!! This area is more suited to surfers and is probably the worst beach we've been to but that's not really saying much as it's still pretty nice. Bali is also the hottest place we have been to so far! We spent out first day lazing on the beach trying to top up our tans. The following day we decided to take a trip to a couple of the temples including Tanah Lot which is on a rock in the middle of the sea, only accessible at low tide. We also visited Gitgit waterfall which was pretty awesome and a Bali coffee production plant.

The following day was our day for diving!! We headed across to Tulamben, where the US Liberty ship was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the 1940's. This dive site was amazing 0 literally crawling with marine life, from small nemo fish to larger puffer, trigger and snapper fish. After lunch we headed out to the marine wall and coral garden, again which were very impressive although not quite as impressive as the wreck dive. Our final day in Bali was spent lazing on the beach again before our flight via Singapore to Perth!!!!!

We think you have enough facts about Southeast Asia to have both kept you entertained and also prepare you for a trip here if you decide to (which you should)! So the feature of this blog post is ways in which we have turned into 'gap year tragedies' over the last few months:

- Our collection of bracelets is accumulating rapidly!
- We have a large selection of tourist t-shirts.
- James has started wearing wife beaters.
- We have accepted the fact that our feet will never be clean again.
- We have some pretty funky tan lines.
- We have become artists at packing our bags quickly and efficiently, to the point were our walking boots sometimes fit in!!!
- Our bartering skills have improved significantly (with our latest purchase starting at 900,000rp and finishing at 260,000tp)
- We have a large collection of DVDs that we are not sure when we'll be able to watch!
- We love a good fruit shake.
- We care less and less about the places where we eat - cost is more important!
- We can handle spicy food.....ish!
- We are being as cheap as possible to the point where Em cut James' hair.

Next time you hear from us we'll be in Australia and it'll almost be Christmas!!!!

Take care and try to avoid the floods!!

x x x

Bangkok to Beaches

Having made our way laboriously across the border crossing between Siem Reap and Bangkok we finally arrived in our hostel in Silom, Bangkok.

For our first day in Bangkok we decided to take the rather spacious and air conditioned skyline train to the river and caught a ferry to the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace was a very impressive collection of ornate and lavishly decorated buildings and temples, including the emerald Buddha.

Near the Grand Palace lie the temples Wats Pho and Arun. Wat Pho houses an impossibly large reclining Buddha well over 40m long and covered in gold paint! Wat Arun required a short ferry across the river, but provided a spectacular view across Bangkok although getting up and down from the top was an issue!

Tickets from the Grand Palace allowed us entry to Dusit Throne hall and Vin Man Mek mansion which we visited the following day. The later is a rather ornate country house made from teak constructed without the use of any nails!! Unfortunately on one of our visits to a throne hall, which has been converted into an art gallery, we fell foul of some clothing regulations. Having already bought a sarong for James to cover his legs for the mansion, we then had to swap bottoms so James was wearing ems balloon pants over his shorts and Em had to wear the sarong as a skirt. This was due to the fact that women have to wear skirts in this particular building. This seemed to cause mass hilarity with the local Thai people with James looking more than ridiculous and Em walking very slowly and gripping tightly onto the sarong to ensure there were no more surprises.

More skyline trains the next day took us to South East Asias largest Market, the JJ Market, in which we got monumentally lost! It's hard to think of things that weren't sold here ranging from standard souveniers to pet fish, snakes and lizards and even adorable rabbits, puppies and kittens held in rather cramped quarters. Despite all that was on offer all we bought was some food, which turned out to not be such a great idea!


That evening we decided to head to Cabbages and Condoms - the same chain we had eaten at in Chiang Mai. This restaurant was so much larger and was packed with gadgets, accessories and numerous other things promoting safe sex!

Before leaving the bustle of Bangkok we ventured into the Chinatown wholesale Market, which was even more hectic than we thought possible. Annoyingly, despite wanting to buy some of the stuff on offer we didn't want to buy 6 of each item so unfotunately left empty handed again.

During our stay in Silom, we discovered that we were in Ping Pong central. Every night without fail we would have various flyers, pictures and DVDs shoved in our faces. All the sellers were very persistent with the best one saying to James (in a not so quiet voice!) "Come back later.....alone!"

We then boarded the coldest sleeper train known to man for the trip to the islands.

Initially we planned to go to the South East Gulf Coast but on hearing that monsoon season had started we decided to go to the Andaman Coast instead! We spent a couple of days relaxing on a glorious beach in Phuket.
 

From there we headed to the more lively Phi Phi, a very contradictory island. On the one hand there are a number of lovely secluded bays with only a handful of people on, and in contrast there are numerous rubbish heaps and the smell of sewage, and finally the upbeat beach bars celebrating the half moon! We took advantage of these beach bars and their fire shows with Emma and Lee, some friends we had met in Hanoi and Saigon.

 After spending the first two days being quite sloth like on the beach we decided to head out and do some diving. We did a half day trip with two dives in Bida Nok and Malong Bay. These were by far the best dives that we have done and saw some amazing underwater animals. These ranged from the smaller sea snake, triggerfish and peacock shrimp to the larger and more impressive blown up puffer fish, blue spotted stingray, hawksbill turtle and leopard shark.

We spent the rest of the time clambering up to the viewpoint 186m above sealevel, relaxing on the beaches and watching a film in a rooftop bar.

After Phi Phi we headed across to Koh Lanta, an island recommended by Lee and Emma and stayed at a lovely resort on the beach front which was also recommended by them. We spent the first afternoon relaxing on the beach ad soaking up the sun.

The following day we decided to rent a moped and tour round the island. Unfortunately it rained for most of the day and we were consequently soaked on this moped! However we managed to visit the old town, the lighthouse and the national park where we were accosted by some monkeys wanting our food! In the evening we drove up to the pier town to get some awesome BBQ seafood overlooking the harbour. You'll be pleased to know that our first experiences of driving a moped were successful and neither of us crashed....well not quite anyway!

The next day we took a longtail boat out to do a four islands snorkelling tour. The islands we visited are on the West coast of Koh Lanta and are very popular. Throughout the day we got three snorkelling stops where there was an abundance of fish swimming right up to your face. We also visited the emerald cave, a place previously used by pirates and smugglers to hide their valuables. The cave itself is nothing special but swimming through it for about three minutes, you reach a secluded beach surrounded by limestone cliffs. The swim both to and from the beach resulted in a lot of thrashing by certain parties on our tour and even a giant Congo line by another tour!! After lunch on a gorgeous, quiet beach, we were due to make another snorkelling stop but this had to be abandoned to flee the impending storm that had built up in the afternoon. Fortunately we avoided it and had dinner on the beach front in our resort.

Our final morning was spent by the pool soaking up the rays and even Em manage to tan slightly more!!

We then took a boat to Railay which is a peninsula off the mainland of Krabi. Again we had not initially planned on going here but heard good things about it so thought we might as well. Here there is no pier though so to get onto the beach requires getting off the ferry onto a longtail boat which took us closer to shore. From here we had to wade trough the sea with all our bags!! We arrived just in time to watch the awesome sunset! The next day we relaxed on a gorgeous beach - our favourite of all the beaches we have visited! In the afternoon we decided to rent a kayak in order to explore a bit more of the surrounding area and get up close to some of the large natural rock formations. We then decided to watch the sunset from the beach we had been on during the day (a different one to where we has arrived and seen the previous nights sunset). This sunset was even more amazing than the night before!!

  

 For our final morning in Railay we decided to visit the viewpoint and lagoon. This entailed effectively rock climbing (with no harness or anything) up some rather steep cliff faces. The view was definitely worth it though! Trying to get to the lagoon was a different matter altogether. Getting down to the lagoon was almost impossible with a number of vertical cliff faces to make your way down with only a piece of rope to help. After much deliberation we decided not to risk our lives and headed back down to the beach for our final few hours of sunbathing! Getting down from the viewpoint however was much more difficult than getting up and James' fear of heights certainly didn't help!

From here we took a boat and a minivan to Phuket where we spent the night before our early morning flight the next day.

Here are some more facts we have discovered:
- There are timers on traffic lights that are not strictly adhered to.
- Despite vein surrounded by water, many Asians can't swim.
- Couples from certain countries like to dress in the same outfits (clothes, shoes, bags).
- Em can actually tan.
- The tax for entering Phi Phi is definitely not used for 'waste management' as described.
- Getting a boat to another destination doesn't necessarily mean you will get dropped off there.
- Some people pay extortionate amount of money to stay in luxury resorts - £5000 a night!!!
- Despite the stereotypical Asian being quite short, steps for everything are ridiculously steep!

- There is no shame in selling sex DVDs and other accessories alongside statutes of Buddha and 'water filtration systems'.
- Priority for locals actually means for just Thais in Thailand rather than all Asians as is the case in the other countries we have visited.

That's all for now! There'll be another post to come soon!

Take care,


X x x

One Dollar, One Dollar!!

Having arrived in Phnom Penh we spent our first afternoon wandering the streets, visiting Wat Phnom and the central market.

The following day we visited Cheung Ek killing fields, where thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime were killed and buried between 1975 and 1979. This was a depressing insight into the brutality of the madness behind the Pol Pot oppression. This was reinforced by the newly introduced audio tour which included a number of survivor stories.

From here we headed to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, otherwise known as S21. This was originally a school, converted by the Khmer Rouge into a torture prison. Political prisoner were among the 17,000 prisoners estimated to have even held here. The victims were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured and killed. The buildings have not been altered much since the overthrowing of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and therefore, although depressing, is quite interesting.

That evening we decided to take a stroll down the river towards the Royal Palace, to be greeted by thousands of Cambodians wearing white and black. It appeared the whole of Cambodia had come to Phnom Penh literally by the truck load, to pay their respects to their ex-king. Roads were closed and there were candles,incense sticks and flowers all over the place - it was mayhem!

For our final morning in Phnom Penh, we decided to do a Khmer cooking class. Here we learnt to make chicken sausages in banana leaves and a chicken curry, both of which were delicious!

From Phnom Penh we took the bus down to Sihanoukville. We were only here for one thing and that was to get our PADI Open Water Diver certification. This took us 3 days, one day in the classroom and 2 days diving off a gorgeous island named Koh Rong. Obviously there were some skills involved but the dives were all really fun, especially the last one where we had a school of Jack fish swimming round us in circles! Our instructor is a professional photographer and took a number of videos of us diving which are all pretty cool and you'll hopefully be able to see shortly! You'll be glad to know that we both passed and are now certified Open Water Divers! We decided to celebrate with a BBQ and drinks in a restaurant on the beach. As Em has been here before, she noticed how much more built up Sihanoukville is in comparison to 2 years ago. Koh Rong island had also changed as two more dive centres have joined the island and a number of restaurants and bars have sprung up on the beachfront!

Our final stop in Cambodia was Siem Reap, home to the famous Angkor Wat. On our first day of temple visiting we took the 'grand tour' ending with some of the temples in Angkor Thom. The temples we saw were: Prasat Leaven, Banteay Kdei, Sras Srang, Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Pean, Preah Khan, Bayon, Baphuon, Phimeanakas and the Royal Palace and we watched sunset from Prah Bakheng. The following day we got up stupidly early to watch the amazing sunrise over Angkor Wat. Despite the fact Em had done it before, it was still just as amazing and something you wouldn't grow tired of doing! After a few days hours walking round this temple we headed back to Angkor Thom to see Terrace of the Elephants, Leper King Terrace, Tep Pranan, Preah Palilay, Chao Say Tevado, Thommanom, Ta Keo and finally Ta Prohm (where Tomb Raider was filmed!)

All in all our two days of temples were hectic but very good fun. Although there are way too many children offering various things for 'one dollar, one dollar' especially postcards which they try to sell by shoving in your face and saying '10 for one dollar; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10' (whole flicking through the pack of ten). Saying no does not seem to be a phrase any of them are familiar with and by the end of the two days, even James was getting pretty irate with them.

For our final night in Cambodia, Em took James to a restaurant she had been to a number of times before, which has 2 hours of free Apsara dancing while you eat which was a rear way to end our time there!

Our next destination was Bangkok and the Thai islands all of which you can read about in our next post. Hopefully we'll be able to make you all jealous with our pictures of gorgeous sunny beaches!

We realised we forgot to keep you update with our 'facts from South east Asia' so here are a couple more (hopefully we're not repeating any) :
- Vietnamese schools close if the temperature falls below 10oC (if only that was the case in the UK!)
- Lots of locals walk round in what we can only assume are pyjamas
- Cambodia's ex-king was loved a lot by the whole population
- You can buy almost anything for one dollar in Angkor
- 'No' is not a word anyone in Angkor understand or is familiar with
- When it rains it truly pours

Think that's all for now so take care and hope the cold November weather isn't too bad yet!

x x