Yum yum eat 'em up!

At this moment in time I am sitting at a computer terminal at a hostel in the heart of Kota Kinabalu, the largest city in the Malaysian province of Sabah on the island of Borneo. Borneo is incredible, the people are friendly and almost everyone speak english to some extent, making travel extremely easy (this is true of everywhere I have been in Malaysia) but the culture is different enough that its an adventure just walking around.

I don't have too too long to spend writing as I have to pay for this terminal but I will leave with a few highlights of the past 10 days in Malaysia.

- Met up with Meagan, a friend from way back home in my Tim Horton's days. We made it to the hostel from the airport when she realized that she had lost her passport, all her plane tickets, and her ID card to allow her to work in Korea. We spent a stressful couple hours looking around Kuala Lampur before returning to the hostel and having the taxi driver show up not too much later with the passport and everything intact.

- Was hassled by a man selling bootlegged DVDs in a night market after having just remarked on how considerate people were when you said no, they just left you alone. Not so this fella, I thought I had a perfect out when I said I was travelling and didn't have a dvd player, when he volunteered to find me a dvd player and tv to watch my movies on. Eventually he gave up, but only to reappear 20 minutes later as we were leaving. He didn't stick around that long, but I apparently need to learn a lot more about dealing with people in markets.

- I missed my flight from Kuala Lampur to Kota Kinabalu and had to buy a brand new ticket.

- I travelled to Danum Valley Field Centre, a station out in the largest continuous forest in Sabah (a state in Malaysian Borneo) where I found my camping facilities to be quite nice, however I was alone in the woods. And when you are camping alone in the rainforest where there are bears and elephants, and leopards, and cobras, etc, etc, you really do feel quite alone out there. Oh, and 2 of the 4 bathroom stalls were homes to the largest spiders I have ever seen in the wild, easily the size of my fist.

- While travelling to breakfast my first full day I spotted some pig tailed Macaques (see photo below), and made the mistake of trying to see if what I was looking at in the forest was a monkey or a log. Apparently my obvious staring was taken as aggression and I was charged. Luckily my first reaction was to sprint the opposite direction, as these guys have been know to attack people and are considered quite aggressive.



- I saw a wild Orangutan!

- Also saw, a bearded pig (which blocked my way to breakfast one morning), red leaf monkeys, samba deer, mouse deer, 3 different types of centipedes (all very large), a malay civet, the emperor cicada, a massive hornbill, the largest monitor lizard I have ever seen, and heard some gibbons. Not a bad haul.

- Realized that I paid less for my entire week, including food, guides, internet access, accomodation, and taxi to get to and from the centre, than I would have for 1 night in the lodge an hour down the road.

And now I am done, because I have hit a half hour and I need to go get some food from the market. Tomorrow to Kuala Lampur, then South Africa, then to Madagascar!

I will talk to you in a while.

The end of Australia.

So its been a while, I am aware. I was down in Tasmania, out in the wilds of the North West Coast, where there was no internet, so I couldn't update. But you can all breathe easy now, cause here's an update.

As I mentioned, when you last heard from me I was heading to Tasmania. I flew out of the Melbourne airport and in my rush made a very unwise move, and got food from Hungry Jacks (Burger King). In a normal situation I would never do this, I rate Burger King significantly lower on the taste and quality of product scale than even McDonalds. But it was all there was and I was very hungry. So I got some, and subsequently got a mean case of food poisoning. Or swine flu, or Ebola, or something that made me feel quite sick for a while. Luckily the nausea and headaches ended quite quickly, however the intensely sore throat lasted for at least a week.

But I stuck it out and headed up North to help with the Save the Tasmanian devil program, monitoring how far the Facial Tumor Disease has spread since the last survey. It was a great experience, and got to see practically all the animals that I could have wanted to (the exception being the platypus) wild and free, and I got to visit places that tourists to Tasmania tend not to visit (ie: clear cut forests - which is essentially all of Northern Tasmania, and a mining camp - where I was surprised to find a large proportion of young 20 somethings, and a large proportion of females. Not at all matching my preconceived ideas that miner were burly middle aged men, apparently they are all burly 20 year old girls).



My crew was made of 3 people, Drew - the team leader, Clair - the assistant, and me - the volunteer. We only caught a single devil with disease, which was great in that it didn't seem to have spread much, and great that I didn't see any really traumatic sights (apparently its really nasty when you see it). However, the other 2 teams which were further north and east, caught a bunch of diseased devils.



After the devil program we headed home to Hobart, where I stayed with Drew for a night. That day I headed out to the Hobart Museum and watched a video on the rigours of Antarctic research and proceeded to return to Drew's to find one of the people interviewed in the movie to be in the kitchen. We then had a nice little conversation where I was told that winters in Canada are far worse than anything they had experienced in Antartica (mind you, it was coastal and in the summer) and they were all impressed with my eyelid freezing shut over my eye story.

Hobart was a nice little place, although quite cold without heating in any building. I toured around for a while, however nothing too too exciting happened while there, so I will save you the time and not write about it.

After Hobart I flew into Melbourne and was lucky enough to stumble upon the opening ceremonies of the Arts Festival where there were a number of free events going on around the town. I was able to see some incredible shows that involved people playing bells on extremely bendy stilts, and then people playing drums and bells dressed in jester costumes while spinning and suspended a good 30 meters from the ground.



Melbourne is a great city, and I would advise anyone going to Australia to budget more time in Melbourne than in any of the other cities (at least those that I visited). There are plenty of little side streets (called arcades) full of coffee shops and interesting little shops to look into. Plus there are lots of free things to do. And a pretty impressive market.

But now I am back in Wollongong and I fly out to Malaysia tomorrow afternoon. I got a surprise a few days ago when I found out that my friend from back home, who now lives in Korea, was able to get a week off and in coming down to Malaysia with me! Much nicer traveling with people than on your own. So as the plan stands, 10 days in Malaysia (with 5 days spent in the wilds of Borneo at the Danum Valley Conservation Center searching for wild Orangutans) and then a one night stop-over in Christopher Cornish's old house in Jo-burg South Africa, then on to Madagascar. In 2 weeks time I will be at my destination in Beza Mahafaly. I have no idea where the last month went.

I'll make sure I get something typed up after Malaysia and before Madagascar, just don't expect anything for about 10 days.

Ayden