Simon at Sepilok

We were met at the Kota Kinabalu airport by Albert, who is the local contact here for Travellers. I got the impression we wouldn't be seeing too much of him this weekend as people were gradually arriving in Kota Kinabalu and we'd have our formal meeting on Monday at Rasa Ria.
Until then we would be staying at the Tang Dynasty hotel for 2 nights to settle in and get to know each other.

After the 3 of us checked in we soon met up with 3 more of our fellow Travellers volunteers who had arrived the previous day. Determined to beat the jet lag we headed for a beach to do some swimming and snorkelling. A short taxi ride away was the main KK jetty and a fast boat out to one of the islands. The Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park consists of five islands only a few minutes out from the jetty. We were advised to try Pulau Mamutik.


A recurring theme here in Sabah is the number of individual payments you have make to get anywhere. Today for example we paid for the speedboat ferry, then we paid a port tax to allow the boat to leave, then we paid a park fee to set foot on the island. We'll get used to it!

By the time we got there it was late in the day and the water was pretty churned up, so although there were plenty of fish to see the water was pretty murky.

I'm sure we'll have better luck another time.

P.S. Specially for Paul, Russ and Aaron - couldn't believe this one at the airport in Kuala Lumpur...
...low budget airline for a low budget team i guess.

Smooth journey really. Arrived at Heathrow on the tube after a leisurely "early morning commute" via the Picadilly Line. At the airport i met up with Becky and eventually Elaina (who had gone to Terminal 4 by mistake...). We managed to get seats together ok and then started all the chat and exchanging of stories. A couple of drinks and a pretty good meal later i expected to sleep for most of the flight to Kuala Lumpur. It didn't work out that way, mostly due to the seat i think, so the movies took a hammering instead.

Connected at KL for the short 2 hour hop to Kota Kinabalu. As we filled out the immigration forms at KL Becky looked worried about the amount of currency she had to declare. El and i had about 650 ringitts each (about £100) but Becky said she thought she had several hundred thousand. Sure enough when we checked, all her notes had big numbers on them with lots of zeros. They also had a picture of the Indonesian president........
....her travel agent had given her currency for Borneo but hadn't checked which part of Borneo she was going to (see earlier map for explanation!).

Finally, just a little reminder for all my old friends at Amex.........

Well that's it - all packed, just need to hire a 32-ton transporter to lift my bags now!
Off to the airport in the morning and then hopefully airborne around 10.50am.

Very excited now, it feels to me like ages since booking my place on this project, but compared to some of the other volunteers (who have had over a year of planning and waiting) mine is really more like a last minute getaway! I'm so glad it's all fallen into place. As one of my old work colleagues remarked "all of the planets have aligned for me at the right time".

I must have created some good karma along the way to deserve this opportunity eh??!!

I'm off to bed now, see you all in a couple of months and stay tuned for more updates... :-)

As part of the volunteering project Travellers have gone ahead and adopted a young orangutan for each of us!

My "adopted daughter" is a beautiful 2 year-old little girl called Sogo-Sogo. She has been at Sepilok since January 2005.
Sogo was found by villagers from the Tongond area of the Kinabatangan River who spotted her climbing trees by herself. She would not have survived on her own so they took her back to the village and looked after her for four months. She remained there until a visitor to the village alerted Sepilok who came to collect her. On arrival at Sepilok she was given a thorough health check and found to be extremely well.

She spent the first 3 months in quarantine (which apparently she hated, probably due to the amount of attention she had been given back at the village!) and currently lives in the indoor nursery. I am told she goes out to exercise with two other youngsters, Naru and Ampul, and is a very good climber!!

Hopefully i'll be able to meet her face-to-face while i'm working there and then i'll be able to let you know a lot more about her progress.

This is a shared adoption scheme so you can all join in if you like. See the "Orangutan Adoption at Sepilok" link in "how to help" section on the right for more details.

Just found a very good interactive map of Sabah that you might like to play around with - click this link to start exploring ---> http://www.sabahtravelguide.com/home.asp?page=mapguide

Last night i went over to Kew Gardens to attend a lecture being given by Ashley Leiman OBE of the Orangutan Foundation, entitled "Saving Asia's Only Great Ape".
See http://www.orangutan.org.uk/events/viewnews.php?id=87a2092b0adb28a5ac0da0ef41a058bf

On the way there i met up with Miriam, one of the other eleven Travellers volunteers who will be working with me. We got there very early to make sure of entry and although it didn't quite sell out, there were only a few of the 220 seats left free. Miriam had travelled down from Colchester for the lecture so we were both hoping it would be worth the journey!

Luckily it was a good session - Ms. Leiman (who has just been awarded an OBE in the recent New Years Honours 2006 list "For services to the Conservation of Orangutans") gave a great overview of the current problems facing the species and highlighted how by concentrating on saving the Orangutan by default the whole of the rest of the rainforest environment can be maintained. There was also a good Q&A session afterwards, which started to explore a number of related issues such as bio-fuels and their possible impact on the demand for palm oil.

All in all a very good session - it certainly helped me put the work we are about to do into some kind of perspective.

So now the packing must begin - we leave on Friday...!!!

As promised by Aaron, the Court Meadow JCB Poster is now live on the Nizlopi media website - see http://www.nizlopi.m6.net and look in the "Fan Content" and then scroll down to the "Fan Art" Section.
(Direct link is http://www.nizlopi.m6.net/FCcourtmeadow.htm)

Well done everyone!!