Kuching

Hello! Sorry for the delay in posts. Brent and I haven't had the best Internet access. We arrived in Kuching which is in the state of Sarawak on Borneo island. They call the natives here the head hunters...and it has been an amazing few days. We decided to splurge and stay at a resort rather than a hostel and headed out to the beautiful beach resort of damai. It was a ways away from the city center so we didn't arrive until the late afternoon. We decided to take a quick nap before finding dinner...but slept until 8pm! We obviously hadn't had the best quality sleep in the previous couple of days. The next day we got up early and headed out on a jungle trek (more on this later) and then went out to this amazing orangutan conservation center. They call it a semi wild conservation area bc there are no enclosures so the orangatans can come and go as they please but the park rangers leave fruit and some yams out in parts of the conservation so that the jungle (which is suffering deforestation) can support these orangatans in months of the year where there is less fruit production. We were incredibly lucky and got to see the alpha male Richie up close and personal. We learned he is about 30 yrs old and weighs approx 70-80 kilos. He had this beautiful and very long orange red coat. He was able to smash coconuts open against the tree trunks with one arm as though it was swatting a fly. Once he left the area about 7 other orangatans came down out of the jungle to eat. It appears the rest of the orangatans stay out of his way and if I were them I would too bc he was about twice as big as the rest of them. Later that night we hung out at our resorts infinity pool high up on the hillside and just took in the views. Then we had an amazing malay dinner in the reorts scenic hillside restaurant overlooking the south china sea. We had it all to ourselves aside from the waitress, hostess, chef and resident bat that did fly bys every minute or two. We had our first cocktails of the trip, a headhunter (bc when in Rome...) and a singapore sling. Food and drinks were dilicious and the total bill was less than 20$ after tax and tip. Today we traveled out to Bako national park. It was a hour in a minibus followed by a 30 minute banka (small boat) ride thru the mangroves, onto the ocean, and into the park. We met up with a guide whose name we couldn't pronounce but that went by Issa. He warned us that we might not see all the animals and monkeys as they could be quite elusive. Again we lucked out. We saw all 3 types including the probocious (long nose) monkeys. These are apparently the hardest to find as they are fewer in number, stay mainly in the tops of trees, and become very silent when they hear humans approach. Amazingly, they seemed to find us on our trek thru the jungle. All of a sudden it just sounded like trees were coming down and it appeared to be coming toward us. The sounds were the big 40-60 kilo monkeys jumping from tree to tree. As they got close they made noises like snorting pigs out of their long noses. We also saw the silver tail monkeys and the macaques (called naughty monkeys here as they often steal people's belongings). Aside from the monkeys we saw a huge wild boar with 4 piglets, a monitor lizard, catfish, 2 pit vipers (which our guide warned us can kill a human in 2 hours after a bite- glad we didn't know that yesterday when we trekked thru the jungle by ourselves!!) 2 green tree snakes, one of which was huge and I almost stepped on. I jumped about 3 feet bc from where I spotted it right next to my leg I thought it was a pit viper (same bright green color) coiled up and ready to strike. The guide laughed and said it was just a treesnake. When I asked if it was poisonous he said "yes, but not like pit viper". We also saw flying lemur taking a snooze in a tree. We did not see any of the crocodiles that the many signs said to watch out for. We also did not see jumping spiders, scorpions, or the giant python which was ok by us. Upon leaving the park we came back to Kuching to stay in a hostel and are going to be flying to Kota Kinabalu at 6 am tomorrow. In other very exciting news we found out today that our offer for a beautiful house in pleasant hill has been accepted and we are in contract!!! Thank you very much family for all the hard work in making this happen while we've been away!!! Brent and Ash