more....

So, after we left the mountain Meag and I headed to Sipilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Center. Orang Utans are only found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. They are endangered and this place was founded to try and rehabilitate orang's that have been held as pets or in illegal zoo's and get them back into the wild. I was in love. I mean it. These are the sweetest creatures that have ever lived.

Humans are on a platform and the orangs are fed twice a day on a platform a dozen feet away. Once they are released into the wild they have the option of coming back to the platforms for food or not. Some always come back and some never do. This is only one of 4 orang utan rehabilitation centers in the world and is apparently very successful at getting them back into the wild. It may also be my place of future employment....

After this we went to the coast of the island so I could go diving and Meag could go snorkeling. The island of Sipidan is a few km's off the coast of Sabah and is apparently one of the top 10 dive sites in the world. The island itself is really, really small and uninhabited. The water around it is spectacular though. The coral starts right away and there is a cliff that drops off 600m to the depths. scary eh? So we went diving around the shallow coral and along the wall of the cliff. It was amazing. By far the best diving I have ever done. It was impossible to look in any direction without seeing a sea turtle. These green turtles were massive. I stretched out my arms as I was going over one and I wouldn't have been able to touch the edges of its shell with my hands. I love how animals underwater aren't affraid of humans and will just swim right up to you. At one point I thought another diver was trying to get my attention but then I realized that it was a turtle poking my arm. There were also tons of sharks (hammer heads!), barracudas, etc. I loved it.

After this, we spent a full two horrible days of travelling from one end of the island to the other, to catch 2 flights to the north end of peninsular malaysia to an island. The first leg of the trip was a 12 hour bus ride that was rightly named the "MTV Karaoke" bus. They blasted Malaysian techno allllll night. The bus ride ended up being even longer, as we got a flat tire in the middle of the night and it took 2 hours to change it. We arrived in Kota Kinabalu at 7am but our flight wasn't until 9pm, so we had all day to kill. We flew to Kuala Lampur and got there at midnight but had to wait until 8am for our next flight. There were many sleepless hours spent at fast food restaurants (the only places that were open), trying to entertain ourselves by playing games, like naming all of the countries in the world, and people watching. We finally fell asleep on our bags, only to be woken up a couple hours later by a bunch of men standing over us and gawking. Awkward.

We finally arrived in Langkawi by 11am. It was a long few days. We had made plans to meet up with the Germans (again, but for the last time) on the island. We spent the days relaxing in the sun, reading our books, playing frisbee and getting beaten up by the massive waves. To top it all off, this was a duty free island so beers were about 0.30$ Canadian. Ridiculous. We had our fair share, much to the dismay of the Germans who were studying and working out at every chance they got. One of them said to Meaghan "Since I met you, I think I have seen you drink more beer than water." We are doing our country proud.

On our last day on the island, Halloween, we spent the day scootering around to all of the other secluded beaches. They were amazing as there aren't any resorts built on them, yet. Sadly though we did see a monkey on a leash being forced to swim by his horrible owner. We spent the night at a huge market eating as much as we could from all of the delicious food stalls. The food in Malaysia is a mix of Chinese, Indian and Malay food, so we had a lot to choose from. We went back to our hostel to find the town dead quiet, so Meaghan and I had a few beers and wallowed in our sorrows about not being able to go out for Halloween for the first time in over 20 years. Sigh.

From Langkawi we took a ferry to Krabi in Thailand. Another night bus had us arrive in the city at 1am where we got dropped off in the middle of nowhere and bombarded by a taxi driver who so kindly offered to take us to "his friends" guest house and "the only one that was still open at this hour". In situations like this you are really at the mercy of the local people because you have no idea where you are, how much things should cost and whether anything they say is true or not. You are forced believe them, although skeptically, for lack of a better option. All you can do is try to bargain with them or get more information.

The next day we went kayaking throughout a mangrove forest and massive jungle covered cliffs. Amazing. Once we entered the river in between the cliffs it felt like we were in our own secluded little world that had never been discovered before now. Although this feeling was taken away by the 20 other groups of kayakers ahead and behind us. There were a few small beaches along the way where monkeys would gather and wait for the guides to come and feed them. The guides think it is hilarious to put food on the tourist's kayaks so the monkeys will jump on them. Little do they know I loved it. Meag, not so much. She chooses to call monkeys "aggressive" while I call them "friendly". While paddling through the mangroves the monkeys would kamikaze jump from the trees down onto the kayaks or into the water, so you never really know where one is going to be next. They are so used to humans that we saw one grab a water bottle, open it, and drink from it. Apparently the lack of opposable thumbs has not hindered them too much.

That afternoon we went for an elephant trek in the jungle where we both got to ride bareback (same terms as for horses?). Also very cool but since we didn't get to go swimming with them, it wasn't quite as good as the time before. I'm apparently an elephant snob now.

Going to try and post some pics. You are now caught up to Nov 2nd. Phew. More later.