Hi, this is Ant, I was very excited to be see Borneo for the first time. From above it was minds eye dense green rainforest with snaking brown rivers looking lazily for the sea. Didn't take long to find Gill and I dont think we stopped talking for hours. Three months to catch up on.
We are to spend 3 nights on the Santubong peninsula at Damai beach. Gill had found a rainforest retreat to spend her birthday and here we were at the Permai Rainforest Resort. We had a treehouse each, the maddest, tallest sheds on stilts that we'd ever seen, at least 10m up in the tree canopy, overlooking the beach and thw Sputh China Sea. From the outside the tree houses looked really ramshackle, but inside they were lovely, windows on three sides and a balcony. Perfect. Slightly disconcerting are the monkeys looking into your room, fab to be on eye level with these creatures watching our every move. Even more perfect was curry for lunch, an afternoon nap and then spicy noodles for dinner. Just great.
GIlls exercise regime was to continue and as Ant needs to get up Kinabalu in a fortnight then his needs to start. Thw deal was an hours walk every day, and as the hotel is smack bang in the middle of tropical rainforest, with marked trails, there was no excuse. So day one we chose a short 6km trail that they estimated 1.5 hours and we set off. Now this is rainforest and I don't think that the trail is frequented that often. We spent the next 2.5 hours edging our way over mangled tree routes, up dry river beds, down ravines. This wasn't the easy choice at all. We crossed a river on a rope bridge then hauled ourselves up the other side on a rope. All in 100% humidity and boiling heat. A fun intro to exercise. The trees were amazing, we saw silver leaf monkeys, trails of ants. The snakes gave us a wide berth thank goodness.
We flopped at a local restaurant for satay and then Ant fell asleep for the afternoon in the heat.
But no rest for the wicked, there were mangroves to explore at dusk. Gill took an instant dislike the the boat, so we got to the mangroves via bua and then a shortened boat ride. We were on the hunt for the endangered proboscis monkeys. And we found them! Result! A large troup, in the mangrove swamp, happily chomping on leaves, almost human in their mannerisms. So the table was turned, this time we were playing peeping toms! It was a special moment as the sun set on Gill's 59th year! Hehe had to get that in. There were stilted fishing villages in amongst the mangrove, and we enjoyed observing waterborne village life for half an hour or so before heading back under the threat of a storm.
The storm did turn up later. Thunder and lightening! Is it wise to be sleeping in a treehouse? It both so knackered for our exertions, we slept through it anyway!
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Turnwd tables we saw probosci
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