Oct 5 - 10

10-5: There are a few things you should probably know about Uncle Tan. First, he's a very large man and he wears a bed sheet most of the time. Also, he's got a patch of jungle diddy'd up with some square wooden boxes (suites) and a hose that pumps brown water from the swamp lake (shower). Now any learned person would immediately question this situation. What would a man of Uncle Tan's 'stature' and leisure lifestyle be doing out in the deep dark...muddy, stinky, bug infested, malaria dripping jungle. The answer to this is simple..not a damn thing. Uncle Tan has probably never seen the jungle. He wallows in a expertly prepared nest of sweet, succulent luxury, incessantly flicking up and down the massaging foot rest of his barka lounger millenium edition (remote controlled) and sticking a teak wood back scratcher obscenely deep into the folds of his sheet. Uncle Tan's jungle adventure camp is specifically for wide eyed tourists in $200 hiking boots, that, with a nod from Tan, lay their lives in hands of greasy haired goobs who lack in teeth, but make up for it in...well..gums. But the food is good and, if you're lucky, you can get good pictures of monkey's asses as they run away from you into the trees. While I'll be saving the monkey rear pictures exclusively for printing on this year's christmas cards, I do have a few photos of the camp and surrounding lake to share.

On one of the jungle hikes by the lake, I noticed a large monitor lizard hanging out in the water. I stopped to film it for a while and eventually it jingled around a bit, tiredly. It was stuck.

Back at the camp, Jay, Mike (a canadian psychologist in Borneo to study the habits of the Orangutans for his forthcoming book "Women who don't shave, and how to get them back to your tree"), and I decided the only moral course of action was to take the little wooden cheese grater they called a boat out into the lake and set that lizard free. We paddled and bailed and eventually found the 4 foot reptile floating face down in the water. We were too late. Or at least that's what we thought till I leaned over to cut the ropes around it and it lifted its head out of the water and looked at us. How the boat stayed upright, I'll never know. We screamed and jumped and swore and got away fast. It was alive..but barely. It had been struggling against the ropes and the water for hours, and was almost completely spent. Probably only enough energy to take a few fingers or a hand. Ha.

We regained our wits and moved in to finish the rescue. I took the paddle and rested it on the back of the lizard's neck. It was still while I slipped the knife under the tight blue rope and flicked it apart. Immediately it thrashed and we jumped and screamed and swore again, but this time, it got away fast. It came up for breath once near by and then again further down the lake. It was free, we were scared..but mostly all parties were relieved.

Before Uncle Tan's wild ride, we spent about 4 days in Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of the Malaysian state of Sabah. It was a typical, and lively, city with a night life that begged to be investigated thoroughly. The four nights can be summed up in one sentence: Sometimes you wake up in the wierdest of places.

Sepilok is the most touristy of the Orangutan reserves in Borneo, and this is for good reason. The apes are everywhere..walking by, above, around us like friends at a party. They posed like supermodels. Unfortunately, my digital camera was a bit to weak to handle their super hairy detail, but here's a few photos that are worth a look. Borneo is one of very very few places in the world that orangutans can be seen in any sort of wild setting and we're both very pleased that we've had such good experiences with them.

Sipadan is an island and world class dive site off the east coast. Nearly everyone I've met who's been there has raved about it. Normally the prices would have made it a tough choice, but things have been slow, prices are down and I was able to work out a nice discount with North Borneo divers. We're traveling with a few folks from Holland, one of which, Helco, is a diver. So we booked in for two days of diving at a few different spots.

Sipadan is definately NOT overrated. It was mind-blowing. At one point there were no less than 8 large (4 feet long) turtles swimming or lounging around. They had no fear of us and so we were able to get close enough to kiss them (which got Helco in hot water with his girlfriend). The place was littered with white tip reef sharks..and a highlight for me, a 7 foot long hammerhead. There were blue spotted and eagle rays, poisonous lionfish, scorpion fish, unicorn fish, lobsters, crabs, groupers, pipe fish, trigger fish, fish fish of every color shape and size..many of which I enjoyed in the 'super special seafood mystery rice' that Helco bought us for lunch. So I've certainly had my dive fix for a while...and I can only hope that it's not all downhill from here after Sipadan. That's all from Semporna for now. More soon!


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