Meeting Borneo

Since arriving home I have been slack updating the last month in Borneo. Luckily I have lots of notes and photos to refresh my memory!

When I decided to do the Great Orangutan Project I didn't realise what a gift I was giving myself and even though I knew what I was getting it still gave me the biggest surprise.

I farewelled dreary London and enjoyed the last few days of hospitality at my brother's house. No hot showers and general civilities for a whole month. Could I handle it?

Number one get on plane to Kuala Lumpur check.

Number two get on plane to Kuching check. Meet driver at the front who would take me to no doubt the dingiest hostel in all of Malaysia.

I walked out the arrivals and looked for a guy holding up a sign with my name. Nothing then a guy walked forward and said "Angela lovelly to meet you". Turns out Richard our driver has a spooky ability of picking volunteers from the arrivals and knowing their names. There were definately others he could have confused me with on my flight. Rochelle and Jack were from a mining town in Australia and I could see they were a little shocked with Borneo.

I had been to Thailand before so the heat and fragrant smells weren't new to me.

The dingiest hostel in all of Malaysia was actually so nice that I have upgraded its title to the best hostel I stayed in. Dark woods, smells of Frangipani comfy beds, clean white sheets, hot water, a cafe and upstairs bar that overlooks the unbelieveable view of the convention centre.

I met the other volunteers and became relaxed straight away. Volunteering is my line of work. I've done it so many times now that I completely accept the role of the worker bee, essentially that the managers will tell you what to do when to do.

That night the volunteers who had just finnished their month stay regalled us with funny stories and we started the bonding process with the current volunters.

Claire a very goregous version of Gwenth Paltrow was coming back for her second month. I knew then there must be something good to make people speak so affectionately about the staff and animals.

We had an awesome dinner, the new dish for me was the ferns with garlic and chili. And I started to take note of the very different kinds of people doing this project. I was actually the youngest there, a few men but mainly women.

We laughed at how we had all passed out before dinner and marvelled how nice the place was. I didn't think much about it then but I was very trusting of the process, maybe if I had never volunteered before I would have been scared and felt apprehensive but I was really prepared to be told what to do.

The next day after shopping for a bit we left for Matang, stopping to shop in our houses and get some lunch. Tried Rotti for the first time a pancake with curry dipping sauce. Very tasty.

The heat was to be honest overwhelming for a white girl, from whiteville, whitevallia England. And when we slept in our quite nice stilt house under my mosquito net I couldn't get comfy and wondered how on earth I would endure the next month.

My skin broke out like a 16 year old the next day, but since I was essentially cleaning out cages and working in sweating conditions I could not hope to look hot in any little bit.

We took a walk of Matang and first impressions of this place was that it was doing some very important work. I have very specific views on conservation in Malaysia that I will share with anyone over a beer but I won't publish them here as quite literally there are people who could loose their jobs over it.