Mon 29 Oct Lahad Datu to Borneo Rain Forest lodge

After just 3 hours sleep the wake up call rang. Groan.

Leaving Kota Kinabalu

Palm oil planations everywhere

Landing at Lahad Datu

Our plane and luggage being offloaded

After good coffee at the lodge office, we are heading off into the jungle. Two hour drive to the lodge as shown in the map below.

Possible we could see Pigtail macaque (monkey), orangutan, pygmy elephants, leopard. Not that I'm expecting anything :)

What an awesome drive!!
Upon entering the park we saw the macaque.

Notice her tiny baby

Next we saw a snake eagle, then a deer, wild chicken, lovely birds. Beautiful jungle

250 year old tree

I felt my arm was sore...
Eek something must have bitten me.

And then.....

Our first pygmy elephant

We were so lucky with our driver as he was a great spotter.

As we arrived at the lodge, an orangutan, known as Son, was in the tree.  Wow.

One of Roy's pictures

We were welcomed with cool towels, lemon grass and ginger drink, and best of all a complimentary short back and neck massage. Bliss.

Lunch was delicious, served with monkey entertainment in the gardens. How is it they didn't try to steal?

We didn't make the 2:30 video presentation as we chose a quick snooze instead, but had a lovely walk along the boardwalk. The lodge lent me some leach socks.

The first tree below is a 300 / 400 year old Shorea Johorensis tree with strangler creeper that has killed the tree over maybe 100 / 200 years. The inner dead tree will disappear over time.

Our guide told us about a guest who was killed by an elephant.

The other couple in our group are from Essex.

We looked at the river, then back on the road where there is a strangler creeper with the dead tree emptied away. Was really beautiful.r Reminded me of something out of a Harry potter movie.

I'll take a better picture tomorrow because this doesn't do it kusjust.

And then we rushed off down the bank to see some red leaf monkey's. One knocked a large tree down as it jumped which fortunately missed us. I am reminded of the indemnity we signed.

Red leaf monkeys

We arrived back just before it rained.
Now I've just had a Pina Colada, listening to the noisy jungle and must get ready for our night drive in half an hour.

The night drive was lovely. We saw a civil (just), two Samdar deer, and two different birds.