Bali Bound

Hi Folks

Well it's my last day in Kota Kinabalu as I am heading to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow to meet Sue. Then we're off for a girlie holiday and some R&R in Bali. Forget hammocks, long drops and chlorinated water, I'm heading for the nearest resort that has the word Spa in its title.

I'm sure I can take a break from all the pampering to update this again next week so keep an eye out for more sunset piccies and the odd tale or two.

Have a good weekend
Love to you all
Vic xxx

David Attenborough, I ain't !!

I thought you would like to see the latest snaps from my jungle adventures. These are the ones I am most proud of...

I give you.....

(a) Orang Utan from afar

(b) Blurry Kingfisher

(c) Christ this snake is heading for my shoe

and my own personal favourite which I have decided to call ......

(d) Black Hornbill at night without a flash

There's another potential career to knock off my list - Wildlife Photographer I am not!!

Nor am I David Attenborough. I know this because I do not have a grey beard, a deep grandad voice or the ability to conduct myself in an appropriate manner around any form of wildlife.

I got so excited by spotting Orang Utans in the wild that I decided to visit a Rehabilitation Centre to try and get a closer look. I went to this fantastic place where they take orphan babies, feed them up and gradually reintroduce them to the jungle - perfect. I paid my money (all for a good cause) and took my place on the viewing platform with a smattering of other westerners and about 15 Japanese tourists in matching baseball caps.

We stood in silence for about 20 minutes and then ...... There was a rustle in the trees, a few branches snapped and the audience collectively held our breaths. And that's when it happened - I farted !! To make matters worse I was sitting on a wooden bench so the sound resonated around the whole platform. Thankfully one of the Japanese baseball cappers pointed at the big orange beast that had emerged from the trees and proclaimed 'Hee, hee - the big orang utan just farted' (or at least I'm guessing that's what she said but my Japanese is a bit rusty!)

Suffice to say I shall not be applying to become a BBC documentary maker any time soon.

To show you that I am not a complete waste of space in the jungle - here are a few of my better attempts at snapping some local characters....

Wellie Trekking

I don't know if this sport is big at home yet but if it's not then I fully intend to introduce it when I get back. It's a very simple sport. All you have to do is decide to go trekking on the wettest day of the year (preferably one that follows about 10 equally rainy days). Choose your location well. Ideally one with as many slippery muddy surfaces as possible (and lots of downhill bits for added comedy value). Then find some totally inappropriate footwear. My recommendation would be a pair of wellington boots at least 4 sizes too big. Make sure they are old and..... now this is the important part... that they have absolutely no grip whatsoever. Then off you go.

Forget bungy jumps and canyoning - this is extreme sport at it's finest. And it's absolutely FREE !!!!!!

The little hill

To celebrate three months of early mornings, seriously hard-work, sleeping in hammocks or on concrete floors, eating prison rations and generally not having a moment free to actually breath, I decided to end my Raleigh experience with one last bout of self-inflicted pain..... enter MOUNT KINABALU (I have deliberately put this in capitals to try and scare you as much as it scared me!!) all 4, 095m of it !!

I'm pretty sure it's the highest thing I've ever attempted and given my measly little dumpy legs, I didn't do half bad. I made it up (and down) in a very respectable time and despite said little dumpy legs now being unable to bend at the knees, I seem to have come off unscathed.

So, that's it... my time with Raleigh is over. To coin one of their favourite terms I will agree that it has been a Raleigh Roller coaster of a ride and one that I wouldn't have missed for the world. The participants really seemed to warm to me and I got some fantastic feedback at the end of both my phases - so much for thinking I couldn't be a PM! I've discovered that I'm not totally useless around a tool box and if I do say so myself I'm a bit of a ball breaker on the work site - that's a blooming surprise. It's been hard work and I'm knackered but I've absolutely loved it. I also got to meet Toby and for that alone it was well worth the air fare.

So here I am, a free woman again, sitting in an internet cafe trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life (or at the very least the rest of the week!)

I currently have a delightful chest infection so Mr Mastercard has let me check into a slightly swanky hotel where I intend to lie low for a few days. I have never been so excited to see white sheets and a porcelain toilet in my life.

I'm now off for a hot date with some noodles and the movie channel - rock on.

Thank you everyone for sending fab emails whilst I've been incommunicado - it was great to come back to them all.

I promise I will get better at updating this now that I'm back in the world of emails and internet cafes so stay tuned for the next installment of ........ Tales of an Aging Spinster!

Till then
Love you all,
Vic xxxx

Part 2 - Mantanani Island

So despite my best efforts of begging and pleading I was unable to go back to the eco lodge for the second part of my Raleigh adventure. In true Big Brother fashion lots of Project Managers had fallen out and I was asked to go elsewhere to help out on a different site. The elsewhere turned out to be Mantanani Island, which is as far removed from the Jungle Mungle as you can get. I seriously got to live on a paradise island. See......

For any of you feeling sorry for me living rough I'm afraid this may very well pee you off. I was indeed sleeping on the concrete floor of a pooey cow shed HOWEVER you open the front door and walk into a malibu commercial!!! Mantanani is one of the most magical places I have ever been and I got to live there for a little bit.

Alas there was no malibu, just a very poor school in dire need of a library - and that's exactly what they got. Courtesy of a new batch of youffs and a new Project Manager partner called Nigel. I am so incredibly proud of what the group achieved on the island. We taught English, arranged sports afternoons and generally became members of a very tight nit community. It was amazing - I loved my time there (as you can see by my slightly excited jump out of the finished article!). We had such a great group.

On a rare day off we hired a boat and went to an uninhabited haunted island (Little Manatnani) where we spent the night sleeping on the beach. It was something that I will remember for a very long time. A definite once in a lifetime experience. It's already hard to believe that I was actually there.

Lots of highlights from my second phase namely the fact that I helped build a library. Also, swimming with turtles, seeing a dolphin, sleeping on a beach, realising I don't suck at Hockey, watching the most amazing sunsets ever, singing Disney songs till 2am on the pier and cold diet coke at the end of the day!!!

Low lights are few are far between but I'll go with: being woken at 5.30am every morning by the call to pray, cow poo EVERYWHERE!, children shrieking "what's your name? what's your name?" every 5 seconds, watching locals empty their rubbish into the sea, realising I suck at football, volleyball and pretty much all other sport (other than hockey), having to leave!

During my time there I managed to accumulate quite a few nicknames but my fave has to be from the little girls in the sunset piccie above. One night I was sitting outside our cow shed home and they came over all giggling and nudging each other. I kept saying Apa? (meaning what? cos obviously I am now fluent in Malay!!!) Eventually the braver of the two took out her pencil and poked me in the chest, shouting PLASTICO, PLASTICO - suffice to say the group found it hilarious and the name pretty much stuck!

Just like Pata Puteh, I have a zillion stories from the island but for now the piccies can sum it up for me. Look at what we built.........

Part 1 - Bata Puteh

Forget Challenge Anneka - if you want something done, call in Moyles! It turns out that I'm a bloody hard worker - who knew eh! For my first Phase as a big important Project Manager type we were dispatched into the Jungle to help a little community build an eco lodge. I won't bore you with the who? What? Why? part as I know 99.9% of you will have no interest in it whatsoever, for the rest of you, check out http://www.mescot.org/ - these are the lovely folks we were working with. I had two other fantastic PMs (Toby & Hannah) and collectively we had to look after 16 unruly youffs , and actually put them to work for three weeks.

Now I could go on about the fantastic lodge structure, boardwalks, stilted viewing platforms and lakeside lagoons however the Raleigh crew were in charge of a much more exciting project than any of these. In the entire time that we spent on site, we dug a shit hole. Simple as that. Not just any old shit hole though. This was the mother of all shit holes - it was mahuuuuussif !! Big enough for TWO gigantic septic tanks, which we proudly rolled into place on our last day on site. I never thought I would get such satisfaction out of building a crapper. But it was ace. I actually nearly cried (probably from the sheer exhaustion of digging clay mud solidly for three weeks!!)

I absolutely loved being a Project Manager and working with Tobes and Hannah was amazing.

Highlights have to be: the boat ride to work in the morning, seeing an orang-utan in the wild on the way to work, seeing a 3.5m croc on the shore opposite our camp, adopting Martin the monitor lizard as our camp pet, Toby streaking through the woods for a dare, dressing up as super gran for a party (and trying to use the long drop toilet), drinking iced Milo after work, the sunset over the Kinabatangan river, playing a mad forfeit game with some crazy Malaysian guys resulting in me pole dancing for them!, doing a mini ceilidh with the locals for Hannah's birthday, washing with the girls every night in the lake and generally getting to wake up with a smile on my face every single day.

Low lights: Blood sucking leeches with a fondness for my crutch, infected mozzie bites, an unexplained rash over my entire body, crackers and peanut butter for lunch every day, sweltering heat, permanently sweating, stinking of BO, having an afro, undercooked rice, dropping my headtorch in the long drop and being nicknamed Shitty for my whole time there and no diet coke!

So that very briefly sums up my Bata Puteh experience. Luckily for you I didn't have access to the internet as I went along as I have a zillion stories I could have bored you with. Fear not, I will be happy to bore you to tears when I put together a slide show on my return. Attendance is obligatory and alcohol would probably be advised!!