The next thrilling installment- in which our hero finally encounters pongo pygmaeus and falls helplessly in love

Anyone want to buy a puppy? Or maybe a persian kitten? Only midly baked in the 40 degree heat of the full Malaysian sun. What's that? No, he's only sleeping, he's very happy really. We're not going to give them any water though, because then they'll only wee everywhere. How about a tortoise- we've got a bucket full, or a rabbit? No?

Such was the scene in which I found myself on Sunday morning in Kota Kinabalu. Anna had sadly left us for Kuching and Tristan had already planned ahead and gone on to KK straight from Mulu. Jonas had planned on going to the Kelabit Highlands, but couldn't get a ticket, so decided to join me for an evening flight to KK. Have you ever flown in a small, propeller plane through a tropical thunderstorm? It's quite, um... interesting- particularly when you have a rather annoying German humming the theme to Indiana Jones to himself in the seat next to you!

Kota Kinabalu is market crazy- in fact apparently it holds the largest Malaysian market in the world, and I can well believe that. In addition to the Sunday market that runs throughout the centre of town, there's a daily sprawl of stalls stretching down all along the sea wall. At around 2 o'clock when the boats come back with their haul, the stalls explode with everyone trying to get their own catch out first. I saw whole tuna being expertly butchered, a single fish taking up an entire stand with the head stood up, holding the tail in it's mouth. We ate red snapper, squid and weird looking seaweed straight from the sea, cooked with chilli oil on a flaming bbq and served with rice and mango. We ate with our fingers and boy did we enjoy it! Even Jonas' bottomless stomach was finally satisfied. One thing though, it was served on plates that had been sealed inside plastic bags, so that they can be reused without the bother of washing them! This is how things work here, plastic bags come with everything, even when you say you don't need one, fruit is handed over in individual ones (sometimes in two- and a polystyrene net case for pears!).

At least in KK there are level crossings so you can walk safely across the road- there were none at all in Miri, because in the towns, the people simply don't walk anywhere. They stare at me with my bright red face, sweating away in the sun as they sit in their air conditioned cars going from their air conditioned houses to their air conditioned malls. When the women do have to go outside, most of them sheild themselves from the sun with an umbrella. Mrs Lee was telling me that she has a friend who carries an umbrella even when she puts her washing out to dry. In KK we can see why. Here our hostel (the usual- geckos climbing the bathroom walls, cats in varying stages of arousal or pregnancy, dorm rooms with 3 sets of bunk beds, jammed so closely together in the boxlike room that only one person can stand up at a time...) has a television in the common room. This is the first TV I've seen for over a week and all of the ads are for skin whitening creams, featuring the palest humans I've ever seen, and trust me, I myself am practically see-through! The presenters too have a complexion of which any vampire would be proud- a stark and ridiculous contrast to their mahogannied, western counterparts.

All in all, I think I've had enough of cities for now, the filth and the noise (yes, Lady GaGa does get everywhere) not to mention the smell, is starting to get to me, so Jonas and I decide to take a bus and head off to Sandakan.

Now Sandakan itself is pretty non-descript, lots and lots of people; although tomorrow is the Malaysian new year, so the crowds may be due to that rather than the town's general popularity. The streets are filled with stall-like shops selling intriguing knock-offs. 'BlueBerry' anyone?! The reason that I wanted to come here though, is that it is a bus journey away from the Sepilock Orangutan sanctuary.

Why do people come to Borneo? It has some of the best diving in the world, one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, home to proboscis monkeys, Elephant and Rhino. And of course to the orangutan. I've dreamed of seeing these amazing creatures ever since I was a teeny tiny girl and they are the reason I am here in Malaysia. Jonas kept telling me that I was being stupid and that I might as well go and see them in a zoo as go to the feeding platform at Sepilok- but that's where he's wrong. These animals are all orphans, mainly from the palm plantations but occasionally their mothers have been killed for bushmeat and the babies kept as pets. They have been rescued and are brought to the sanctuary to begin their rehabilitation. This process takes around 8-10 years, with the older ones returning to the feeding platform as and when they please. The rehabilitation centre itself is not open to visitor, since any diseases that humans are carrying can be passed onto the vulnerable babies. But you can see them at the feeding platform, twice a day, vieing with the pesky makaks for the choice bananas. Seeing them so close, as relaxed as can be, you almost forget how bad things are looking for their species. I really really hope to see them in the wild, maybe on the Kinumatangan, or south in Bako.

The feeding frenzy over and the over-confident Makaks that lined the walkway successfully negotiated, I was waiting for Jonas in a large, secluded bandstand-like hut. In walks a young orangutan. Just like that, out of the blue. I was sitting on a step at the entrance and he came and sat next to me, before brushing past my shoulder and walking lazily up to the trees at the side.

I literally couldn't move. I have been fascinated by these animals for years, but having now looked one in it's soulful, intelligent eyes, I know that I am smitten, and always will be.

Hello London, this is Miri, come in London...

This is pretty impressive, is it not? - I'm about 7000 miles from home and can still annoy you all with my witterings. Though to be honest, I'm finding it a little difficult to decide what to tell you, there's just so much that I've seen and done already (plus there is a giant German ecologist talking on his phone in the background and it's very distracting- pipe down Jonas I'm trying to concentrate!)

It's been a whole week since I arrived in Sarawak, and I still haven't quite worked out how I ended up here. Borneo is a place that I have always wanted to visit and if the past week is any indication, I don't think I'm going to be disappointed. The original plan had been to go out with a group and do some voluntary conservation-style work for six weeks, before heading out on my own. Devastatingly though, about four days before I was due to leave that all fell through, and so I was left with the choice of either not going at all and losing all the money that I had put into the trip, or getting on the flight and finding my own way around. Of course I chose the latter and so set off with my backpack, a copy of the Lonely Planet (thank you Julia!!) and no small amount of trepidation.

I finally got to Miri after an epic twentyfourish hours of traveling (the bus journey from Miri airport took almost 5 hours in itself, what with having to wait for the drivers to turn up etc. Still, I managed to kill some time chatting to the incredulous locals, who simply couldn't believe that I had come here on my own. One lady told me that she lives in Kuching with her husband and six children, but her employer made her relocate to Miri earlier this year and so now she works here and only goes home to her family once a fortnight, traveling for ten hours by bus to get there.)

I had planned on staying at the hostel I'd booked in Miri for a couple of days, in order to acclimatise myself to this new world and work out what to do next. Of course this didn't happen. There was another girl staying in the dorm with me and she'd been looking for someone to go to Mulu with her. In my exhausted and overheated state I agreed to accompany her and before I knew it, she and Mrs Lee (the owner of the hostel) had booked me on a flight at 8.30 the next morning and Anna and I were heading off to buy provisions from the local supermarket.

I am so lucky to have bumped into Anna so early on in my trip. She is a communications officer in the Australian army and so knows quite a lot about living out of a rucksack in the wilderness. She can also speak Malay, which is pretty useful since, although almost everyone here speaks English fluently, in some of the more remote places communication can be a bit hit and miss. I feel like such a rookie by comparison, but Anna was incredibly patient with my incompetent bumbling and gave me the perfect introduction to life in Malaysia. Well, I say perfect, more like throwing myself straight in at the deep end with no idea how to swim.

Whilst waiting at the airport for our flight to Mulu, Anna and I met two guys going the same way. Belgium-born Tristan and the large German, Jonas. Together the four of us made our way from dorm to campsite to longhouse, traveling by plane, boat and very dodgy van from Mulu to Limbang, meeting all sorts of interesting people along the way.


Of all the things that I've seen so far, the bats at Deer Cave in Mulu National Park was probably the most spectacular. David Attenborough mentions this daily exodus of 3 million winged beasts in his Planet Earth series and I cannot tell you how incredible it was to witness in real life. The main cavern itself is unbelievably huge. The picture above doesn't really show the scale very well, but I'm using this one because (as well as being pretty pleased with it) it clearly shows the dark patches on the roof that look a bit like moss, but which are actually thousands upon thousands of bats.

I far prefer wandering through the jungle to spending time in the city, at the moment at least. Although after five days of continuous walking and sweating we were all getting pretty ripe and the luxury of a warm shower and a washing machine cannot be dismissed. It's strange here, they add sugar to pretty much everything. Apparently diabetes is becoming a serious problem, not altogether unsurprising when they add condensed milk to tea and then add extra sugar. Bleugh! I think I've finally worked out how to order black tea without sugar, but it's been a lot of trial and error. There's also an odd, slightly unpleasant smell that seems to permeate everything, at first I thought it was my hiking trousers (they were pretty grim by the end) but now that they're clean, the smell is still there, so I think it must be the city rather than me!

There is another shadow that falls upon everything here and of which you are constantly aware- the palm oil plantations. As we flew to Mulu I got my first sighting of this devastating industry. In the middle of stunning forest there were swathes of perfectly straight grid lines cut harshly into the land, rows and rows and rows, extending off as far as the eye could see. Whilst we were staying at 'Camp 5'; a campsite set beside a river, between two mountains in the Mulu National Park, we spoke to the Ranger Ishmael about the plantations. Ishmael is Penan, a peaceful, nomadic tribe who've lived in the forest for thousands of years, and he told us that the government of Sarawak have been forcibly buying up land and relocating people in order to make way for the palm oil. Ishmael went to court to try and stop his people's land being taken, but he is unable to read or write. The English he has, he learned from guiding tourists and he simply doesn't know what the law is or how it works. He said that his lawyer told them not to say anything, so they obeyed and lost the case.
He believes that the forest doesn't just belong to his people, or even to Malaysia, but to the whole world and he knows that he is powerless to save it. The look of despair in his usually cheerful face was beyond upsetting as he asked us for guidance. Ishmael needs someone to tell him what to do because at the moment, the prediction is that in less than twenty years all of the rain forest in Sarawak will have gone forever.

I don't want to end this first post on such a sombre note, but this is one of the major reasons that I decided to come here, to find out about the plantations and how the local people feel about it. It seems that those living in the cities never leave them, I spoke to a lady today who has never been to Brunei or to Mulu, but lived in Miri all her life. She once went to Kota Kinabalu, but that's as far as she's been. The contrast between those living in the forest and the city dwellers couldn't be more stark.


Anywho, it's getting late and I have rambled for far too long. Tomorrow evening Jonas and I head off to Kota Kinabalu (or KK as it's known- see I'm getting the hang of this traveling lingo!) in Sabah, where hopefully I should be able to see some exciting beasts!


Will write again when I can, over and out xxx

Once more into the mix dear friends, once more

How is it November already? October seems to have flashed by in a blur, along with the mixtape deadline. In the last fortnight I've left my job, moved house and said an awful lot of goodbyes. This hasn't left me with much time for mixtape making so poor Piers has had to wait an age for this beaut.

As you can probably tell from this month's theme (and also from my going on and on and on about it) I'm disappearing off for a little while. My flight leaves for Miri on Friday and so for the next couple of months I'm going to be bumming around Borneo and trying to avoid being eaten by snakes.

This blog may start to look a bit different over the next couple of weeks, I'm planning on keeping it up to date with my adventures and I'll be taking my sketchbook of course, so I'll be boring you all silly with sob stories about leeches and mosquitos. I'm going to be all on my own, so please feel free to leave motivational/abusive comments on here, I'll pick them up and reply when I can. I've never done anything like this before so am freaking out quite a lot just now. See you in Malaysia! xxx

Sketchbook nonsense

I'm having a minor crisis in the drawing department, so I thought I'd dig out some uni work for inspiration. (The rubbings were taken from pieces made using an acid bath and sheet metal- the same process as an etching plate, only I let the acid eat through the metal until only the fragile objects remained. I have the original plates somewhere- I might dig them out and take photos, they're pretty strange).

Inspirational trees

This is what I am giving my sister Pippa for her birthday. Hope she likes it!

Is that a mixtape in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

I know, I know, it's really late, but it's done and has been sent. Phew. I don't know what happened this month, I got all panicy having seen the amazing tapes that other people have produced, they're getting increasingly impressive as the months go by. Seriously people, how am I supposed to compete? So I spent ages trying to produce an incredibly elaborate pop-up number, but in the end I decided to go back to the design I've been using since the beginning. I find the idea that they work as a series oddly satisfying, even if they may not have the same impact as some other pieces.

Oh and the odd pale colour in the image above is in fact an ever-tasteful fluorescent pink...mmmm, nice!

Tis not yet the season...erm sorry about that

Hey there lovely people. Sorry for the disgraceful lack of recent postings, I've been somewhat distracted with Hen-do's to organise and all sorts of boring but necessary tasks to complete before my excursion to the Rainforest (which is coming up really soon, I've got to get into training!). I have however, found enough time to add some more stock to my Etsy shop.

Yup, that's right, Christmas cards!

I know, I know, I too hate the fact that all of the shops are already stocking all their glittery shite, despite it being only mid September. It makes me cringe when hearing Christmas carols pumped insessently through shop speakers everywhere once bonfire night is over.

Thing is though, I'm disappearing off for six weeks in November (key Christmas selling time) and have decided therefore, that my shop needs to be fully stocked with festive goodies before my departure. I've managed to ensure that I am going to escape the majority of the hype this year- I don't think that there's too much carolling in the Malaysian wilderness, and so feel somehow less guilty about foisting such atrocities on you.

So if you're one of those super-organised types and fancy a hand-cut card, or a high quality printed beaut for that special someone, just check out my shop, you might find something you like. As for the rest of you I can only appologise, but you know it's only going to get worse.