Orangutans and scorpions

After a day of snorkeling I ran (literally) to the bus station to get a ticket for Sepilok. The bus departed at 7:30 pm and dropped Leanne and I at the junction about 50 km from Sepilok at 11:30pm. We waited in a restaurant and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a large insect. I walked over to my bag and moved it away from the insect to discover that it was a rather large black scorpion. The staff at the restaurant just panicked. The women did their high pitched shrieks and out came a man with large tongs to take the little creature outside.

The bus pulled up at midnight. We immediately hit a checkpoint. All locals have to carry ID in this part of Malaysia. One woman was pulled off the bus. Some large guns pointed at her and she started crying. Our bus pulled away from the checkpoint a few minutes later without her.

Leanne and I got dropped at another junction. This one was 3km away from the Orangutan sanctuary and guesthouse. Our conversation about S21 and the Kmer Rouge as we walked down a dark, lonely highway was a bit eerie. The dogs came out to greet us with their barks. The road got darker as we walked down. Twenty minutes late we found a guesthouse and checked into a dorm (after waking the staff).

At 9am it was off to the sanctuary to see orangutans which translates into man of the forest. The aboriginal communities of Borneo believed that people turned into orangutans when they died. The place was a bit of a zoo. Hundreds of people were crowding the feeding platforms to get a look at the apes. They would swing into view and some even walked down the wooden path toward us. Leanne and I took a walk along the path away from the crowds when I had my very own personal encounter with one of the apes. It walked up to us on our way out and when I sat down next to it the orangutan started to scratch my arm with one of its fingers!

Tonight we sleep in Kota Kinabalu after a long beautiful bus ride. Mount Kinabalu was covered in fog displaying it's eerie, imposing side.