Les Journal Photographique! (Sumatra, Indonesia: Imma gonna catch me an orangutan!)

Indonesia was a side-trip, really. Remember our terrible orangutan photo from Borneo? Well, we wanted to see us some orangutans! So, we flew from Manila to Kuala Lumpur to Medan (on the Northern tip of Sumatra) and then took a bus back into the heart of the jungle! Bonus: it's the dry season here... no leeches!

We went to Bukit Lawang, a quiet little village on the edge of the jungle. We found an orangutan within hours of arrival.

This cute little guy was just sitting on the river bank playing with his stick!

Then, a minute later, his buddy came sommersaulting through the forest and down the rocks to get a drink.

Bukit Lawang is on the edge of a large section of protected rain forest. Sumatra and Borneo are the only two places in the world with wild orangutans. Bukit Lawang also has an orangutan rehabilitation center, where it helps rehabilitate orangutans with too much human contact and prepares them for life in the jungle. Orangutans are special because they live alone (not in groups... with the exception of babies and moms) so they can be rehabilitated as individuals. This program has been quite successful over the last few decades. Rehabilitated orangutans have gone on to live the wild jungle life and raise wild babies of their own.

Twice a day, there are feedings for the rehabilitated orangutans. There are no fences, or seats, or gates, or anything zoo like. A half hour walk into the jungle, they feed them milk and bananas (delicious!). We watched the afternoon feeding and saw a momma and her baby, a few other orangutans, and the big manly male orangutan (he doesn't come to the feeding often... we were lucky).

Then, we spent the night in a jungle lodge, and departed early the next morning on a six hour hike. We saw a few more wild orangutans and some gibbons monkeys. After our hike we rafted down the river on inner-tubes back to where we started.

It was pretty awesome, spectacular, tubular, man!

Here are a few more photos of the orange guys. We took nearly 600 photos. This is just a sample.

Orangutan or Bigfoot? You decide.

Momma and her baby.

Big Poppa.



Oh, yeah. we forgot to mention... Corinne fed an orangutan.



She was excited.



This means that we got really close. And got some really good photos. You'll have to come visit us when we get back to see them.

Les Journal Photographique! (Philippines)

Our time in the Philippines can be described in on word: lazy. This includes our photo taking. Why would you want to take pictures when you can lay in a hammock or on the beach?

As soon as we got to the Philippines we went straight to Donsol to swim with whale sharks. We bought a little underwater film camera, but we have no digital photos. So, our photo journal skips to our next stop.

It was so good, we didn't even know where we were. People ask, and we just don't know. We can point it out on a map next time we see you.

This was our deserted beach. It was pretty awesome when it wasn't raining, which was once in six days. There were other ways to enjoy ourselves. (get your mind out of the gutters!)

Corinne had fun playing in the water. But where was Jason?

Tending his wounds. The salt water hurt, so he stayed out of it. (This photo was taken after the blood was cleaned up, sorry Andrea.)

One of the ways we had fun while it rained was by playing with Brad. There was also a kitten to keep us amused. And we played cards. And we played scrabble. And we ate. (We sound like old people! No offence, old people.)

We also spent lots of time reading. Lots of time. This is Corinne's only sunshine day! (Actually, we think it was only a sunshine hour).

Corinne describes this photo this way: "I think it describes Jason as being very tough, but intellectual at the same time".

After we left our beach, we climbed a volcano. This is the crater lake on the volcano in the lake. Confusing!

We are beautiful people!

Then we went to Puerta Gallera. We seem to have forgotten to take pictures, with the exception of one slightly drunken, mainly blurry, sunset photo.

Les Journal Photographique! (Borneo)

I suppose that we owe you some photos don't we? Well, here they are! We have been quite busy doing nothing, but unfortunately, the places that we did nothing had no internet. Now, we have a down day, and internet, and time, and desire! That's a perfect combo for effective blogging!

Here are a few photos that you haven't seen. They're a bit out of date, but still worth showing you.

First up, Borneo. (phhhh... that was soooooo two countries ago)

We went into the biggest cave in the world! It's called Deer cave. Caves are dark, and good photos are hard to come by, but this one turned out. Have you ever seen the BBC Documentary "Planet Earth"? Do you remember the scene with all the cockroaches swimming in bat poop? Well, this is pretty much that. All the red-brown stuff is bat poop. 3 million bats make lots of poop.

Then we took a boat ride! Look at Corinne's beautifully amused face! We took a boat ride to a drop-off point and walked 8km to our camp. The next morning we started our hike to the pinnacles, which we remember as the sweatiest day of our lives.

Along the way, we saw many variety of interesting plants and animals. But the coolest plant has to be the pitcher plant (its also on the "Planet Earth" show). It fills with water and bugs go in it, but they can't get out because of the plant's waxy inner coating and then the carnivorous plant digests it.

Our route was demanding to say the least. Although the trail was only 2.4 km long, it was also 1.2 km up. Past the first 200 metres, I don't think there was a span of five steps during which we didn't have to put our hands down or pull our selves up. In a few particularly steep places, there were ladders.

This is us at the top. Borneo is very limestoney, and very rainy, so there are lots of caves and cool rock formations. The rain has worn these rocks down to a sharp point. It has been described as "the worst parachute landing site in the world".

See! Sharp and pointy! This rock is like five feet high, but only that thin. This photo also demonstrates another quality of our hike... humidity! The humidity fogged our camera lens. It also was a main contributor to the sweatiest day of our lives.

There were many, little pinnacles along the path. They were tough on Corinne's shoes. They are now in a Borneo garbage bin somewhere.

scabs, scars, and scurvey!

The first one Jason has, the second he will get soon enough, and the third may result from our rice-intensive Asian diet.

I suppose we owe you a blog. We are in the beautiful, tropical, cloudy Philippines. Here is what we've been up to:

Our purpose for coming here was to swim with the biggest fish in the sea. We flew in to Clark, took a two hour bus to Manila, then 20 minutes and 6 doughnuts (for dinner!) later, we hopped on a 12 hour overnight bus to a town called Legazpi.

We awoke to the reality of the Philippines... it's a pretty gritty place. Sometime in the night someone had thrown a rock at our bus and smashed the window. Apparently this is a common phenomenon. After Legazpi, we took a mini-van to Donsol (our destination).

After nearly 20 hours of traveling by land, it took about 20 minutes at sea to find the big fish. Corinne was beside herself with excitement while we swam above and beside 8 meter-long whale sharks! Five times! it was really cool. We must admit that we didn't scuba with them, which would be cooler, but snorkeling with them was plenty cool.

So, two days into our three week Philippine adventure, our primary objective was accomplished. Now what? We talked with other people, weighed our options, and decided to stay at a nice remote beach for a while. We're just not resort people (or are we?)

We traveled along a nice rugged jeepney-tricycle-ferry-jeepney combo, spanning some very rough roads. (If you're wondering what a jeepney is, we suggest you google it. Or picture this: what if a school bus mated with a jeep, and the rebellious offspring got itself many chrome tattoos and flashy paint, with a variety of decals, and painted its name on its forehead? It would be a jeepney.)

Anyway.... we got to a really rugged little beach called Puraran beach. We rented a nice little cottage (it had a bed, a roof, and a hammock, but it lacked hot water, a sink, a shower, a mirror, and a toilet seat). We got this steal of a deal for around $6 per day. And they cooked for us! oh the food! it was the best food we've had in a while. It was generally delicious fresh fish, but the lobster night was a standout. Our only complaint? No sun, and lots of rain, for the duration of our stay.

On our second day, we decided to go surfing with some locals. We borrowed surf boards, hired a local fishing boat, and headed for the waves! We learned some startling new math. Consider this equation:

Jason + surf board + coral bottom + 6 foot waves = blood. lots of blood.

Corinne emerged unscathed. She's a good paddler. Jason is convinced that he lost enough skin on his shin to see his fatty underlayer. After some hydrogen peroxide and iodine, his healing is now progressing nicely.

After five days of relaxing in the rain and cool breeze, and lots of reading (and eating delicious food) we decided it was time to move on.

We shimmied over to a nice little volcano named Taal. Taal is sitting in the middle of a lake, and, interestingly, also has a lake in it. We boated over to the volcano island and hiked up to the crater (about an hour). The volcano was still active, and we could see some hissing and steam, and could feel the heat from the ground, but there was nothing resembling lava. So, for now, Volcan Pacaya remains our favourite volcano. (We climbed that one on our massive roadtrip to Guatemala; it had flowing lava and everything!).

So, a week left and what to do? We're sick of buses (jeepneys are still cool) but the thought of more nausiating ferry rides or arduous bus rides are starting to grow tiresome (and we're running out of motion-sickness/sleeping pills). So we decided to stay in the same area.

We took a crowded jeepney and a SHORT bus ride and a SHORT ferry ride to the island called Mindano. We are now in a little resort town called Sabang (near Puerto Gallera). Remember when we asked if we were resort people? A week ago... No. Today... Yes.

We splurged and got a sweet place with hot water, a sink, cable tv, air conditioning, a mini fridge, and a toilet seat! get this... we didn't even need to ask for toilet paper. and there was a spare roll! wow! We are living the life of luxury now!

So, for the next five days (which is most of our time in the Philippines) we will likely be doing one or more of the following activities at any given time: snorkelling, swimming, drinking beer and/or rum, playing pool, sitting on the beach, eating fried rice (after the accomodation splurge, food is the first thing to be affected by our budgetary constraints), chatting up our nice new toothless fruit lady, hanging out on the floating bar, dancing at the disco (which may turn out to be a strip-club/brothel... we'll keep you posted), sleeping, or taking long, luxurious, warm showers.

Also... Jason got a sweet new tank top with flourecent writing. He plans to get a sweet tank-top tan to accompany it. He will vohemently encourage D to do the same when the two long-lost buddies are finally reunited in Thailand.

Enough computers... we've got fried rice to eat and rum to drink!

-Jason and Corinne

Best national slogan ever...

Forget "Korea, sparkling", the title of best slogan ever goes to... drum roll...

"Welcome to bird-flu free Philippines!"

-Jason and Corinne

PS - We are in the Philippines.

we have so much to catch you up on...

...but so little time.

we flew from Kota Kinabalu to Gunung Mulu national park. It was amazing. We thought that our little twin-prop airplane would never make it through the storm clouds, but we landed safely. We spent four days hiking and seeing the sites, and it was spectacular.

For your amusement, please google the following:

"deer cave" ( we recommend http://www.mulucaves.org/deercave.php )
"borneo pinnacles" (we recommend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9wCkRJPhPY )

those things have kept us quite busy for the last five days. unfortunately we do not have time to say more at this time. We will post some pictures when we can. maybe.

Jason would like to announce a special thing: the hike to the pinnacles was the most he has ever swat (past-tense of sweat) in one day.

Corinne would like to add that the hike completely destroyed her only pair of shoes (which are now in the trash).

Jason would also like to announce that he has officially flown into Kota Kinabalu the exact same number of times as he has flown into Edmonton: 3.

Corinne is sad that we didn't see 2 to 3 million bats. They refused to come out in the rain. There were, however, 2-3 that constantly flew through our camp at night.

that is all.

-Jason and Corinne