Before I got back down to work..

On our way back from Australia, we spent five days in Sabah’s coastal city of Kota Kinabalu. It was our first chance to see the fantastic beaches and to do some shopping.

During our stay we visited Tanjung Aru beach on the mainland and two of the small islands close by. With KK being on the West of Sabah, we headed to Tanjung Aru beach to watch the amazing sun set, stroll along the sand and to dip our toes in the Chinese Sea, the beach is very popular with tourists in the evening due to its great sunset, and it didn’t disappoint. Along the beach we also saw a washed up jelly fish and thousands of tiny crabs that dug out their burrows and left tiny balls of sand all around their entrance.

There are five main islands off the coast of KK, during our stay we visited Manukan and Sapi. On our first trip Naomi and I caught one of the small wooden motor boat from Jessleton Point, past the front of the city, over to Manukan Island. Jessleton point is the old major port in KK and is the reason Kota Kinabalu city was previously called Jessleton Town. The boat ride only takes 20 minutes and we arrived to a very busy pier surrounded by shallow crystal blue water, filled with coral and fish. Naomi and I spent the day lounging on the beach and swimming in the shallows, before getting a late lunch on the beaches edge and catching another boat back to the main land... via Sapi island to pick up some other people and then a quick stop at the huge marine patrol boat. Being a white girl, it was a bit scary pulling up alongside a ship and then a load of paper work being exchanged, with the recent kidnappings in Sabah I was extremely glad when we finally moved off an headed back to the mainland! Whilst recovering from our impromptu stop at the ship I managed to see a sea turtle swimming about 5ft from the boat, unfortunately it dived as we got closer so I didn't manage to get a picture.

On our visit to Sapi Island we were joined by Gwen, a fellow Cardiff university placement student. Here we spent the morning snorkelling in the shallow waters, looking at the diversity of fish and corals. It was too hot to lie out on the beach, so in the early afternoon after a few hours in the water, taking pictures of the fish and attempting underwater selfies, we headed back to the mainland to assess our tan lines and my burnt nose!

Naomi and I spent one afternoon at the Sabah National Museum, despite mixed reviews on the internet, the museum was great and had an exhibition of Roy Knowle’s work. The ‘Sacred Legacy’ exhibition contained photographs of people working in all areas Sabah from 1940’s to 1960’s, it showed young children dancing, women harvesting the crops and men building their houses along with royal visits and military gatherings. The rest of the museum was spilt into sections showing the military history, the wildlife of Sabah, the costumes and instruments of Sabah and a rather creepy section on head hunters, mainly consisting of skulls and killing instruments! Naomi and I were very surprised to come across two Banteng skulls displayed in one of the sections, but it once again reiterated to use the prize value of these beasts. The wildlife section contained replicas or stuffed versions of many of the animals of Sabah, including a very realistic looking Clouded leopard and rhino and super cute elephant calf.

The museum also had grounds, which contained an Islamic mosque and replicas of traditional wooden houses from all different areas of Sabah. Despite the paths between the sites of the houses being slightly run down and the layout of the grounds somewhat confusing the houses and museum of Islamic culture were great to see.

In KK we continued to make the most of normal food, having a great meal of pie and chips in an Irish pub on the water front and other restaurants where continental food could be eaten. We met Gwen for dinner on a few nights and also joined her on the Friday night when she met up with the Couch surfers at Borneo back packers. It was great to meet so many people who were all in Sabah for different reasons, from just visiting to working as engineers getting electricity into the small villages around Sabah. It was here that we met Gwen’s friend Liam, who turned out to be from North Wales, he was working in Ulu Papar a series of indigenous villages in Sabah, that are threatened by prospects of a mega dam being built to provide water for the city. He is also helping to put electric into these communities villages and was running the Borneo half marathon on the Sunday morning.

So on the Sunday we decided that we would head over to watch the running at the sports village in the north of KK and support all the runners as they came over the finish line. Due to the heat  and humidity in Sabah, the Marathon started at 03.00, the half marathon and 05.00 and the 10k and 06.00, so it was an early start for us. At 6am we caught a taxi over to the Stadium in Likas where the finish line was. We were in time to see the first few kilometres of the 10km race and the schools race, then it wasn’t long then before the first runners started making it to the finish line.

Naomi and I dug out our flags that were still packed from Australia and hung them out over the barrier. Liam came in just under 2 hours and thankfully before the heat of the day and was surprised to see Gwen, Naomi and I on the finishing straight waving our flags, it was the least we could do considering they had just run 20 kms in 30 degree heat! As we continued to cheer runners through we were staggered to see some of the juniors coming in from the 10km race wearing only flip flops, to top this off they had just run a sub one hour 10km.. crazy!

Our remaining time in KK was spent meandering around the shops where we found lots of nice gifts to take home, although the majority of shops either sell phones or phone accessories and out here hello kitty is a teenage and adult character instead of a childs!

On the Sunday evening we caught the night bus from KK back to Lahad Datu, arriving at 3.30am! After walking back up to the house, we unpacked and headed back to bed for a few hours of horizontal sleep without banging our heads on the window!

We spent five days in Lahad Datu where we prepared for next expedition and celebrated my 21^st birthday! Having spent the previous two weeks sightseeing, socialising and supporting athletes, on my birthday we decided to relax and have a lazy day, eating cooked breakfast and making a birthday cake. The cake was an apple cake in a pig design, decorated with pink icing, strawberry jam and sweeties. In the evening we headed over to our favourite restaurant, ‘Secret Recipe’, here they serve fish and chips, amazing cakes and have the most reliable internet! As an extra birthday treat Jo returned from her home in Penang with bacon, so for the next few days we had bacon and eggs for breakfast! It had definitely been 21 days of celebrating for my 21

Before we headed off on expedition we went back to Danau Girang Field Centre for a few days. The field centre was involved in a land recovery act, where a local plantation had encrouched on a patch of government owned land. The local people were fighting to reclaim this 20 hectare piece of land and turn it back to forest. On our second day at Danau Girang we joined Ben, the head of DG and some of the PhD students, as the assistant tourism, culture and environment Minister spoke at an event and then officially started the digging up of the palm oil trees. The mini digger then continued to work, removing the rest of the palm oil trees, as we began planting tree seedlings as part of the restoration project. After this we were invited to a traditional Malaysian meal, where we were served rice wrapped in a banana leaf and delicious meat and fish dishes, followed by a sweet, green coloured, custard like pudding that looked interesting but tasted great! The whole day was extremely successful and, hopefully, will lead to other encroaching plantation being caught and further action being taken across the state.

After a busy few hours at the plantation event we headed back to the field centre and in the evening Naomi and I joined 2 of the French boys and some of the staff for a night walk. The night walk started well as we saw some proboscis monkeys and a malay civet, along with many frogs and far too many ants. About two hours into the walk we came across two tarsier, Naomi and I were very excited as this was our first tarsier sighting and there were two of them! The next thing we knew the tarsier had been caught by the Malaysian guys, and we were ringing back to the field centre to let them know we were bringing them back, for data to be collected and to put satellite collars on them. Having spent very little time at DG Naomi and I had no idea where on the trails we were, so we just followed as the boys hastily made their way back to the buildings. To keep the tarsiers calm, they wrapped one in my hoody and another in a t-shirt before placing them in bags back in the lab. Unfortunately the satellite collar was not working so after taking samples from the very grumpy female and very quite male the boys headed back out along the trail to release them where we found them.

On the Sunday we headed out in the boat with Danica, to find one of her female proboscis monkeys using a satellite tracker. The large group of monkeys were in the trees near the riverbank and from the boat Danica could download the data of the monkeys movements from the previous weeks.

On the Monday we said our goodbyes to everyone at the field centre before heading to Sandakan and then back to Lahad Datu to finish preparing for expedition. In Sandakan we took my plant specimens to the Herbarium for identification, after spending hours carefully collecting these specimens, drying them and mounting them, leaving them all at the herbarium was a bit sad. Whilst in Sandakan we also picked up the new mattresses, that were finally in stock, after ordering them in February, comfy beds in the house.. yay!

Final Visa Run- Sydney and Penrith, Australia

For our final visa run of the year, Naomi and I headed to Australia. We had planned our trip to coincide with the Junior and U23 world canoe slalom championships in Penrith and to meet my cousin, Alexandra, had flown out to catch up with me and to help cheer on team GB.

Requirements for the week:

•  Civilisation
•  Hot showers
•  Comfy bed with a duvet
•  Fish and Chips
• Easter Egg- we failed to find one anywhere!

After a 12 hours bus journey from Lahad Datu we had some hours to kill, so headed into Kota Kinabalu (KK) city centre to get some internet and to meet Gwen, a fellow Cardiff student, who is on a marine based placement in the city. We negotiated the hop-on hop-off buses and headed for Starbucks, on the water front, where we knew we could get internet and a good milkshake, and settled in their to catch up with the world! What we weren’t prepared for was the freezing temperatures inside Starbucks, the aircon was set so low that even the staff were shivering, and despite trousers, t-shirts and hoodies we were still cold! After a hour or so we decided that we were too cold and so we headed outside to defrost and to wonder around the shops. Although we had been in Malaysia for nearly 9 months this was the first free time we had spent in KK and the first tourist shops we had come across! Later in the day we met Gwen for a late lunch and a catch up, and craving western food we headed for Little Italy. After an extremely satisfying fill of pizza, we grabbed a taxi to the airport for our over-night flight to Sydney.

We landed in Sydney at 9.45am local time and had arranged to meet Alexandra at central train station. We were quick getting through customs and immigration and hopped on our first ever, double-decker train into Sydney.

We've arrived, reunited in Sydney train station

We spent our first day in Sydney centre, seeing the sites and acclimatising back into civilisation. We walked down to the harbour area to see the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera house before wandering around to the Botanical Gardens. At 16.30 Al, Naomi and I had booked to do the Sydney harbour bridge climb, as the entire climb takes 3 hours this was listed as a night climb, but it turned out to be a fantastic dusk climb. Romeo lead us out on to the bridge and we ascended the steps to an amazing sun set over the blue mountains, reached the top of the 1,332 steps as darkness set in and descended in the dark with fantastic views out over Syndey, all lit up. An amazing experience which was well worth the money.

Fantastic views out over Sydney at night.

After a fantastic bridge climb we jumped back on the train and headed for Penrith in the blue Mountains, this is where we were based for the next five days, watching the kayak racing. We stayed in Penrith town at the Chifely Panthers hotel with luxuries of a hot shower, a kettle, a tv and a proper bed with a duvet!

Qualifications Day 1 and 2

With 5 days of racing at Penrith White Water Centre the agenda for the week was a jam packed one, kicked off  by our own Welsh Steffan Walker, who was the first racing boat down the course on the first morning. He definitely set the bar high and showed the world that the Welsh mean business, with a fast, neat run. 

The first 2 days were qualifications and the rest of the GB team followed his example with all 14 U23 boats, including Steffan, the half Welsh C2 containing Rhys Davies, and 5 of the 6 junior boats qualifying for the semi finals! As the unofficial GB support team we spent these 2 days running down the side of the course cheering all the GB paddlers down each of the runs, this totalled 39 lengths of the course run by us,  Adam Burgess getting the wrong start time and missing his first run saved us running the extra lap!.. he won’t be doing it again that’s for sure!

Steffan Walker making us proud to be Welsh.

Taking 5 minutes break between GB paddlers
and enjoying spectating from the bank.

On the second afternoon of qualifications we took the afternoon off running and headed for Featherdale Wildlife park with some of the GB families that were out supporting the team. The wildlife park was our first encounter with the Australian Marsupials and we saw everything from the generic Koalas and Kangaroos to the amazing Cassowary and a crazy tazmanian devil. The park was also home to a huge freshwater crocodile and many native birds and reptiles. The park was split into sections allowing us to walk in amongst and feed the grey kangaroos and to have our photos with some of the koalas. My favourite animal from the park was the Southern Cassowary, these flightless birds are in a similar situation to the banteng in that they are found in the ever-decreasing tropical rainforest and are therefore threatened by habitat loss, humans and diseases.

In the evening I braved a swim in the hotels outdoor, unheated pool, it wasn’t quite brain freeze temperature and it was good to get back in the water and do some lengths! Dinner topped off a great day as Naomi, Alexandra and I joined the Westleys and Beth’s mum for dinner in ‘The Outback’, this brought back childhood memories of numerous dinners in ‘The Outback’ in America with unlimited pink lemonade refills and bloomin onions!

Semi-finals, Finals and Teams- Day 3, 4 and 5

Friday saw a new course design for the first day of semi finals, finals and team runs, with the U23 kayaks and C2’s competing. With 11 GB boats racing it was set to be a busy day from the off. The U23 kayaks and C2’s put down very quick semi-final times but unfortunately a few mistakes meant only 3 boats made the final, 2 K1W and one C2. In the final a fantastic run from Beth Latham earned her a bronze medal, the first of many medals for the GB team.

Late afternoon saw the GB U23 kayak teams putting in 2 fab runs to land the boys a silver medal and the girls a fantastic gold, beating the Australia team on their home course.

As the U23 kayak and C2 paddlers were finished for the week we decided to have a few drinks in the Panthers resort, a few turned into quite a few and before we knew it the live band we playing and we were into the early hours of the morning!

A brisk wake-up jog into the white water course killed any hangover that was looming, before getting back down to business cheering on the junior kayaks. The gruelingly hard course had the better of all but one junior kayak, with only Zac Allin making the final, and finishing 9^th overall.

In the afternoon we headed for Katoomba to see the ‘Three Sisters’ and the Blue Mountains, unfortunately some bad timing by us meant we didn’t end up arriving in Katoomba until 5.30pm, only just before sunset. A speedy walk across town to the lookout point meant we only caught a glimpse of the Blue Mountains at sunset, but could still see the Three Sisters which were well-lit by a huge spot light. The train journey had given us great views out over the mountains  and area surrounding penrith in day light, so the trip wasn't a complete loss. Our escape to the mountains did mean we missed GB getting another medal, with our only junior team, the K1M getting a bronze.

Alexandra and I at Katoomba lookout! 

K1 junior Lauren Strickland
 and I modelling our  GB flags.

By the final day of racing my voice had gone completely from shouting and I’d hurt my knee running up and down the course, nothing Ibuprofen and strepsils couldn’t fix for a few hours!  The final day was all single canoes and with some fantastic paddling in the semi-finals all 8 GB boats made the finals! The finals were very tight for us as supporters as two of the men and all three ladies were running back to back. On a 100-second long course and with 90 seconds gap between each start time, this meant for a few crazy couple of minutes in order to cheer everyone on! In the final the U23s put down many podium worthy times but some silly rolls and touches meant that only Tom Quinn made the podium receiving a bronze medal.

The 2 junior canoes both put down brilliant semi-final runs and to make the finals. In the final Sam put in another great run to land himself a 4^th and Rachel held her own on the tough course and finished a fantastic 6^th, with many of the girls in her class missing multiple gates or swimming.

GB team encouraging each other down the course.

To end the week the U23 canoe girls team landed themselves a silver medal, despite their run not going completely to plan, bringing the GB medal total to 6, with 12 of the 20 boats being in the finals, it looks like it’s going to be another great season for GB canoeing. 

After the medal ceremony the evening had already drawn in and the weather cooled off, so we said our goodbyes to the paddlers and parent and headed back to the hotel. What a week, so many fantastic times by the paddlers and 75 lengths of the course run by each of us. Great job team GB! 

It was hot showers all round before heading out for pizza followed by chocolate pudding and ice-cream in ‘The Outback’.

Monday

We checked out of our lovely, comfy bedroom in Penrith and headed for Sydney center, where we stayed one night at ‘Wake up, Sydney Central’. After dumping our bags in the hostel we decided to head for Bondi Beach, stopping for lunch at ‘Pie Face’ where I had a steak and ale pie- this may sound boring but after months and months of rice a pie was amzing!, before catching the underground and then a bus down to the beach. 

Bondi beach was everything I expected and more, being a ‘Bondi Rescue’ fan, yes I’m actually admitting it, being there was a bit surreal. The weather wasn’t boiling, but warm enough for shorts and a long sleeved top, so we sat and ate our ice creams on a bench, overlooking the beach, before walking back along the sand and dipping our toes in the sea.

As the evening drew in we headed back to Sydney central to fulfill our need for fish and chips, yes pie and fish and chips in one day! Luckily we found a little corner pub, with a great pub grub menu, which included the much wanted beer battered fish with chips.. success!

After 9 months in Malaysia the fact that there was a bar under the hostel was driving me crazy, so I persuaded Naomi and Alexandra to join me for 1 drink. I kept my promise and reluctantly after my 1 drink I headed back up to our room with the girls who were ready for bed! To my rescue came 3 Irish lads, who knocked on our bedroom door and asked if we wanted to go out, to which I replied ‘Yes’ and the girls ‘No’! So I started pre-drinking with them in the next room and was later joined by Naomi and Alexandra who decided to stop being boring.. hehe! After a few Vodka and Cokes we headed back to ‘Side Bar’ below the hostel, where we chatted and danced into the early hours of the morning before retreating back to our bunk beds!

Tuesday

On our last day down-under we headed to Manly Beach, after the busy week a few hours of relaxing and lying on the beach was an easy mutual decision! We wondered to the marina and caught the ferry over to Manly before Naomi and I collapsed on the beach and watched Alexandra have a go at surfing! In the afternoon we had yet another ice cream, then headed back to Sydney for an early tea, before collecting our bags from the hostel and going to the airport.

It was a tough saying goodbye to Alexandra after the amazing week in Australia, but with less than 3 months left in Malaysia we knew it wasn’t long until I would be back. Time to head back to hot, humid Sabah and back to work, for the final time.

Penrith and Sydney 2014, what a week to remember.