We woke up bright and early to catch the bus to Lahad Datu. As we were driving through the country side, we slowly began to understand Edward´s concerns about the jungle disappearing. The landscape of the entire 7-hour bus ride consisted of palm oil plantations. At first I thought, “Oh, how cool! Look at all those palm trees!” and it looks nice, I have to admit. But after kilometers and kilometers of just the plantations and nothing left over of the jungle, you start to get the feeling that this is just not right! And now they are starting to go to Kalimantan and Sumatra and destroying mother nature´s work there, too. Such a shame!

Once we arrived in Lahad Datu, we quickly went to the office for  Danum Valley Field Center. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and they were closed, so we found a hotel only a short 3 blocks away. We settled in and decided to get a bite to eat. Although we weren´t very far away from Indonesia (where the food is just so dang tasty). the food in Malaysia, thus far, has been very very very disappointing! Plus, they were out of EVERYTHING! Barely anything on the menu was available (why give us a menu??), so we settle for roti canai. These are offered everywhere and are not so bad, but they don´t taste like anything. You have to eat it with a filling of some sort, like chicken or veggies. It is always served with a type of red sauce, which I never ate because I don´t like sauce, of any kind. But I tried it, it´s quite salty. We ended up eating roti for breakfast, lunch, dinners, and in between meals as snacks!

Lahad Datu is the main gateway to Danum Valley. If going to Danum Valley, their transport service will pick you up and drop you off here at the office. In case you don´t have time or just don´t feel like taking the bus, you can also fly there from Kota Kinabalu. Unfortunately, there seriously is not much to see in this city, so if you go, don´t plan to stay longer than absolutely necessary.

Early the next morning, we went back to the Danum Valley office and booked our jungle adventure for the next 4 nights. This is a good alternative to booking with tour operators. It is (only a bit) cheaper and it is not full of tourists. The Danum Valley Field Center was established in 1986 and serves as a center for rainforest research. The center lies about 30 km from Danum Valley and a park entrance fee is necessary. As far as I know, you are not allowed to go to the Field Center without booking with the center.

We booked for the full experience, breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as 2 beds in their hostel. It all ended up being pretty pricey. But what the heck? This was gonna be a once in a lifetime experience!

The bus would pick us up in the afternoon, so we had about 6 more hours to kill. We went back to the hotel to sleep and get some breakfast. After our nap, we went shopping for some supplies, like a flashlight, and some water and snacks for the duration of the trip. And then we were off!!

On the way to the Field Center, we saw a family of pygmy elephants, which are endemic to Borneo! After seeing them, I was sure I would most definitely see orangutans, which is my sole reason for going to Borneo in the first place. After a few hours, we finally reached our destination.

We checked in, the reception explained a few important things, like where the dining hall and dorms are, and also that the electricity gets turned off from midnight to 7 am (eeeek). Some other rules of the game were also explained to us.

We went to our dorms, boys and girls separate and each with 45 beds, I was the only person in there, it was kind of freaky and then we got ready to do our first trek of the week. We did a mini trail. It was quite easy and we were done within 1 hour. We were quite hungry and headed directly to the dining hall to have dinner. Guess what?! The food was super awesome! The best food we had in Malaysia thus far.

Soon it was time to head to bed. No air conditioning, only fans in the room, which is quite okay, except that it turns off when the electricity is cut off. It was H.O.T. in the dorm room!! Luckily, I didn´t have to share, but Thomas had quite a few roomies, which makes the room a bit hotter and sticky, plus, let´s face it: we are in the jungle, so everybody is quite sweaty and stinky.  Let´s just say that I was very relieved to not be in the boy´s dorm! Hehehehehe….

Stay tuned for more posts about the rest of our stay in Danum Valley! For now, a sneak peak with pictures will have to suffice.