Borneo part 2

Right. So, after the orangutans (you can adopt one. But you can't take it home), we had the longest journey of the trip - 2 hours to the Kinabatangun River, home to much of Sabah's genuinely wild wildlife. To be honest, I don't think any of us knew too much about this part of the trip or what we were likely to see. Which meant that everything we did see came as a pleasant surprise! First of all, we took a short boat trip accross the river to the lodge where we were staying - a really lovely place with huge rooms with air-con and duvets. And hot showers. And lovely folded tissues, and little things of shampoo and soap. And yes, after 11 months of depressing rooms I am focusing a lot on this!
Once we'd settled in, had lunch and a little rest, it was time for our river cruise. Looking all professional with our binoculars we initially saw, well, not that much. All of us kept imagining every log we saw was a crocodile, but they all turned out to be logs. After half an hour or so, we saw a big group of macaque monkeys, and a couple of black and yellow snakes - this was where the binoculars started to come in handy! We also saw a few hornbills flying over our heads. The real stars of the show were spotted a little later - first of all a group of Proboscos monkeys, a very strange looking species found only in Borneo with huge bulbous noses and beer bellies. Then, and best of all, a herd of pygmy elehpants - the smallest elephants in the world. Only 2,000 of these exist in the world, and we saw 4 of them including a baby. They were great, and very noticeably smaller than other full grown elephants. All in all a very lucky river trip - the only thing we didn't see was a wild orangutan.
The following day, after a leisurely breakfast, we left the lodge to make our way back to Sandakan, via the Gomantong caves, used to collecting swift nests to make bird's nest soup. The smell inside the caves was awful - too many bats - but they were impressive, and it was interesting learning from Dan how the nests are collected and the soup is made. Not a job I would want, that's for sure! Even bettor, no the way back to the van we saw another new monkey type - a wild red leaf monkey - very, very cool.
Sadly, my internet time is running low, so this will have to be split into a third part and I will have to leave it at this point for now. More writing and photos still to come!