Monkeys!

Sorry, this is a short one. But I'm busy reading and packing as we are heading "into the field" tomorrow with a researcher named Stan. Our group will travel up to his research station with him tomorrow afternoon and start a Proboscis monkey survey at around 4:30. We will spend the night at the station and wake up around 4:30 the next morning to do another survey. We will be doing it from boat as the monkeys prefer to slumber in the trees along the edges of the mangrove waterways.

I'll try and snap some pictures of these "Dutchmen Monkeys". (Named so because of their huge noses and pot bellies... apparently all Dutchmen have similar characteristics?!)

Class Begins. Kind of...

So we've been here for two and a bit days now and every minute has been amazing. We saw our first rain yesterday, other than arrival day, but it cleared after a short downpour and we were able to enjoy another lovely dinner outside. We have gone to this market of street vendors for dinner the last two nights, right on the ocean. Fresh fruit, veggies and the obvious rice and noodles. Always so delicious though.

We had our first day of class yesterday which mostly involved talking about where we will be, what we will be doing and the assignments and projects involved. The schedule literally sounds unbelievable.

The day before last, Saturday, the people that had arrived were able to meet with a couple who run an NGO here. The wife works doing dolphin research in the waterways and the husband works to gain protection of the waterways against illegal fishing activities which are wiping out the dolphin and aquatic life.

I'm off to class again, but tomorrow night our group heads into the field to a research station to do Probiscus monkey surveys. Can't wait!

Singapore and Beyond

We made it to Balikpapan alive! (slightly to my surprise). After my last post in Seoul, we flew another six hours to Singapore which I successfully slept for most of after popping a couple Gravol. Luckily, I just happened to wake up when dinner was being served. And speaking of food on the airplanes, my mother, the wonderful and caring lady that she is, went to the trouble of ordering me vegetarian meals throughout each leg of the trip. Well, what I didn't know is that every meal served, four in total, would be Indian. I realized I haven't eaten breakfast in three days, just Indian lentils, Indian spinach, Indian rice, Indian vegetables etc. My stomach is quite confused, as it keeps going from point of starvation to a couple bites of airplane Indian, back to starvation. But I must not complain, because for airplane food, it was pretty damn good; just a lot of Indian.

But yes, back to Singapore. So, we arrived into Singapore at about 1 in the morning. I think that made it 12 noon the previous day in Ontario and 10 in the morning in Denver, both of the times zones I was used to at the time. So of course Bean (my roommate Nadine) and I were wide awake and began what became a failed search for the coveted Singapore Tea House in the airport. We walked for about an hour, followed countless directions with no luck. But, we did find a pond full of very big fish and a butterfly room, jungle thing. Pretty cool for an airport. At about 4:30 I fell asleep and slept semi soundly until 4:55! Big sleep. At that time, the airport began to become inhabited and the day was in full swing.

Mid-morning, we took the "Free Singapore Tour" into downtown Singapore from the airport. Oh, and P.S., it was 37 degrees when we landed at 1 in the morning. HOT, but nice. Anyways, we got to explore a Chinese temple as well as drive through Little India. I'll try and attach some pictures of Singapore. In a nutshell, it's the city of a million cranes. Buildings are going up everywhere. And it's also the city of a weirdly high number of golf courses. 22 or something crazy just in the vicinity of the airport.

When that ended, we were in the final two hours of the 13 hour lay-over and killed time by enjoying some well needed coffee and Skype-ing with some friends all the way back home.

Sorry, this is getting really long. So, we flew out of Singapore in a little plane to our final destination of Balikpapan, Borneo, which is in the Indonesian part of Borneo. Flying in may have been the craziest sight I have seen. So much dense rainforest beneath us with huge areas that had been clear cut (or burnt). We were about to land when the pilot pulled the plane back up... the weather was too rough and I believe I heard him say the smoke was too thick (a regular occurrence due to the heavy burning of the rainforest.) We came in a different way and finally landed in heavy rain, thunder and humidity.

But we are here! And it's great. The trip leaders met us at the airport and we headed to Hotel Sagita (quite posh for Balikpapan standards). We enjoyed a simply dinner at a vendor on the street and I am now settled into bed. At 8 at night.

A little shopping at the markets is happening tomorrow. Cannot wait.

xo

Chocolate Koalas?

Love this blogging thing! After about a 12 hour flight, we are is Seoul, South Korea for an hour and then off for another long haul to Singapore. Good thing Singapore Airlines provided complimentary support hoes to keep my ankles from swelling to those of a pregnant women's :)

I didn't sleep on the flight and officially feel like I have been run over by a bus. Then reversed over. Then run over again. It's the night of the 7th here I believe and our flight leaves soon so I best be off.

Ciao!

P.S... since we're kind of close to Japan here I'm on the search for the best cookies ever... chocolate koalas. I ate about 3 boxes a day last year in Japan.

Off and Away!

Well, here goes my attempt at blogging. I'm sitting in my hotel in San Fran, about to head to the airport to begin the adventures. I'm meeting up with my roommate from school, Nadine, as well as two others and together we will fly to Seoul, carry on to Singapore and finally to Balikpapan, Borneo. We have about a 13 hour lay-over in Singapore and are hoping to be able to head into the city and explore for a while- I have heard only amazing things about it.

With the time change and such, we should hopefully be in Borneo on January 8th. The course begins January 10th so we will have a day to explore the city and get our travel legs under us.

For those of you who I haven't told, I'm heading to Borneo for two months as part of a school trip with Quest University. We pretty much got evicted from school during the Olympics so they organized some two months trips to keep our credits up. There are 16 of us going on this trip, and the point of it is to try and put a stop, or at least instigate a stop, to the rapid deforestation of the rainforest due to palm oil plantations being developed. This deforestation not only effects the rainforest itself, but the plant and animal life within it. We will primarily be looking at the orangutan populations, as well as the effects of the deforestation on the livelihood of the dolphins, sea turtles and coral.

Anyways, that's all I've got for my first ever blog. It's pretty fun actually. I'll try and keep updating as often as I can, but I'm not sure what the internet situation will be like in far far away land. I'll shoot for more pictures than words cause they're better :)