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Archive for January 5th, 2012

5th January
2012
written by Hazel

We had a bit of a trip ahead of us to get from Borneo to Singapore.  Remember that thunderstorm which got us completely soaking wet after we saw the orangutans?  Well, it made for a very slow taxi ride to the airport and a fairly bumpy flight back to Kuala Lumpur.  It was 11 pm or so by the time we got in and we had to be on a train to Singapore early the next morning.

Justin did an awesome job planning this segment because he found us a hotel right by the airport, meaning we could get to bed right away and still be near transportation to the train station the next morning.  What he found was Tune hotels, which are a little different than normal hotels.  I don’t have any pictures, but I’ll try to describe it the best I can.  Or, just click on the link and look at their description.

Basically, it’s a hotel modeled after a budget airline.  So you get a really cheap, really tiny room, and anything else you might want has an extra cost associated with it.  The beds were some of the best we encountered in our travels, the shower was awesome, very clean, etc., but hardly enough space for us and our backpacks.  Especially since we had wet, muddy clothes we wanted to hang up from the jungle!  We didn’t need many of the add-ons.  In fact, we paid about 32 cents each, each direction, to get the shuttle from the airport to the hotel and about 65 cents to have a towel provided since we wanted to keep ours dry.  And that was it!

I’m not sure how a place like that would be for a longer stay, but for what we needed it was perfect.  I have never seen this concept anywhere else, but it looks from their website like they are an international chain. So who knows, maybe this will be the next big thing!

5th January
2012
written by Hazel

Our last activity in Malaysia was a trip to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center.  I was really excited for this because we had not seen any orangutans in the wild and they are some of my favorite animals.

Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary

Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary

We stayed at a pretty good hostel close enough to walk over to the sanctuary, so we were able to get there in the morning for the first feeding of the day.  There are two sessions, morning and afternoon, but if you buy a ticket you can go to both of the sessions in the day.  This is the best chance of seeing the orangutans because the sanctuary covers a huge area of land and you are pretty unlikely to see them unless they are coming to get food. (more…)