I slept so amazing last night! The room was pitch black, cool, big fluffy beds, and NO BUGS!!! Had a great breakfast at the hotel and did some journaling. We got back on the bus and headed off for a two hour drive. Then we had an awesome lunch and there was a super friendly kitten that crawled in my lap and was kneading me. It was so cute but she was using her claws a lot! At the restaurant on the river, we saw some monitor lizards and they are huge; at first glance they look like crocodiles!
I truly have never sweat so much in my life. I have been drinking so much water and yet I never have to pee. I am forcing myself to drink like 3 times as much water as I normally would.
Next, we unloaded our stuff off the bus and put it on the boat. I sat in the front seat on the boat and it was so fun and the breeze was amazing! I was really hoping we would see a crocodile but sadly we didn’t. We did see a huge seagull, which looked just like a turkey vulture, but white. Later found out he had said sea eagle not seagull which explains why it looked so huge. We had to stop the boats because the other groups boat had a snake in it - yikes! The boat driver lost sight of the snake but said he saw it last on the teal suitecase which of course happens to be mine. Once we arrived we unpacked the boat and walked a long concrete path to the field center and we had an orientation presentation given by Meg. She warned us about all of the terrors of the forest like crocodiles, and not to make eye contact with macaques. We headed to our hostel and Jack told us to shake out our beds in case there was a foot long centipede that would bite us in our sleep!!! The jungle sure is a crazy place. I have a new respect for Minnesota. Having a bug-free shower is something I will never take for granted again. I used to scream at little spiders, and now that I have showered with rhino beetles, I can keep my cool around little Minnesota bugs. After we got settled, Rich, a PhD student, did a demonstration on the data he takes on reticulated pythons. When both pythons were taken out they pooped/peed all over the floor and on whomever was holding the tail. With people helping Rich hold the python down, he put cream on their injuries, weighed them, measured them, took a blood sample, gendered them, and checked their GPS unit/microchip. Rich retrieved one of the pythons from a plantation, where the snake had been eating chickens. His research focused on seeing how the pythons that had been translocated from different habitats like plantations would do once released in the jungle, using the GPS unit to track where it would go. It’s crazy to see how strong the snakes are, since it takes 3 big guys using all of their strength to hold it down to the ground, I wonder how he catches them? They are just so big and fast that you must need whole team of people.
After Rich’s presentation, we played some Apples to Apples:). The cooks kids are always running around, and it is the cutest thing ever! Since I think all the staff live here, I wonder if the kids will go to school when thy older? It is great to see all the researchers interacting with the babies. The little kids are already so social and know a lot of English, which may be helpful as they grow up.
The other day, Amy gave a 10ringgit tip to a women at the restaurant near Sandakan and the woman started crying. Today we found out that she was going to use that money to buy her children 3 months of rice. 10rm is less that 3$ US. I can’t even begin to imagine the extreme suffering and poverty she must have been in for that to impact her that much. It takes 3$ just to take money out of an ATM in America and 3$ to a person here is 3 months of food. It really just puts everything into perspective. And the most amazing thing is that even though they have so little, they are so unbelievably kind.
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