Glorious Nature, As a matter of FAX! - Day 2

Day 2

Woke up bloody early around 5am I guess. Got all prepare for the morning walk at 6am. We ( me and manager ) went to the cafe to grab some breakie 1st. Seems like only hand full of us going for the morning walk. I think the rest of them are totally worn off.

The morning sight of Tabin - It was a coooold morning, brrrr~!!

Our guide was showing us animals foot prints and ways to identify them, I think graduate from "Identifying animal foot prints" liao wey! ;p We saw birds, insects, plants and lots and lots of fresh foot prints.

This little fella was the 1st bird I've sighted in the morning - it's a broadbill!

Look at it's beak you'll get what I mean! - I saw it from the cafe somemore.

This is a deer's foot print!

On our way back we saw this MEGA-HUGE-OVER-SIZE millepede!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just wanna share to you all, this is a dipterocarp seed.
Tabin Wildlife Reserve made up of 120,500 hectares of dipterocarp rainforest. If you can't imagine how big is 120,500 hectares it's twice of the size of singapore!!!

This is another unique plant - it belongs to the cactus family.. nice :)

Ladies and gentleman, boys and gals and all furry animals gather round now..
This is a Mengaris Tree.
According to our guide it is to be the TALLEST TREE!!!!!!!!!
Our Borneo's Mengaris trees are taller then those in the Amazon forest or those in the African jungle (!) and this Mengaris tree was part of the primary forest. There's only left 10% (I think?) of the forest in Tabin is consider primary forest. Now, try to imagine how long does it takes for the minerals from the roots of the tree to pump up to the top of the leaves? Anyone knows the answers? This questions has been bugging me ever since I saw this tree in Tabin.

Around 7:45am we head back to the cafe. Had 2nd round breakfast. Hungry la, habis kena burn suda the food we ate early that morning during the morning walk.

The next activity was jungle trek to the Lipad waterfall. Since it rained last nite, I was preparing for our friendly little friend from the jungle.

Say hi to our friend leech :)

Yes, we came across lot of this blood sucking creatures but I heard the leeches are actually helping to suck out all the bad blood in our body so we shouldn't be sooo scared of this tiny creature. *blink* If you were thinking did I get any bites from them. Well luckily NONE! But they were on my pants and my hands but I managed to pull them off me before they could start feasting on me. I even help others to pull off the leeches from them too! Guess when you in the jungle everybody should watched each other's back. Team work!

It was a lonnnnnng journey indeed. Have you ever notice that to get to a destination seems to take longer than going back from the place. It took us around ALMOST 2 hours to reach our destination. Before the reaching the waterfall we saw..

This is how a Napenthese ( did i get the name rite? ) plant's leave looks like. Napenthese is also know as the pitcher plant.

This is how a pitcher plants look like

Some of the colorful wild flowers we encounter.
Bright purple no-idea-what's-the-name-of-the-plant-call flower.


Another plant while I've noticed during our trekking in the jungle.



We also so this

Well, technically we didnt really see them, but we saw their foot prints and lots and lots of elephant dungssss.... they can really make huge 'cakes'! ;p Oh well, the elephants were not at sight. Our guide has warm us that IF we do meet face-to-face with this huge mamal. Make sure we retreat and move backward slowly.. fast movement may scare them. You dont wanna end up as elephant 'pancakes' do you?

So this is what we saw after almost 2 hours of trekking in the jungle!

Micro shot of the rocks at the riverside.

What a relieved, I was happy and had this feeling of satisfactory and accomplishment in me. Suddenly this journalist was asking me: 'I thought we're supposed to see waterfall, where is the waterfall?' Then it hit me, yeah... where is the waterfall? We came this far not to see a river but a waterfall. The guide to us that the last leg of the trekking was to cross the river to get to the side of the river then we can see the waterfall from there. WHHHAT?

At 1st I was like no way, nah-ah! I'm not gonna get myself soaking wet just to see the waterfall! But after been persuaded by one of the journalist I gave in and force myself to cross the river. It was kinda fun actually and the water was sooooooo coooolinggggggg. Half of my pants were wet, so were my leech socks ( how come I didnt think of taking of my shoes and the socks before crossing? weirddd )

This is the Lipad waterfall




but if you're lucky enough you might be able to see this...




Yes, this is the same waterfall just that there are twin waterfall!!
This happens normally after a heavy rain. If you noticed on the 1st pic of the waterfall, you can see there is a bit of water coming down from the other side.

I think we've spend like 45mins to an hour at the waterfall before we head back. Both of my legs were numb. I can't feel them, it's like there we walking on auto-pilot! Poor legs. Moral of the story is: Please make sure you're fit and ready to go jungle trekking!! It took me couple of days to get my legs back to normal mode again.

We were super duper late when we got back to lodge. We were supposed to check out at 1pm I've reached there at 12:45pm. I have like 15mins to shower & have my lunch!!!!!! walao weh! How to do like dat? Superman meh? So we ended up leaving Tabin at 1.30pm. As we were late we had to rush to the airport. Our flight was at 4.30pm. Everyone was tired but still able to mingle in the airport. Then came the bad news around 4pm, our flight has been delayed to 5.30pm. GAAAHH~!!

To make things better S from FAX airline decided to belanja us 'yam cha' in the near by mamak stall. Everything was all good, we had our roti canai, some asked for soto ayam and of course some drinks. We chatted more to get to know each other and that's how we managed to burn our time.

Around 5.30pm we board our plane. The journalist was snapping pictures of the aircraft and NOBODY WAS YELLING AT THEM????!!! how can this happen? I was warn NOT to take footage and this bunch of people just came in and take like heaps of pictures and it was ok?? WALAO WEY! DOUBLE STANDARD! bikin panas eh! By then I have no mood to take any pics liao. Xian Tiao!

We got back to kk around 6.30pm. I was tired but it was a fun weekend over Tabin. Psstt, I got more mosquitor bites on me rather than leech bite.