Borneo July Phase 09

We set out to our new Jungle base from Bario in high spirits after much karaoke and black market beer from the night before. However, we hadn’t taken into account the duration of the trek we were going to have to make. So many hours later we turned up at our new base exhausted and covered in sweat. Two days were spent prettying up our campsite before we started our project.

It was only when we started though that we all realised how much Maths we would have to use to work out the perimeters for the cultural sites. So much Pythagoras later, and after learning that our walkie-talkies only had a 10m range, we cracked the first site.

Unfortunately one of our party, Jon, had to leave after the first 2 weeks, which was a real shame as by then we had really gelled as a group and got to know each others ways. Whether it be Holley’s obsession with organic food and her thinking that the country directly North of South Korea is in fact Japan. Or Alex’s sleepwalking and fear of spiders, or Ryan’s breaking wind and blaming it on Holley. Not to mention Tom’s scabby plaster that he always wore on his finger just in the place where a precious ring might be.


Mike, of course, had no embarrassing or stupid habits and it is perfectly understandable that he would think one morning that the best way to help a fire burn more readily was to pour some of the liquid from his gas lighter on to the fire. Which is in fact a bad idea.

With one cultural site done we proceeded swiftly onto the others and have now completed five of them. Only another six hundred and ninety five to go…

Mike