Borneo & Northern Asia Cruise

It’s been quite a while since I have updated my blog. Let’s see, since our adventure in Australia and Zealand a lot has happened. Ryan and I took one last trip while we were both still in Singapore together to Borneo with our friends Liana and Todd, we took a cruise with Ryan’s parents, I went back to Texas for four weeks and we made our way to Germany.

Borneo was pretty cool in the short three days we got to do and see several things. We got to go to a cave where they harvest birds nest soup. This was not my favorite activity and here is a link to Liana’s blog to see why. Also here are some creepy pictures. 

The big, bad, scary cave. And yep, that's several feet of guano. The smell was overwhelming.

This thing was actually really big.

Everywhere!!!

Everywhere!

We also got to take a boat tour of the Kinabatangan River where we saw Borneo’s wildlife in action (elephants, orangutans, monkey’s, etc.). But by-far my favorite thing… we went to Selingan Turtle Island, where they monitor mama turtles and their babies. There was even a Nat Geo crew on our little island trip to see the turtles which I thought was pretty neat. So you get to see the mom’s lay the eggs and you get to see the eggs hatch and the baby turtles make their way to sea. Now all this is monitored and controlled by the authorities because these turtles are in danger. Once the mom lays her eggs (any where from just a few to almost 200) the ranger takes the eggs where the eggs are then laid in the ground in a protected area safe from lizards and other predators. Then eight weeks later they hatch and the rangers then release them later that night to the water. LUCKY for us, because this really was rare, sometimes a nest is missed and the turtles hatch and make their way to the water on their own. Now they usually hatch at night. How do these babies know its night time while in the ground? By the temperature of the sand, i.e. if it’s cool and damp it must be night time. Well one mom laid her eggs in the nice shade back into the trees. And since it was in the shade the babies thought it was night and decided to come out while we were chilling on the beach. We got some great pictures and a video (below) of the cute little things going as fast as they can to the water. It was amazing.

My favorite part of the trip.

Watch the baby turtles make their way to the water! 

A short week and a half later we were all packed and out of our apartment and on our way to Tokyo where we met Ryan’s parents for a cruise that stopped twice in Japan, Russia, South Korea, and China. This might be my new favorite way to travel.  It went by really fast and was amazing to see all these different places in a short amount of time. We ended in Beijing and I flew back to Texas with Ryan’s parents and he made his way back to Singapore for the next four weeks before we both left for Germany. 

The Great Wall of China!