first few days

So I left my house on sunday night, for a flight at 5 to midnight. After a 13 hour flight, I arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 8pm (7 hours ahead!). After being knocked over several times while attempting to lift my rucksack, I managed to find a cash machine and get a taxi. I had a hotel booked in the centre of KL, which took about an hour to get to. I thought that paying about 35 pounds for it would ensure I could get a nice nights sleep there..... but there were cockroach's in my bathroom! Nice.... Having breakfast the next morning was interesting, too. Not sure about rice and noodles for breakfast! I left my seat for a minute when I spotted some toast and found I was joined about 5 other men! A strange experience to say the least. I was staying right next to the towers in KL which was pretty cool. My flight was at 11.10am so I made it back to the airport for about 9 and managed to pick up a Malaysian simcard. It was a 2 1/2 hour flight to Kota Kinabalu but the pilot somehow managed to get us in half an hour early. I had a drink at the airport and met Ant and Mel before meeting Man (Man the man..) and heading for Tinangol. I slept most of the way but it seemed that we picked up a lot of people on the way! It was about a 3 hour drive to Tinangol and it rained torrentially the whole way. Luckily the weather had picked up a bit by the time I got to Tinangol and had to get out of the car though!

I met everyone there and we had about half an hour before dinner time. And time to start on the rice wine! Rice wine is made locally and tastes something like watered down Vodka. There are 3 grades.. We've been drinking grade 3, the weakest, which is still something like 20%. You drink in rounds, the first being a full glass and half or quarter glasses thereafter, and it's considered rude not to have the first. I managed a relatively early night the first one, and avoided drinking too much!

I woke up at about 6.30 on wednesday, and we all had breakfast before walking in to the village for about 9 to start work. We're helping build a new kindergarten, and this morning involved levelling the ground where they were going to concrete for a playground, using spades and hoes. This was pretty hard work as it's so humid and so hot anyway! I don't think I've ever been so sweaty! We managed to get the whole day's work done before stopping for lunch at 12. We had a 2 hour break as they tried to find us some more work to do! We varnished logs that will be used as supports in the afternoon, but this didn't take us too long either. We played badminton for an hour or two before heading back to the longhouse at 6ish. The long house is about a metre and a half above ground level, with a kind of ladder to get to the porch, and then another to get in to the main house. There's a big communal kind of living area on the right, and the left is split in to 5 rooms for all of us. Toilets and showers are separate, and the loos are basic to say the least!

Thursday we were all up and in to the village at about the same time again. The village has 3 main longhouses, which each house about 100 people, I think. There are a few other smaller houses, too, a school, and a small shop. As we had been so speedy the day before there wasn't much to do. We did a tiny bit more levelling, and did a second coat of varnish on the logs. It seemed that the guys had done so much before I got there, too, that they were at a loss as to what we could do as they had no more materials! We had a pretty chilled day before doing a little more varnishing and a little more badminton in the afternoon. I think everyone else had done a lot of rice wine evenings in a row so we decided an early night was good for everyone!

We got a lie-in friday morning, before heading down to the sports field so we could put on a sports day for the kids (aged between about 3 and 13). We stressed a lot all morning about our lack of organisation, but when it came to it we found this wasn't really a problem as the kids pretty much did as they pleased anyway! We did lots of different events, including egg and spoon, coconut shy, 3 legged race, pass the balloon, bulldog, etc. There was a lot of cheating but I think they all had fun! The kids then seemed to attach themselves to us, and while some went round arguing over who got my camera, two little girls kept demanding to be picked up, so I have very sore arms! It was great fun but so knackering! We managed to get away at about 5, and back to the longhouse for dinner. As we had missed out the night before a very heavy rice wine night was had, with a fair bit of karaoke!

Saturday I think we all felt a bit the worse for wear, but none as bad as Emma, who threw up the whole way in to Kota Belud, and had to buy some lovely new clothes...... We had a little look round the shops and had lunch before heading off again. On the way back we went to a bee centre, where they showed us how they made honey, and then a village where they make gongs. I bought a few of the smaller ones but they weren't quite as impressive as a 20ft one they have standing there - the biggest in Malaysia, apparently. We headed back to the longhouse where I proceeded to be eaten alive all evening by mosquitoes!

Today we're in Kudat for a few hours in the morning, to catch up on internet and some shopping, and then beach this afternoon. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm told it's gorgeous! :)