malaysia {pt. 2}

monday: we packed up early and took about an hour boat ride to turtle island. so these huge mama turtles come up on shore at night and lay their eggs. problem is, there are huge lizards (that i liked to call comodo dragons, because they were just huge!) and birds and such that dig up the turtle eggs and eat them. these people have built a big lodge and live there now to help the turtles not become extinct. they go out and wait all night for however many turtles come up on shore (there were 13 the night we were there!!), remove all the eggs literally as the mama is laying them (she doesn't know they're removing them from the hole where she's laying them), and relocate them to a safe, fenced-in area on the island so they have a chance to hatch and make it to the ocean before the lizards can get to them. so they've since built smaller housing lodges that they open up to guests/tourists so people can see this cool stuff. the thing is, you never know when/how many turtles will come on shore, so it's just a waiting game from like 9pm-5am. and if it's stormy at all, they probably won't come because they don't like the light from the lightening. so we spent the day on the beautiful beach and snorkeled. it was so nice. there weren't tons of people and the fish and coral were sweet! then we had dinner and started the waiting game for the turtles. in the meantime, my youngest nephews, Liam and Eli, fell asleep on the (very) hard wood floor (we later woke them up so they didn't miss the turtles). i think i dozed in and out a bit too. finally around 1130pm we got the "turtle time" call and headed out. you have to be super quiet and aren't allowed any extra lights because it'll scare the turtles. that means no flashes on cameras. so that made getting any good pictures hard, but i got a couple. after we watched the mama lay her eggs and we relocated those eggs and re-buried them, we got a basket full of new tiny baby turtles that had hatched in the last day or so and got to take them out on the beach and set them free to the ocean! seriously, one of the coolest things i've seen. finally we went to bed.

he slept like a baby on the boat rides.
and yes, his crocs are on the wrong feet :)

our tiny digs for the night

the trees were huge!

snorkeling buddies

our beach post for the day. seriously beautiful.

this has got to be one of my favorites from the whole trip

this is how he spent most his day
(in case you're wondering, thats lots of sunscreen all over his face)

and this is how they spent most their day

sleepy boys waiting for the turtles. that floor was hard!

{these next pictures of the turtle stuff are not great - they wouldn't allow flash so it's the best i could do}

the turtle laid like 64 eggs or something ridiculous like that

the babies!!

setting the babies free!

tuesday: we packed up and got back on the boat for the hour ride back to Sandakan. we immediately got in a van and drove to see orangutans! it's a part of the natural jungle area they have enclosed and house these apes. we got to see them during an eating time, so a bunch came out of the trees everywhere and munched on bananas and other fruit while a bunch of people sat and gawked and took pictures. pretty cool.

from there we got back in the van and drove about 2 hours to the middle of the jungle. once we got out of the car, we took a short boat ride to our new digs for the night. there was a big lodge and separate little cabins for each family. so Jae and i in one, and my sister and her fam in the one next to us. the jungle is way cool, but people - BUGS. there were giant red ants that seemed to live on the step right outside our door. i was a little paranoid all day/night. but we survived. we spent the day hanging out, relaxing a bit, eating, and then had a river trip. we saw lots of monkeys, a few cool birds, and lots of places where elephants had recently been. sadly, we saw no elephants though. boo! Jae was on the constant look-out for crocodiles, but we didn't see any of those either. after the river trip, we came back, had dinner, and crashed for the night.

view from our deck

Blue Kingfisher bird - so pretty

our cabin. we had monkeys on our roof and all around that night & the next morning!

wednesday: we got up extra early wednesday morning to go on another river trip. after that, we had breakfast, packed up, took the short boat ride back to the car, and drove the 2 hours back to Sandakan to the hotel we originally stayed in on sunday night. we spent the afternoon back at the pool and had a relaxing night at the hotel.

malaysia {pt. 1}

i don't even know where to start with this trip. let's start with the stats:

-10 plane rides
-3 airlines
-8 boat rides
-6 taxi rides
-44(ish) total flying hours (mind you that's just flying time, not airport/traveling time)
-370 pictures
-2 lost/forgotten items (1 dress, 1 wedding ring...luckily not one of ours, not so lucky for my bro-in-law)
-4 adults, 4 kids
-24/7 intense heat/humidity (aka constant sweating)
-87 servings of white rice (give or take..just know it was a lot)

how do i sum all that up in a few blog posts? it's going to be tricky. here goes. oh, and if you want to skip all the chit-chat and go straight to the pictures, i can't say i blame you.

for record keeping purposes (for ourselves, mostly, and because it was quite a trek...malaysia's really far away, i don't know if you knew that) this is how we got to malaysia:
left SLC at 830am on thursday, arrived San Fran at 945am
left San Fran at 115pm, arrived in Tokyo at 440pm on friday
left Tokyo at 620pm, arrived in Singapore at 1220am on saturday
*layover in Singapore airport for 8 hours all night...it was pretty rough*
left Singapore at 850am, arrived in kota kinabalu, malaysia at 1120am on saturday

got that??

(one of the many) airplane ride

in the Singapore airport around 1am - we were pretty hungry. mcdonalds? why not.

weird tiny little plastic plate thingy's for the ketsup

our sleeping arrangements for that 8 hour layover in Singapore. told you it was rough.

my sister and her family got there the night before us, so we got a taxi from the airport to take us to the condo they were staying at. needlesstosay, we were pretty beat. we wandered around the market down the street a bit, but it was SO hot and humid, we were melting. we didn't last long. Jae doesn't sleep on planes very well at all, so he'd only slept about an hour or so the whole trip there. i slept maybe 4 hours. Jae passed out around 3pm saturday and i could not wake him up the rest of the night. i went to bed around 7pm and we slept til we had to get up sunday morning around 6.

YAY! finally made it to malaysia

ocean across the street from our condo

drinking the coconut juice. it was kind of warm and NOT good.

sunday: we took a short flight to Sandakan, another city in Malaysia, where we stayed at a really nice hotel with an even nicer pool. we had a hired tour guide for this part of the trip, so that was nice. he was hired for just our family, it wasn't like a big tour group, so we had a private driver and guide for 4 days. made things so much easier! we were all over on this trip - spent every night in a different place. when we first got off the plane, we took a short tour around the city and got to walk through a small part of what we would call a neighborhood, i guess. we spent the day sunday at the pool and ate at a local restaurant for dinner. they're right on the ocean, so everything is seafood and it is super fresh. we're talking literally straight off the boats and sent to the kitchen. they let us roam in the back at all the fish, crab, lobster, etc sitting in the back in water waiting to be taken to the kitchen.

huge, puffy clouds looked like snow

mt. kinabalu. you can actually hike this. we just ran out of time & energy

this is basically the only sidewalk down the middle of houses

they build their houses on these beams to keep them up away from possible storm flooding & such. kind of scary to me, but i'm sure it's all they really know, so they don't think twice about it.

they like to use lots of color, it's kind of neat

a goat lives on their porch!

walking through a wet market - some of the super fresh fish. smells wonderful...

this little dude was all floaty-ed out

most of the pool area

kiddie pool

this was a nice spot. there was just total jungle behind us. super cool.

brothers hangin out, eating some crackers after some hardcore swimming. and about two minutes later...

....Eli was like this.

our first local dinner!

Liam spilled some super hot egg soup on his hand during dinner. it was pretty traumatic - it actually blistered over the next few days. we wrapped it in an ice cold bandana and Hattie was forcing him to smile.

so there you go. did you make it through all of that? eek, i barely did, and i'm the one writing it.
next part coming soon.

is it over yet?

i'd be lying if i said i wasn't super glad it's friday.
it's been quite a week.
and i'm ready for it to be over now.
i have lots of trip posts to do, as well as a surgery update.

but for now, just to get me through the rest of this day,
here are a few things that helped.

happy friday, friends.

halloween :)

 i have really good friends.

a bit of my ornery, sleep-deprived self shining through..

 tell me this isn't the cutest tissue box ever.

 i LOVE chocolate-covered strawberries.

 totes me.

 i need to learn how to do this asap.

how did she even get up there??

 beautiful.

so true.