Shetland pony and hallucination

Got the great news yesterday that I've got my job back at the BBC. Really really chuffed. It coincided nicely with me having a day off with another Bex, the admin girl in fieldbase for this phase (40, just divorced after 17 years of marriage, very successful interior designer from London, has a yacht on the Solent, and a campervan, wants to meet a good looking sailor so is thinking of moving to the Isle of Wight.. brilliant girl, a great laugh). We're known on the expedition as 'double bex'.

The photo is of Bex doing her 'admin girl typing' impression.

We decided that celebrations needed to be had so we went to a hotel down the road and lay by the pool. Had a long lunch, a jug of sangria, and had a general gossip about life. The heavens then opened and so we headed into town for some retail therapy and dinner on the Waterfront. Had a bit of shopping frenzy, and managed to lose my Raleigh mobile phone in the process.

Then we had 'Radio Raleigh' again in the evening. This photo is of me doing the 'gong' at the start of the show (sort of Big Ben style) which always causes high hilarity. I then had to read the international headlines and I managed to find a brilliant article on the BBC site about a mini metro that had a car accident in Norfolk and when police turned up they found that there was a Shetland pony on the back seat. As soon as I started to read it out everyone else in fieldbase started uncontrollably laughing and so I got complete giggles. I think we'd all been cooped up for a bit too long in fieldbase and had got delirious. I don't think I've had the giggles so much since Mr Bibby threatened to jump out of the window in a latin lesson at Beeston and I was sent out for giggling. I could hardly breathe.

Other things that have happened over the last few days.... Lolita our Filipino cook has managed to blag another month of living here illegally and so is back to cook for us, sun-bears have broken into one of our project sites and stolen all the food so we're having to send in emergency supplies, we've booked to have our staff party on an island down the road called 'Pulau Tiga' which is where the TV series 'Survivor' was filmed, and I had a Larium hallucination that there was an intruder in my bedroom in the middle of the night (Mark it reminded me of our Inworth St episode).

Sunrise on top of South East Asia

At the very last minute one of the venturers on our adventure phase dropped out of climbing Mount Kinabalu (highest mountain in south east asia - 4095m) so I ignored everyone who said I was crazy and volunteered myself to do it instead.

The climb up to base camp 'Laban Rata' took about 5 hours of gruelling climbing up steps through rainforest, then jungle, then very barren land. We reached the hut at about 6.30 pm and had a massive dinner before heading early to bed in tiny little bunk beds. It was freezing cold as we were already at about 3000 metres. Very strange to feel the sensation of being cold having lived in the tropics for the last 3 months! It was actually lovely to get into bed and get into my sleeping bag and wrap myself in a blanket to keep warm rather than getting into bed and being far too hot to sleep.

Anyway, sleep was shortlived as we were woken at 2am and we set off walking at 2.30am. We all had our headtorches on and walked for about 3 hours to reach the summit for sunrise. The first hour or so was steps and the next 2 hours was really steep granite slopes which we had to pull ourselves up with a rope. Several people got really bad altitude sickness so didn't make it to the top. I had a bad headache but I think that was more to do with tiredness rather than altitude.

Reaching the top was the most amazing experience. We sat on the top of south east asia and watched the most perfect sunrise and the views were breathtaking. Emms - I kept thinking of you and Mark getting engaged up there, what a beautiful place, and how great to have so many exciting things to talk about on the long hike down!

Several of the boys did the obligatory stripping off and posing on the summit and of course all the welsh and scottish people had brought their flags up to have photos at the top (why do they always do that?). It was actually quite emotional reaching the top - I'm not quite sure why but it felt like I'd achieved something really great reaching the top and yet it was quite humbling to be somewhere so naturally beautiful (Mums I just felt like you when I wrote that!).

I had been so focussed on reaching the top, that I hadn't really thought about what it would be like to come down. It was about 7 hours of coming down first granite slopes and then steps and it absolutely murdered my legs. I'd done a bit of a schoolboy thing and not cut my toenails and so they dug into the front of my walking boots - they're now looking black and I think they might fall off. I think the pain was comparable to about miles 15-20 in the marathon, but not half as bad as miles 20-26. But it was beautiful walking down through all the different landscapes and through the clouds.

So I've now done 2 of my 3 big things I wanted to do - climb a mountain, run a marathon and the last one is sail an ocean, which will definitely have to wait until another year and lots more money.

After reaching the bottom we headed off on the bus to 'changeover' when all the groups swap round again. It was great to catch up with everybody and to hear all the gossip (the latest count is that there are 3 staff couples now, and far too many venturer couples to keep count - Henry and Nicky I kept thinking of you as I was watching the couples saying their emotional goodbyes as they headed off on new phases!).

I'm now back at fieldbase for the last 3 weeks of the expedition. I'm going to be really busy as I've got to organise opening ceremonies with the press for several of our project sites, write design and publish the end of expedition magazine, get together a CD of all of the photos, get end of expedition t-shirts printed, send out numerous press releases about each of the projects we've done, and compile lots of case studies for head office. And also tackle the dreaded CV and think about getting a job when I get home.

Turtle!

I went snorkelling yesterday at a beautiful island called 'Sapi'. Was just thinking how amazing it was as I was swimming in turquoise seas surrounded by loads of brightly coloured tropical fish, when all of a sudden I looked down and there was a big turtle swimming below me! Really amazing...

Diving

I'm now part of the gang and am a Padi Open water diver. Just spent 4 days on a really beautiful tiny island just near KK doing my training. The first day was in the classroom and I very nearly didn't make it to the rest of the course as I got stuck in a lift! Was coming down from the 9th floor and the lift suddently jolted and stopped in between the 7th and 8th floor. There were a few other people in there, including (typically) a girl who suffers really badly from claustrophobia. We were stuck for about half an hour and then a little Malaysian man wrenched the door open and we were led down a ladder. I felt like I was part of some weird experiment on TV.

Anyway, finally got to the island and I really loved the diving. It was pretty scary, and I did think that I was going to drown when I had to take my mask off underwater and swim along. My instructor laughed so much at the distressed face that I pulled that he had to surface to calm himself down. I also had a bit of a problem as I couldn't stop myself from smiling and every time I did my mask filled up and I nearly choked. Oh and my hair kept washing in front of me so I couldn't see properly.

Saw loads of fish - devil scorpion fish, lots of different types of Nemos, cuttlefish, parrot fish, and loads of others that I can't remember the names of.

I slept in a hammock strung between the trees next to the beach and it was lovely just being able to watch the sunrise from my hammock then go for an early morning swim in the sea. Also had a view of Mount Kinabalu from my hammock which was pretty cool.

Today the island was taken over by Hewlett Packard for a big corporate do. Quite interesting as HP used to be one of my main clients at Hill and Knowlton and so some of the people knew people I knew.

Back in the office now and have already had to have a bit of a row with my designer. Whilst I was away he took it upon himself to sign off some banners and bunting that I'm having designed. He just sent me an email saying 'Rebecca I will not wait for you, trust me, they are going to print'. I most definitely don't trust him as his english is terrible and they've now been printed saying 'Raleigh Intrntional' which is pretty unacceptable! So I'm making him reprint for free. It's quite frustrating trying to get anything done properly out here. They seem to have a very different way of going about things, and absolutely no sense of urgency. Nothing is really done by email - it's all still on very bad quality faxes and there's always powercuts so you never quite know if the faxes have got through.

Had an early morning text from Dads saying that Vix and Dids have got engaged!!! So exciting!!!!

And well done Kate and Dom for giving up smoking!!

I've had loads of work to do so I cancelled my day off on Tuesday, only to find that by Wednesday I had completely overdone it and got raging flu. Have spent the last few days in bed feeling really grotty. I miss my lovely flat, lovely bed, Countdown and freshly squeezed orange juice from Waitrose.

Having said that, my PR contact from KL flew into KK this afternoon for meetings and as soon as she heard I was sick she arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me down the road to a five star hotel where she put me on a deckchair by the pool, and gave me lots of magazines and fresh pineapple. So no complaints.

Rita

On Sunday and Monday, Andy, Cat and me went on a visit to one of our project sites in the North of Sabah in a tiny community called Rita. We are building a little library there. The community is amazing - all the village live in the same house which is a rickety old 'longhouse' made of wood and bamboo. About 50 people of all ages live in it. And also dogs, chickens, cats, mosquitoes.

We were able to stay in the longhouse and were the first 'orang puti', or 'white people' to do so. It was very hard to communicate with them as they don't even speak Malay, they speak a tribal dialect called 'Rungus'.

They taught us how to 'beat' rice (which is what i'm trying to do in the photo), how to play a strange guitar-like instrument (that's not me in the photo), and how to strip coconut leaves to make baskets. Got very little sleep as it's such a communal living arrangement that there's always people up and about and they all get up at about 4.30 to go and do the rice harvest.

The community is really near the beach and is surrounded by coconut and banana trees.

Yesterday morning we trekked for 45 minutes to visit the local primary school and sit in on a few lessons.

This a sweet little girl who befriended me in the village where i was staying...

By chance I've found out that the BBC are making a series called 'Expedition Borneo' and are focussing on an area called 'Imbak Canyon' which is where one of our projects is. So I've been speaking to the series producer in Bristol and hopefully we're going to work together which will be great for Raleigh.

A quick photo that my friend has just sent me of me and Cat out on the Waterfront in KK, back in the days before expedition had properly started and we were allowed to drink....

Village life

I had an absolutely brilliant week in Saguan. It's really remote and basic - no electricity, water, or any kind of communications. Just a tiny shop that doesn't really sell anything apart from notepads and flip flops.

Spent the week helping to build a kindergarten that Raleigh is sponsoring. I'm definitely not cut out for hard manual labour in tropical temperatures - it was exhausting.

But the community was amazing, we were constantly surrounded by loads of kids, we gave them english lessons, organised a big sports day for them - tug of war, egg and spoon (well, stone and spoon), sack race etc.. and had volleyball matches with them every evening after work. We lived on the floor of their tin community hall, and washed in the river.

On Sunday we went to church with them and they made us get up onto stage and sing. We did a hearty rendition of 'Jerusalem' and as I let slip that I'm in a choir I was made to take centrestage with the microphone.

I managed to discover the 'Curtises of Borneo' in the village who completely took us under their wing. The family were hugely competitive at volleyball, the house was the scene of many parties during the week, they played the music in the church and every girl who entered the village seemed to be vetted by the two sons.

The other project manager there was Ginny who's in the photo with me and used to work in Raleigh head office (TP her family live in The Old Rectory in Itchenor) and we got on brilliantly. Her real name is Virginia Fox - awesome!

After the week we went back to Kota Kinabalu for 'changeover' when all the groups come together and swap round. We stayed in a hotel called 'Borneo Paradise Resort'. It is in Borneo, and it is a resort.

Each group had to give a performance of what had happened during the phase. We did 'Borneo Rhapsody' (Is this the real life, or a larium fantasty, caught in a landslide, no escape from Raleigh.... etc..).

It all kicked off a bit at changeover and a couple of the members of staff had a big falling out with our boss. One has subsequently packed her bags and quit and I think another one won't be far behind which is a bit of a nightmare. I'm trying to stay well out of it.

So, back in fieldbase now, looking brown as a berry (well, within the ginger boundaries), with builders muscles in my arms, and with a slightly slimmer waistline having lived off porridge and corned beef for 2 weeks.

Only 6 weeks now until Mark comes out to see me! Time is flying....

Road trip continued

Back in the office now after nearly 2 weeks out and about. Had the most amazing time.

The girl with the back injury is now fine, she was airlifted out of the jungle and within 36 minutes the helicopter had landed on the roof of the main hospital in KK. She was in hospital for quite a few days but is now fine.

Our landrover trip restarted but within an hour we had another drama. The roads in Sabah are pretty treacherous and we were driving along a nasty bit with a sheer drop down one side (mum you would have loved it). All of a sudden a 4x4 came really fast round the corner in the middle of the road. We swerved to avoid it and it then fishtailed across the road and into the crash barrier near the sheer edge. We were all fine but it was pretty scary.

After a night in a very seedy hotel, we then carried on to one of our project sites in the Danum Valley which is a virtually untouched area of rainforest. We'd been told that the main track in was unusable as several bridges had been washed away so we had no option but to take a slightly illegal off-road route through some oil-palm plantations. After 5 hours of offroad driving (the stuff of dreams for landrover enthusiasts), and having to blag our way through 6 sentry gates, we were then faced with a swollen river to cross. We waited for about an hour to see if it went down but then we just had to go for it. We could feel the front of the landy lifting as we crossed, and water was coming over the bonnet.

After another 2 hours, getting stuck in the mud, and having to cross another even deeper river, we finally arrived in Danum Valley national park. It's a really amazing place - we saw monkeys as we drove in, and elephant poo (but no elephants!). Got a great reception from the project group when we finally arrived and they managed to craft us up chicken curry and banoffee pie from their rations. Had a night in hammocks and I woke in the morning to find that my walking boots had disappeared. After much searching we found them about 20 metres away from the camp - they had been taken in the night by a bearded pig!

The next day we went to another project site in a tiny Muslim village which used to be next to a big river but is now in the big river. The flood waters are at the level of the top of the village volleyball net.

Our next stop was a little village called 'Saguan' where I was being dropped off to help out for a week. We'd heard that the village was completely cut off due to bridges being washed away, but in true landrover extreme style we decided to give it a go anyway. We drove for 4 hours down a really muddy track before the road completely stopped due to a massive landslide. So we had to get our stuff and trek in for the last few miles.

We met the project group and I was left there for the week, whilst Rory and Mia headed back out. On the way out they got stuck in the mud for 6 hours and had to dig themselves out...