the biggest nose in Borneo

This morning we got the shuttle to the Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary, about an hour away. Josh was extremely doubtful about the appeal of the monkeys…

…and yes, they are ugly (it’s the giant noses) and fat, and apparently have a flatulence problem due to their diet. Oh, and they have pretty much constant erections (I realised that all the pictures you see of them have their thigh at a certain angle to cover this embarrassment). But they were oddly compelling, and we spent all day going between feeding sessions and enjoying their crazy antics (Neen – I missed you with your appreciation of “look at the baaaaby”).

Josh here… I just want to say that if I told you that we were going to see ugly, fat monkeys with constant erections who spend all day farting and feeding their equally ugly offspring, would you want to go? I mean it’s hard enough to convince people that normal monkeys are cute, what with all the slinging of faeces… but when you throw in the facial disfiguration and raging hard ons, it’s really not a recipie for a fun day. But I was wrong… They are actually pretty cute, and much better behaved than the tourists who come to visit them. Here they are being fed:

We’ve arrived at Uncle Tan’s base to stay the night, and we’re heading off on a 3 day jungle trip tomorrow. The shared showers here are actually in the toilet cubicles (handy if you wanted to sit down to shower). I thought of a new game for that “Minute to Win It” show – putting on fisherman’s pants in this type of toilet/shower setup without drenching the ties when they drop on the ground. Obviously, I didn’t master this, and now have wet toilet floor pants on (Josh pointed out that I should have just walked back to our room in my towel).

Okay, no one has actually peed in a bucket yet….but stay tuned for our jungle adventures (which we’ll blog when we get back in 3 days).