We left Friday about 3:00 AM and traveled until about midnight on Saturday night. We stopped in chicago and Hong Kong (from the view from the airport it is on my must see list). The Singapore airport is the most amazing thing and we really enjoyed our stay in the transit hotel there. The next morning my brother Weston and wife Erin took the taxi to Church/parents' place for church. We attended church in the Clementi Ward so we could meet the members that my parents have been so impressed with for the past year and a half. Really, I can see why they love it there. The church members are well educated and travelled and it was just like sitting in church in the US (okay, maybe not Miami, but the rest of the US--just kidding) Then at 2:00pm, we had a taxi come and pick us up and take us to the Johor Bahru Airport (West Malaysia). And flew to Kota Kinabalu (East Malaysia). We went out to get some dinner. Jet Lag wasn't too bad as I had been able to doze off and on for two full days on airplanes.

The next day, March 2, we went in three directions. Dan left at 5:30am to hike up to the top of Mt, Kinabalu. A feat usually done in two days, and one that left him VERY sore the rest of the week.

Mom Dad, and I took the tour to the tip of Borneo Island, and Weston and Erin went to the islands near by to do some snorkeling. We all had a great time. I will include some of the pictures I took on the way to the Tip of Borneo Island where the South China Sea meets the Sulu Sea.

On the way to the Tip, we visited three different villages. Each village is tasked to produce a product. One village produced honey from their Bee Farm, the second village was a Gong Factory.The picture below is the village with the bees.

In this village the women are responsible to the hives. The men do the farming. Notice that they don’t wear any protective gear. They use a can with a bellows attached to it that has bark burning in it . They can pump the bellows to blow out the smoke. Here she is smoking out the bees. She is going to open the hive and show us the honey comb.

On the way to the next village, we came across a rubber tree plantation. The rubber is collected in the same manner as maple syrup. They cut the bark at an angle and the sap (i.e. rubber) runs into the container. In this case a tin can. Malaysia prior to Word War II was a mian producer of rubber. However they have torned up most of the rubber tree plantations and replaced them with palm trees. They collect the fruit from these palm trees to make Palm Oil.



Below is a picture of a grove of rubber trees. You can see the grooves that have been cut in the trees to collect the rubber. The rubber is white and fwhen you touch it, it feels a lot like the silicon used to seal around the bathtub.



From here our next stop was the village with the Gong Factory. It isn’t really a gong factory, but cottage industry because each gong is made by an individual at their home. It was quite interesting to see them make the gongs. At one house, they played the gongs for us. It sounded a lot like a xylophone. Gongs can be made in all sizes.



From here we drove to a village that consisted of a Long House. A long house is a lot like an apartment complex. . This first picture is the outside of the long house. Some of them can be longer than a football field.Here is a picture of the hall on the inside of the long house.



From here we drove on to the Tip of Borneo.


Day two in Malaysia we headed back up to the Park on Mount Kinabalu. We took a nature trail and I was in heaven learning about all the plants. I think Erin perhaps thought I was a little nuts with my fascination and excitement, and perhaps I am...

We saw the worlds tiniest orchid-the pinhead orchid, the worlds' tiniest squirrel, and the worlds' largest flower-the Rafflesia.