Borneo Photos

A post dedicated to the wonderful country that is Borneo, including the best of my photos. A small tribute to a fascinating country that everyone should visit, friendly welcoming people, more flora and fauna than any other country and landscapes to match anywhere in the world, Borneo is a must visit.

Rice Paddy in the Wilderness

Wishful Thinking

Good Morning World

A New Perspective

Beauty

The Lone Wave

Rural City

Sunset

White Sand, Blue Sky

Holding On

Palms on the Beach

Cloud Cover

Isolation

Sunrise

Sunrise Over Mt KInabalu

Faultless

Sun Rays

What a job

Vegetation

View from the Shack

A Malay Sunrise

Where have I seen this before...

Stunning

Trip of a Lifetime

Jungle outside Miri

Now I feel I ought to begin by saying, I can't tell you all about my experience on what was easily the best adventure of my life to date. This trip was a school expedition to Borneo in summer 2012, and the reason I can''t tell you all about it is because
1) We already have a blog (http://alderbrookborneowc.blogspot.co.uk/)
2) I genuinely can't remember it all
3) Even for what I remember, if I told you it all this entry would be thousands of words long

We found Nemo

Okay so now we've got that out of the way on to the trip and country. The trip was run through World Challenge, a truly brilliant company who offer expedition programs to young people, if you have a young person or are a young person I can't sell these programs enough. They are truly life changing! Now you can read about all we did on the blog linked above so I'm going to talk about one aspect of the trip that really annoyed me, as it would anyone. This is the fact that I was ill THREE times during the trip.

A lesson in atmosphere

The first time was before we even set off when I got cellulitous in my left foot. As we flew on our epically long journey to Borneo my foot gradually deteriorated, becoming larger and darker in colour until it had gone a bruise's purple/black colour and double its usual size. This meant I had to take, if my memory serves me correctly, 4 trips to the hospital, 2 injections, was given 4 different types of medication and a large sum of money was splashed out for a scan to make sure the problem wasn't DVT. Finally after around a week my foot finally returned to normal.

Rice Paddy

The other two illnesses were particularly nasty as one made me incredibly itchy which was diagnosed as possibly an allergic reaction to a poisonous tree. The third was after drinking too much sea water.... you can probably guess the result....

Team + Malay children = sight to behold

But I don't want to put you off going to Borneo because it is a truly awe-inspiring country, a place of amazing human beings, amazing natural beauty and amazing landscapes. This joint with the fact that we ran our expedition, created a learning experience second to none, life lessons were learnt seemingly on a hourly basis and I can't fault my team for what we all achieved. My best photos are posted both here and the rest shall be posted on another entry after because there are too many to all put on this entry. It's a paradise to remember the beauty of life.

1st visit to Iceland

These two photos are from my first trip to Iceland in the Summer of 2011.The trip was a real eye opener to the sheer beauty that volcanic landscapes have and set Iceland deep into my heart as my favourite place I've ever visited. It was surprisingly warm considering the name of the country however little did we know that the country was aptly named after our second trip there.
The whole trip was two weeks in total and we managed to fit in a surprisingly large amount in that time, driving on Route 1 in it's entirety around the whole island.
The first photo was taken in a meadow that banked onto a river, where just out of sight the river dropped off a small cliff face down into the sea below. There are a large amount of these small rivers in Iceland which create a hugely different feel to the coastal areas. This unusual coastline is made even odder when you add in the black sand beaches dotting the coast, as well as a few lava fields which just drop into the water, the magnificence of the Western Fjords and the massive mud flats in the south of the island.
It is a truly beautiful country and one that I urge you visit.

First of Many

So this is where it all begins. Having been told by numerous friends and family that I should start a travel/photography blog, I have finally decided to do so. However I have a lot of time and posts to make up for and so for my first post I have decided to use the first of my favorite photos I ever took.

I took this from the Rock-a-fella building overlooking New York City in Spring 2010. I was never all that interested in New York as a place to visit before this trip, maybe because I thought it was just a bit too touristy and too hyped up and so would be disappointed by it, in much the same way I view Las Vegas now. Despite this New York simply blew me away, everything from the Statue of Liberty to Central Park, I was astounded with every turn. The highlight was undoubtedly going up the Rock-a-fella building from which this photo was taken. The sunset over Manhattan and behind the Empire State Building is still one of my favorite sights of all time, only then to see the Empire State Building light up in sapphire blue... magical!

This blog is more for me than anything else so I don't forget just how beautiful the world can be and don't forget the stories I have (minus Jordan and Cuba, where my computer crashed and I lost all my photos, and India, where I was too young to take photos). However to anyone visiting I'd like to say firstly thank you and secondly travel!

Sit back, relax, and enjoy