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.