Blog for 2009-06-28
From BiodivBorneo09
Rest Day in KK.
After spending a considerable amount of time on Gaya Island, we are back in town for another rest day. We all had most of the day to ourselves to catch up on news, give our parents a call, and get in touch with friends and family again. It is Sunday so many of us took a break and went to the Sunday Market in KK. This Sunday Market is undoubtedly one of the most favorite places to spend time in for many members of the group.
The afternoon was also fun in that we had two very exciting activities planned for us. The first was a lecture given by Dr. Kinary Webb, the lovely wife of Dr. Cam Webb, our course director. Her lecture was titled “Health and conservation” and during the lecture she described the project she and Cam have been working on for the past two years. They have set up a clinic in Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, Indonesia called Health in Harmony. Here, the community has invested in high quality medical care and in return, the community is continually developing new environmental protection methods that will aid the surrounding threatened rainforest. I would highly advise anyone and everyone to look at the website for the clinic, www.healthinharmony.org, for more information on this very inspiring project. After Kinary’s lecture, we had an activity that was initiated by Cynthia Ong. We were all arranged in a circle and we had a discussion on our thoughts and ideas on the environment and the rainforests. It was a meaningful activity for the group to have.
After our activities of the afternoon, we grabbed some dinner and most of us went to bed early in anticipation of the next few days. On the agenda is a full day of traveling to Mount Kinabalu. Once there, we are planning on spending 3 days hiking up and down the mountain. Most of us had never climbed a mountain before so the group was filled with excitement as they went to bed tonight.
