Site Report: Danum Valley, Malaysia

Visits

• 2023-03-27: The first day of the trip into the rainforest. Unfortunately, the lodge messed up the guides.
• 2023-03-28: A continuation of hiking through leech infested mud while the guide was walking quickly and talking in a loud voice. After the hike, Barbara found some gibbons in the forest next to the lodge. We asked for a new guide, and the lodge charged us a bunch of money to accommodate that starting in the afternoon.
• 2023-03-29: Walked around all day feeding the leeches. Then, there was the night drive to feed the mosquitoes.
• 2023-03-30: Walking around in the forest, I thought I felt something around my nose. I was sure that it was a leech, but the guide said he never heard about a leech in someone's nose. But, I still felt movement inside, and then my nose started bleeding. After some very violent nose blowing, there was a leech full of blood and flying out of my nose. I was understandably concerned about egg-laying in my nose or other indignities. My searches on the internet found that you can actually die from a leech in your nose. There were stories about people who had leeches in there for months. So, I guess I was lucky that it came out after only 20 minutes.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Asia
• World

Trips

• Malaysia