Today's the day!

We woke this morning in Kota Kinabalu to a beautiful ocean vista - pink puffy clouds, calm waters around the islands, little boats zooming here and there. Tonight we'll be far away from the ocean, sleeping in a lodge at the foot of Mt Kinabalu, preparing to rise early for the first stage of the climb.

We are beginning to get travelled out. Our enthusiasm for crowds and new foods is waning. We've become so blasé, we forgot to remove knives and iPods before going through airport security. Our excursions out of the hotel are becoming results-oriented - get the laundry, find a pharmacy, find someone who can show us proboscis monkeys. Last night we couldn't even muster enthusiasm for the night market that surrounded the hotel on three sides (though we had an excellent view from our room of the market and the associated traffic chaos).

We won't get the chance to get to know KK the way we did Kuching. We've had just 24 hours from getting off the plane till our pickup for the mountain, and when we return from the mountain we'll have one more full day (on Tuesday). In view of that, we're not really bothering much with the city - no sooner had we arrived yesterday than we were arranging a ride to Lok Kawi wildlife park, half an hour out of town.

Lok Kawi is essentially a zoo. We aren't usually keen on zoos, but we don't have the time to seek out Bornean wildlife in the wild, and these animals often can't be seen in zoos at home. The enclosures seemed mostly big enough and the animals weren't stressed out (except the sun bears, who were pacing and clearly needed more trees to climb). The jewels of the zoo's collection - orangutans and proboscis monkeys - were lovingly cared for with large, stimulating enclosures full of games. I hope if I come back here that all the other animals will be treated as well.

I've never seen proboscis monkeys before. They're very graceful, have slow, thoughtful eyes, and of course the funny little probes on the end of their noses (for flowers, maybe?). We had the pleasure of seeing a young one with its mother, and watched it for a good 20 minutes as it tried to learn to climb a rope. It was exactly like watching a child figuring out a jungle gym (but a thousand times more agile). So cute!

On the way out we stopped to say hello to the otters. They were swimming around and around their moat, whistling soft messages to each other. As we stood there, the heavens opened, and the otters played together in the rain. There's no point trying to avoid a tropical rainstorm - who knows how long it could last - so we deployed raincoats and umbrellas and squelched back to the van.

A local passed us with two large palm leaves tented together as an umbrella. There's no substitute for local knowledge; we wouldn't even know how to cut a palm leaf. Tomorrow on the mountain we'll have to rely on our guide for that - especially if there is any actual Bornean wildlife around.