Today we put our volunteer t-shirts on for the first time and headed to the centre for our induction. We were greeted by Elis – the head ranger, who has worked at the centre for 30 years. In fact he started in June 1987 – same month I was born! He is quite a character – he laughs so much about random things, but he is happy and smiley all the time, which is nice. I'm sure he's just nervous.

After watching a short video about the work of the centre, he talked us through our duties in each of the sections, as well as dress codes, hygiene etc. The best story was about a lady who was hiking in the nearby Danum Valley and had an itchy eye. It turned out to be a leech, but by the time someone noticed it had basically sucked out her cornea! Thankfully that is very unlikely to happen here, as a dry few years has meant the amount of leeches has drastically reduced. But it's important to keep your eyes and ears open in the forest! (or maybe closed??)

We went to the cafe at the centre after the induction and we all had a drink (orange float for me!) and some local specialities – prawn wrapped in rice within a banana leaf and these green crepe type things filled with crispy coconut (which were lovely).

After a long break. we headed back to the centre and were given a tour of the Sun Bear Centre by a lovely lady named Gloria, who was very knowledgeable. We caught a glimpse of Wendy, one of the orangutans that is now semi-wild. She and another orangutan had wandered into the Sun Bear Centre and the rangers had to keep a close eye on them. We just saw them leaving when we arrived.

We also bumped into Dr Wong, who founded the centre. The plight of the sun bear is quite sad, and Dr Wong is very passionate and enthusiastic about his work. He founded the centre because he realised "no one gave a shit" about the plight of these bears, which are hunted for their bile, gall bladders and more for Asian medicine, so the centre is doing what it can to rescue the bears in Sabah. Visitors to the centre are very important to keep everything going, but despite being right across the road from the orangutan centre, they get less than half the visitors. Gloria also took us behind the scenes to see the bear houses and on route we saw the five orphaned baby elephants that are also kept on site. They are simply precious. One of them trumpeted, and boy was it loud!

We also managed to catch the baby orangutans being led back to their enclosure – all seven of them were latched onto one ranger. Holding his hands, wrapped around both of his legs, and holding on to each other. I don't know how he could even walk – guess that comes with experience. We also encountered Ceria once again. But he didn't dare make any sort of move with the rangers around. We have another free day tomorrow before I start at the outdoor nursery on Monday – can't wait!