White Rabbits but still no Orang Utans!

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Another long river boat ride this morning, but unfortunately no sightings of wild orang utans (or happy ones either, haw haw). We were going rather fast, but John still managed to get sight of, and photograph, some interesting birds.

Soon we were back in Sandakan and in a coach up to a wonderful Chinese temple with a fantastic view over the Bay. There was actually a Buddhist ceremony taking place, so we didn’t go in, but spent a fascinating time listening to the chanting (it’ll never catch on).

We then went on to a rather grand hotel for a fantastic buffet lunch. We sat outside looking enviously at the people in the pool. I was rather surprised to see a sign on the door to the restaurant saying ‘no alcohol allowed’ - we’d been allowed to order beer round the pool - I didn’t know Islamic law only allows you to drink beer outside, or perhaps you can’t pollute the air-conditioned air!!

A short flight back to Kota Kinabalu took slightly longer than expected as the plane managed to get stuck in a hole on the runway whilst we were taxi-ing to the terminal. It took quite a while, and increasingly bigger trucks, to get us out. Eventually we were checking into our next hotel, and looking wide-eyed at the stunning views over the islands we were snorkelling on only a few days’ ago, and looking forward to what promises to be a stunning sunset from our balcony.

The hotel also provides a shuttle bus into town, dropping us off outside a shopping centre we hadn’t even noticed until then. I dragged John in so that we could look for the Borneo Christmas decoration ... its a green turtle ... it was almost an orang utan as well, but Mr Grumpy said I couldn’t have one as we hadn’t seen one ... !! (Mrs Still Blinking Disappointed agreed with him!!)

We then had a wonderful meal at our crab place with a couple of Americans from our trip, John and Randy. We were put on a huge circular table with a lazy Susan revolving circle in the middle, which we managed to cover with delicious seafood dishes. Each of us was privately thinking we’d never get through it all, but hey! We did!! And boy, it was superb!

Toe News: it is getting better ... or it would be if someone would stop stubbing it everywhere he goes ... !!

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