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Published: January 18th 2012
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I left home at 3am Sunday morning prepared for a full day of travel. Air Asia can never be described as luxurious travel, but hey, I arrived safely and on time and that's all that counts really. I do think I have spent half my life at KL's budget airline airport, but on the upside, at least I know it like the back of my hand now.
I arrived in KK (Kota Kinabalu) around 7.15pm Sunday night. It was pitch black outside which surprised me. I was late for the group meeting so I dumped my bag and quickly met up with my travel companions Katie, Heather and Soffia and our travel guide George for a quick meeting before having dinner at a Thai restaurant on the waterfront called 'The Loft'. It was good feeling to meet such lovely travel buddies and I knew straight away that we would make the most of everything on offer over the coming 10 days.
We had to set the alarm for 5am Monday morning as we had a 7am flight to Sandakan. I was shattered and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. The room at our joining
hotel "Citidel" was gorgeous, but in usual asian style didn't have any windows, so it was pitch black which made for delightful sleeping.
We made our way straight to the Sandakan Memorial garden, which was the actual site for the 2000 plus British and Australian POW's during World War 2. It was from here the Japanese began the infamous death marches which would ultimately see all but 6 men perish. It was a touching tribute but amongst such lush and tropical gardens, I did find it hard to imagine the atrocities that occured there.
After a good explore we drove on to Sepilock's famous Orangutan rehabilitation centre. We chowed down on some food (Heather's brown soggy noodles did leave a bit to be desired) before spending the next few hours chilling. Soffia and I took the opportunity to grab a dip in the resort's pool. Of course, Murphy's Law was not far away and just as we were donning our cameras for our orangutan viewing experience it started raining cats and dogs. Luckily for us, just as the gorgeous animals showed up the rain stopped and we managed to get some decent pics.
For me, it was
a life long dream finally realised. We had been warned that we may only see 1 but, lucky for us we saw 7. In total we saw 3 mothers with babies and 1 pregnant female. It was a dream 45 minutes which sped by too fast. Although there wasn't anyone to ask questions, which was a little disappointing, I think the fact that the females are pregnant is enough evidence that the program is achieving what it set out to do.
On the walk home from the centre it started raining again and this time, it didn't stop until the early hours of the morning. It was good old fashioned Asian rain and it was perfectly timed! Poor Soffia was suffering from a pretty full on dose of jet-lag and she was asleep around 5pm. The rest of us spent the next few hours drinking cups of hot Milo and chatting, still reeling from our awesome luck at the Orangutan Centre.
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