Days 9-10 Sandakan - long arms and big noses


Advertisement
Malaysia's flag
Asia » Malaysia » Sabah » Sandakan
January 27th 2013
Published: February 13th 2013
Edit Blog Post

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:115%!;(MISSING) mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
The next day I was due to meet the Orangutans at Sepilok, this is a conservation area that brings in orphaned baby orang-utans and adults that have been mistreated/injured etc. They have two feeding times – 10:00 and 15:00 and my new chum Andrea from the States and I arrived in time to see them have breakfast.In total we saw 6 wild orang-utans including a mother and her young baby

which was great to see. It’s amazing how close to humans they are (some closer than others:-) and the face recognition on my camera even picked them up as human faces! When there was just scraps left the macaques came in and polished the food off. For those of you who don’t know orang-utan means man of the wild or jungle man, that together with the hair colour means w have a few things in common although my arms are certainly not as long:-) Due mainly to the dreaded palm tree plantations there are now only 15,000 specimens left in the wild.

As well as the feeding I was also looking forward to walking round the trails during which there was a good chance that you would have a close up encounter with one of the ginger residents. I was very disappointed therefore to hear that all the trails were closed as a wooden bridge had collapsed. Unsurprisingly the admission price remained the same!!

After the feeding most of the people left on the tour buses so a group of us waited for a minibus to arrive which it never did so we walked around 5km back to the main road and thumbed a regular rickety bus from there.

At night we headed out for some food but as usual there wasn’t much for me, it’s either veg fried rice or veg fried noodles at least I have two choices so can’t complain too much.

-------

The next day I was off to the Labak Bay Proboscis monkey sanctuary, Andrea was off to Kota Kinabalu so I would be on my own today:-( If you haven’t seen this monkeys before they are quite striking, as their suggests they have huge noses, the males only have these impressive appendages and it indicates sexual maturity so the bigger the nose the better. There is one male in the group and he services all the ladies very regularly, in fact the male walk around constantly standing to attention – no wonder it is red. It is a good job that he only needs a few seconds to finish the deed as otherwise it would be worn out:-) As with all good jobs there is always someone else keen to take your place and there are often encounters with the dominant male in the bachelor group that hangs around the group waiting for their chance for a sneaky 10 seconds with one of the ladies when the Alpha male isn’t looking – this is the only chance they get for some action and so they often have to release the tension themselves if you know what I mean, these primates have just one thing on their mind:-)

Borneo is the only place in the world were these wild primates can be found and as with the rest of the animals here they have been squeezed into a small are of land due to the palm oil plantations. The only area they have left is the area near the shore where the mangroves are as that is all that’s left of the forest.

The minibus driver took me to the two viewing platforms and there was a video in between. I was much closer to the Proboscis monkeys than the orang-utans and I really enjoyed my visit I also saw glimpsed a hornbill (bird) and lots of mudskippers.

I really wanted to see Gomantong caves wee the birds nests are collected for the soup but this was 2 hours outside Sandakan and there was no easy way to get there and it would involve hitchhiking or walking a fair distance. They are near Sukau and Kinabantan river, maybe in hindsight I should have done this but you can’t fit everything in and I‘d already been in one jungle and was going to another in Indonesia.

Boring bits

Accommodation - Harbourside backpackers

Get to the minibus station for 09:00 and there will be one there to take you to Sepilok for the feeding at 09:00.

There is a bus to Labak Bay Proboscis sanctuary that leaves Sepilok at 10:30 so you could do both these sanctuaries in one day, instead of two like me. This would leave spare time to do Gomantong Cave.

Bus leaves at Hotel Sandakan at 09:30, then gets to Sepilok for 10:30 and then arrives in time for the feeding at 11:30

Admission fee 60RM + camera and transport = 100RM (£20)

[
]

[
]

[
]

[
]


Additional photos below
Photos: 27, Displayed: 27


Advertisement



Tot: 0.185s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 63; dbt: 0.1338s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.2mb