Blogs from Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia, Asia - page 3

When Sunjay first told me about Borneo, I admit I had to research it. Borneo had been on his list of destinations for some time and when we had an opportunity to take a vacation during Maya's Spring break, Sunjay contacted an agent from Borneo Adventures and made all the arrangements. It was quite reasonably priced package given that we had decent accommodation everywhere with breakfast and lunch included most days. The TV shows Survivor and Amazing Grace have been shot in Borneo. From my research, I discovered that Borneo is the 3rd largest island in the world after Greenland and New Guinea. Interestingly, it is divided among three countries Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia with 73% owned by Indonesia followed by Malaysia (26%) and Brunei... read more

What an incredible couple of days! So after a lazy afternoon of writing blogs and watching The Discovery Channel in Sandakan, we continued where we left off from Kinabatangan with more wildlife. We were up and on a boat across to Selingaan (Turtle) Island - a tiny tiny island just across from the Philippines, and we thought Gili T was small! After landing on the island and finding our accommodation we headed out to the beach - armed with snorkel equipment. Geared up and ready to jump in the water something caught our eye - a large snake like head was bobbing about just off shore. After a mild panic attack, under closer inspection (and a lot of deliberation) we realised that the creature was a large monitor lizard having a lovely morning swim. We watched ... read more

We arrived in Sandakan around 10ish in the morning and we took a taxi to uncle tans base. We had our buffet lunch then were driven to the jetty where we took our long tail boat downstream on the river to the jungle camp. On the way we saw loads of birds, a crocodile and lots of long tail macaques on the river bank. Fingers crossed for an Orang utan! We hopped off and were greeted by Lan the camp manager. We were assigned a hut which would fit all of us. We got only the basics - three double (but Asian sizes) mattresses with mosquito nets and a plastic bin to put our food in so that the rats didn’t chew holes in our bags. After dinner we set off for a night time river ... read more

Sabah – Wildlife adventure continued We left the lodge and headed for Seplikok Orangutan Centre, which was “ok”. We, and 20 other tourists, saw a mother and her baby and another lone babe. It allowed us to wander round and say things pretentiously like “they are a bit more orange in the wild”. Apparently in the afternoon there are a lot more at feeding time. That afternoon we were dropped off at Nipah Lodge and were the only guests at this out of the way (in the middle of a plantation) accommodation! Us, and the “guys”, ventured out in the evening for a spot of glow worm hunting. Which was lovely…an experience punctuated by Tory whispering to Will “I think we are being kidnapped”. In all honesty it was fun and everyone at the lodge was ... read more

Went to see the Orang Utans again. Seen a movie about the park. While the Orangs got fed, some smaller monkeys came, and cheeky steal the food. A woman, who came in a big group from a cruiseboat compared it with the scene at the buffet. My mum adoped an Orang Utan and we had a little chat with Emma from UK. She is doing voluntarie in the park and told us a bit about it. The afternoon we drove to Sandakan, strolling through the roads, finding it looks pretty poor. Many things are like in India, cheap clothes, fakes, rubbish in the streets. At least I saw two big Monitor Lizzards, swimming at the waterfront.... read more