Malaysia - KL and Borneo

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We took the train from Singapore to KL - not as exciting as we'd hoped; mostly eight hours of railway cutting, but made up for by our first sighting of the Petronas Towers. We were staying in a hotel with a view of the towers and even in the gloom of a very grey afternoon they seemed to glow. By night they looked magical!

After a short stay in KL we moved on to Sabah, Borneo - the last leg of our trip home. We landed in Sandekan and wandered around the town centre a little soaking up a bit of WWII history and reading Agnes Keith. But the main event came the next morning - a trip to Sepilok Orang-u-tan sanctuary and then onward by boat up the Kinabatangan in search of Bornean jungle and exotic wildlife!

Sepilok was amazing - the sanctuary isn't fenced, the orang-u-tans can come and go as they please, but many come back for bananas at feeding time. We saw loads - including a couple of very cute little ones. From Sepilok it was onto a small boat for our journey up the Kinabatangan river into the jungle. We saw wild Proboscis monkeys (big noses and pot bellies!), macaques on the journey up the river to our wilderness lodge. Later that evening, back on the boat, we saw more monkeys, a crocodile and - very unusually - a herd of Pygmy elephants - smaller than Asian elephants, only found in Borneo and very rarely sighted on the river bank! Back at the lodge, we had dinner with our expedition group (which included 5 people from Devon!) by lamplight - at which everyone (boys too!) had to wear sarongs. In the morning it was back onto the boat, and more monkeys and crocodiles as we made our way back to Sandekan.

From Sandekan we flew to Kota Kinabalu on the northern coast of Borneo for a couple of days snorkelling before flying home. We spent a day on a tiny island off the coast - Palau Mamutik and gazed at (but did not climb) Mount Kinabalu - maybe next time.

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