I arrived in Kina Kotabalu, Malaysian Borneo early in the morning and after dumping my backpack at my hostel, went straight to the beach! I have to admit, not the best beach and a bit smelly but beautiful all the same.
After a baking hot day it poured with rain all night, I was woken at 5am by the girl sharing my room. She was leaving early to fly home and our room was flooded! My corner was fine, but her passport was dripping wet as were most of her clothes. She emailed the hostel the next day, they let her fly home but confiscated her passport.
KK's not the most interesting city, but theres some lovely islands just off the coast, which i visited with a malaysian couple i met at the hostel.
The next day i headed to Sepilok for my first trip into the jungle. I visited the Orangutan sanctuary, which i have to say was really disappointing! They do a great job and i know the Orangutans are free to roam around, but the crowd was huge and only 1 showed up!!
I spent 3 days at Uncle Tans jungle camp on the Kinabatangan river we had
to get a boat to the camp and saw proboscus monkeys on the way.
The huts are really basic, no doors, just mattresses and mozzie nets, but the setting is gorgeous. You can tell the staff just love their jobs, everyones welcoming you to the jungle and just generally really friendly. Luckily we only had 7 in our group as i think in high season they can have up to 30. It poured on our first night so our evening river trip was cancelled which was a shame, but it is the rainforest! I got woken in the night by rats running around, but they weren't trying to get through the mozzie net, so i went back to sleep!
Our next day started with a boat ride and we saw our first Orangutans in the wild! But in my opinion the Gibbons stole the show. I just wish i had better pictures, but between the boat rocking and the monkeys swinging though the trees its pretty difficult to capture much.
We also saw 2 types of Macaques, civelet monkeys, hornbills, an otter, monitor lizards, fish eagles and lots more. On our trek through the jungle, nature wasn't playing and the
most interesting thing we saw was a tractor centipede! We also had a night trek, where we saw lots of tree frogs and a civet cat.
I saw a rat again as I headed to bed that evening, but was so tired i slept through all the noise! We had another river trip the following morning and saw more Orangutans, you're guaranteed to see them as the forest is just a thin strip along the river and behind is palm oil plantations. Great for the tourists, not so for the wildlife!
I got the 6hr bus back to KK for the night, then an early morning flight to Sarawak.