Advertisement
The Orangutan Sanctuary in Sepilok was listed as one of the must sees in Borneo. I was not sure what to expect at the Orang Utan Sanctuary. In my mind I had an image of a zoo and the orang utans being fed by rangers. Well I was wrong the Sanctuary seemed like it legitimately supports the Orang Utan (literally "men of the wild" in Malay) back into the wild. A few platforms were supported by trees and cables within the jungle and food was laid out for the orang utans by the rangers. The orang utan came to the platforms close to 10am and stayed till 11am and during the second feeding they were around from 3-4pm. We were told to hang around for longer until the crowd clears out to wait for the orang utans to come back. The volunteers at the Sanctuary says usually no more than 5 show up at the same time and some don't come back to the feeding platforms which is a good thing since not all orang utans rely on the centre for food. During the second feeding 5 orang utans came by. It was extremely intriguing reading the description of the orang
utans features and personalities written by the care takers in a brochure and spotting the personalities at the feeding spot. It made the feeding sections more impressive when we were able to recognize certain traits and personalities described by the sanctuary. The male we saw at the feeding section was sure scared of the dominant females, he didn't come close to the platform until the females left or backed away. It was definitely worth hanging around the centre until the second feeding. While waiting for the second feeding we enjoyed lunch at the cafe, watched a short documentary film and walk through the infocentre. After walking through the museum we spotted a short hiking trail and were interested in hiking to the mangrove the next day. We rushed to get a permit after we motivated ourselves to go on the hike. Of course trying to get a hold of someone to help us get a permit was a challenge. Laura put a hard effort into requesting for a permit and clearly spelling all our names numerous times to the ranger who really did not want to complete the forms because it was close to shutting down. This was after Geoff
tried and was totally denied.
Well it was raining all night and we contemplated skipping the hike and weren't sure if the permit was going to come through so we called the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary in the morning to see if we were granted our permit. They managed to pull through with the permit at the last minute but even with Laura's extreme efforts in spelling all our names to the ranger over the phone the night before we ended up with a permit stating these names Midi Lee, Goues Boune, and Lauri Sorde. After breakfast we motivated ourselves and we were graciously offered a ride by the manager Antonof our guest house, Paganakandii to buy gum boots and snacks for the hike. The hike is 5Km and estimated time was 1.5 to 2hours, so we thought if the boat that was supposed to be at the end to take us back to Sandakan was actually there (because we couldn't confirm that there would be) we could go to the nearby Discovery Rainforest Centre in Sepilok after a bus ride back from town. Believing the trail would only take us a few hours was a misconception, we started
the muddy trail for 2 minutes and stopped for 5 minutes to get leaches off our legs and arms. Lets just say a 5km hike that we estimated would take us few hours to complete took us 4 hours because of the annoying critters along the trail. We were pretty skeptical about the boat ride and wondering if it was going to be at the Mangrove to pick us up because the ranger who we requested the permit from could not be bothered to give detail about the hike and the forest service was closed for the weekend. Thankfully we caught a boat from the mangrove to Sandakan and took a bus back to Sepilok because we were not overly enthused about walking back on the same trail with the leaches. Overall, it was a nice hike and there was an area to camp or stay at the resort at the end near the mangrove. We cackled when we saw there was a sign at the end of the trail stating 60-90mins to complete...BULL!
Since the trail took so long to complete we did not make it to the Rainforest Discovery Centre so we decided to go the next day.
Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary
ladies enjoying the monkey business The centre has a very educational and descriptive gallery of the plants and animals discovered in Sabah as well as local crops like coffee, tea, vanilla, cinnamon, rubber and others. We strolled along the discovery trail, walked around the garden and enjoyed the scenery and wildlife during the canopy walk. Our energy seemed to be running low during this day but the flowers and plants were gorgeous and it was a great way to test out our camera. During our stay at a new hostel called Paganakan Dii Tropical Resort (very clean and with REALLY comfortable beds) and Anton, the owner often offered to drive us to the tourist attractions while staying there. When he can't drive us he got a big guy driving a minivan to give us a lift for a small cost. Unfortunately while we were told to get a ride at the Rainforest Discovery Centre to the junction for 2 RM each by Anton, the driver came at the arranged time and sprawled out on the bench beside us. He asked so "you want to go to the junction right" because we were catching a bus to Mt. Kinabalu from the highway, and our usual question
Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary
Long Tail Maqaque enjoying leftovers "How much?" He delayed and dragged out his reply and eventually spit out that it was going to cost 5RM each. YEAH RIGHT! it was less than 2 km from the discovery centre to the junction and Anton told us the rate so we all said no and tried to negotiate. It was not getting anywhere and we would rather walk to the junction to catch our bus then grabbing a ride from a dishonest driver so he left. A staff from the centre overheard the conversation and thought his offered price was ridiculous so she called her friend and got us a ride for 2RM each. If we had to walk though and we were late for our ride to our next destination there would be very angry people. 😊
Our next destination was Mount Kinabalu Park. Before Geoff and Laura's trek up Mount Kinabalu we all went and checked out the Canopy walk at the Poring Hotsprings. Knowing our laziness we thought it was a good idea to do the Canopy walk before the hot springs because we probably would not want to walk after soaking and relaxing. It was a very hot day so hot springs
did not sound super appealing in the sun. The canopy walk was around 2km. The trail led us up to a narrow suspension bridge held up by weak looking cables and supported by trees. Small platforms were wrapped around tall trees and it was a great spot to enjoy the scenery but it felt like the platforms swayed back and forth. The scenery was beautiful and very green but not very enjoyable when the staff at each platform pushes people through even when there are no line ups. After our short trek we went and soaked ourselves in hot springs under the hot sun. Well we started with the cold pool then went to fill up our personal hotspring pools to enjoy. It took us awhile to get the spring water to fill to our ankles so we sat in the pools hoping to flood the cozy hole in the ground, faster.
On the bus we were kinda enjoying the ride resting our legs and watching movies. So much so that we didn't really think twice that we drove about half an hour past the park head quarters which was right on the highway. Wondering why we hadn't stopped
at our destination I thought to ask and the bus and crew realized that they forgot to drop us off. Woops. So, they arranged with the bus heading the opposite direction to pick us up and take us to the park. It was about 8:00 and it was dark, they dropped us on the side of the highway on the outskirts of KK. We were at a bus stop but we weren't totally convinced that our ride would arrive. Eventually it did and we made sure we weren't paying twice!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.119s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0868s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Tadpole
non-member comment
Complaint
Dear Laura and Mazi, I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience with the dishonest driver. If you are keen, you may give me the details and I will forward it to Sabah Tourism Board. BTW, nice travelogue!