Advertisement
Published: March 7th 2009
Grasshopper
Not sure of this ones exact name but it looks nice(on a side note I really like Air Asia and despite their reputation have never had a late flight yet - we are on to our third now).
We were chuffed upon arriving in Kota Kinabalu - the capital of the semi-automonous Malaysian state on the island of Borneo - to be met at the airport by my great uncle Des. Uncle Des moved out to Malaysia and Brunei 26 years ago and has lived here ever since. On landing at Kota Kinabalu or KK as its better known we were immediately more comfortable in the heat here. We are talking 28-32 C which is more pleasant but the hummidity is all the more apparent as we are only 5 degrees north of the equator.
True to his word, Des managed to wrangle us a free night in a very posh penthouse appartment on the top floor of a block overlooking the sea in downtown KK for which he is caretaker for. It had two floors and a bar amongst other things.
Mel, me and Des
This was after our meal and a few pints of Malaysian Guinness We just had the place one night so just chilled really. The place costs 350RM a night which is under 70 pounds if anybody would like to book it? http://www.penthousekk.com/. We went our for a few drinks and food with Des that evening. Was good fun.
We spent the rest of our time in KK just relaxing really. We moved out of the penthouse after considering taking up squatters rights to stay. The Borneo Beach house hostel was nice but it just wasn't a penthouse. We did meet Des' son David - who I haven't seen for years - who works there. David is related to me - we just couldn't figure out the exact relation.... any takers??
The rest of our time in KK was spent just relaxing. We did take a trip out to Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park which is a group of 5 islands about 20 mins boat ride from KK. We visited Mamutik and Sapi and were impressed by the decent Coral and fish while snorkelling. There was a good amount of fish here right next to the shore and they were very friendly coming up to say hello. We even saw 2
Female Orangutan with Baby
Sepilok Orangutan Rehabiliation Centre - the baby is aged about 3 months clown fish in amongst the coral - a big one and a small one. Melissa said they were Nemo and his dad but I remain unconvinced as Nemo ended up in a fish tank didnt he? - and besides he'd be a fully grown clown fish by now as that movie came out a while ago. We also had a BBQ at the hostel which was really good. David cooked & played guitar (really well) and later Des played a bit too (see pics).
We caught a flight south to Sandakan at the start of the week as we had booked a tour with Uncle Tan (http://www.uncletan.com) on the Kinabatangan River in East Sabah. Wikipedia describes the Kinbatangan thus "The lower Kinabatangan teems with both animal and plant life, making it the best area for viewing wildlife, not just in Sabah but all of Southeast Asia." I believe this to be true bit I will get to this.
We went first to Sepilok which is home to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre which is run by a British charity. This is an interesting idea that aims to rehabilitate orphaned orangutans back into the jungle. They do this by
Blue Kingfisher
A decent picture if I do say so myself showing them how to forage and the like then releasing them into the jungle. They leave food out for them twice a day and sometimes the orangutans show to eat and sometimes they don't - such as when there is plentiful food in the forest. They have built a viewing platform opposite the feeding platform where you can go and watch the big guys being fed. For about 20 mins prior to the event the trees shuffle in the distance and you catch a glimpse of orange or see a big arm wrapped around a tree. It really builds the anticipation. When the feeding started, a female swung into view with her 3 month old baby holding on. She rather unsportingly sat with her back to camera so getting good pics was tricky - see below. It was a good mornings entertainment and that afternoon we headed off to Uncle Tans...
So Uncle Tans is an outfit that had a base in Sepilok but has a Jungle camp that is completely inaccessible by road out on the Kinabatangan river. To get to it we drove for about 1hr along roads that felt like they had been shelled recently. We
then all got on a speedboat that took us on a 90 min ride upstream along the murky river. It was a mixed bunch with 1 Norwegian, 2 Swedes, 2 Danes, 1 Swiss and an American girl. The river itself was a bit like the Thames in the eastenders theme music in that it was one huge bend after another. The only difference was that it was the colour of the river in charlie and the chocolate factory.
During the course of the stay we were treated to a variety of safari trips both on foot through the incredibly muddy jungle and on boats where it was easier to creep up on the animals without them running away. The Kinabatangan has 10 distinct pockets of primary rainforest covering 26,000 hectares. These are unfortuinately not linked and are seperated by private land - palm oil plantations in other words. These cover the whole of eastern borneo - they have ripped down the forest and put endless rows of palm trees in their place.
Anyways on the various safari's we saw (all in the wild I might add):
*- 2 wild Orangutans - One was high up in
a tree eating figs. The other was snoozing up a tree in the 10.30am heat of the day
*- 1 gibbon
*- 5 groups of proboscis monkeys - these are only found in Borneo and are unique because of their distinctive noses. It was amazing watching them do death defying leaps between trees.
* -Lots of Long Tailed Macaques
*- 2 Crocodiles - Very deadly - they eat people every year but are not as numerous as their aussie cousins.
*- 5 monitor lizards - think a lizard over 1m long
* -Hoards of flying fox bats - wingspan - 1m
* -Many kingfishers
* -On night safari we saw huntsman and wolf spiders along with tree frogs and wild bull frog
* -2 sea owls on a branch just above our boat
*- various types of hornbills and eagles
It was a great trip and i would highly recommend uncle tans to anyone who wants to see really amazing animals in the wild. This is primary rainforest though and the humidity is high. What that means in practice is that you sweat all the time. I mean bucket loads. When your clothes get wet they stay wet.
Des on Guitar
I think he was playing the irish rover or something along those lines. You hang them up to dry and a day later put it back on and its still soaked. Its unbelievable. Plus because of all the rain we all had to buy wellies (in Sandakan before we went out) as on the treks your feet kept disappearing into the mud. We stayed in the new camp which had only been operational a few weeks and they have done a great job. All the walkways are on duckboards do you dont have to walk in the mud. Also the food was really good. we ate ridiculously well over the three days. The guides were excellent and could spot an animal and name them from 150m. It was really impressive. On night safari on foot we were all rather alarmed to hear wild grunts coming from the darkness. This we were told was nothing to worry about as it was a wild boar. I did notice our guide slip his machette from his wellies into the back of his shorts all the same...
When we left Tans we headed to Sandakan where we visited the Sandakan Memorial Park. This was built to commerate the 2700 British and Australian POW's who died on
Uncle Tans new camp
.. muddy but hey what do you expect in a rainforest Japanese forced marches to Ranau near Mt Kinabalu. Only 6 Australians escaped out of the 2700. It was a very moving experience and we were very humbled to have been able to visit this site - the actual position of the POW camp.
After this we had our most expensive meal yet at 90RM at the English Tea House in the hills overlooking Sandakan. I had fish and chips - the first in a month. It was battered red snapper. I guess this is because cod isn't readily available in the Sulu sea. It was lovely none the less. We had some pink lemonade too. Colonial or what!!
On a side note i have been taking an antibiotic which I bought in Bangkok called Doxycycline. This is anti malarial medication. One of the side effetcs is that it stops you getting travellers diahorrhea so you can eat and drink what you want. Some people say it makes you hallucinate but that's bollocks. What it does do is is give you very vivid dreams. I have been having the weirdest dreams every night. When we were in uncle tans i dreamed that our hut has been towed down the
The Penthouse
This was before we trashed it river and i was really worried how we would get back and didn't know where I was. I get these weird dreams every night now. Not scary - just strange. I will try to keep you updated on the vivid dreams front.
PS - It may seem like I have been updating the blog every sunday. This is just co-incidence as it was ready to post on Thurs last week but the internet was broken. Then travelblog was down on Friday and Sat. We are flying to Singapore on Thursday and then on to Saigon on Sunday so no blog that day... Please keep the comments coming in (as they are entertaining) as well as tips on what to do in these places if you have been etc!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 12; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0413s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ali
non-member comment
Looks like you are having a great time Gareth, keep up the good writing, is nice to read. Have fun, Ali