Blogs from Kinabatangan, Sabah, Malaysia, Asia - page 2

After starting my holiday vacation out with a few days in Melbourne (see "The Great Ocean Road" for background), I fly to Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia (on the island of Borneo) to meet up with Nimarta, who is already there and has been there for a few days now. We are staying with one of her friends from college, Alex, who happens to live right by the airport so it's quite convenient. They meet me at the airport and I hop in his truck, because everyone in Malaysia drives a pickup truck. It's about 10:00 at night, so it's late, but not to worry. Restaurants in Malaysia are open all night. We roll into a little seafood joint and it's packed with people eating dinner, or whatever you call a 10:00 meal. Nimarta had caught a fish ... read more

It was a couple more hours by bus and share taxi in a bit of a large U-turn, before I arrived at Kampong Sukau. And this really was a kampong (village). I mean, I've been in some small towns in the course of my travels, but you could almost count the number of huts here, and of course, just one (narrow) road running through the place. There are a few lodges/ B&Bs here for tourists like me, but in the main town area, there was one restaurant (which was empty), a school, and two provision shops. Remarkably, there's an internet cafe too though, jam-packed with school-kids playing LAN games. Can you blame them? So why was I here? Situated along the River Kinabatangan, Sukau is one of the natural places from which to explore the wildlife ... read more

Kota Kinabalu & Sepilok & Sukau & Sandakan The flight to Kota Kinabalu was nice and smooth and we were really amazed by standards offered by Air Asia. We were more or less expecting Ryaner kind of experience so that was a nice surprise. As it was late in the evening we had no other choice but take a taxi to the centre (30 RMB/10$) and as usual we embarked on a hostel search. We finally settled for less nice but more affordable Sunset Lodge (40RMB/13$ for basic room with shared bathroom). We were so tired that we just did a quick stop at the food market and went to bed. We did not want to stay long in KK ... read more

A fair portion of our time in any foreign land is spent seeking out experiences that can’t be enjoyed back home. Strange food and drink; different cultures; warm water for swimming and diving; ancient temples and monuments; bizarre vegetation and not least, animals that are either rare, or scare. Scientists and wildlife photographers dedicate their lives to various different creatures. We turn up in the jungle for a few days and hope to see as many as possible before going home for a proper shower. So it was at Uncle Tan Wildlife Adventure on the Kinabatangan River in eastern Sabah. We spent two nights and three days at Uncle Tan’s jungle camp, taking part in eerie boat trips long after sunset, and bleary-eyed ones soon after sunrise; night-time walks with flashlights and mosquitoes, and daytime treks ... read more

After a simple breakfast of watermelon and dry toast we hung out in our room until our departure time of 10:45. We were all keen to get going earlier and felt the hanging around was a bit of a time waster. We entertained ourselves by drying out Soffia's daypack with newspaper and writing our free 'welcome to borneo" postcards. Eventually, we climbed into the van and set off on the two hour mini van ride bound for our Miso Walai Homstay along the Kinabatangan River. We made a quick supermarket stop for essential supplies (tigerbalm, bottled water, cremos and other snacks). We also made a pee stop where you paid according to your ummm.... requirements! (See photo for further explaination) Upon our arrival our homstay guide Otto, took us on an open fishing boat ride along ... read more