Off Exploring!

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Stacey and I were up, ready and out the door for 7am (yes 7am on a Sat!) so we could get the wonderful 6hr bus journey at 8am. This was taking us to Sandakan and we were staying over night. We got there and freshened up and headed to the harbour and walked around a few shops and then had dinner. We managed to get throughout the evening, 2 noodle curry's, 2 drinks and 2 cakes (yum yum) all for under £5! We then headed back to the room (which was the worse we have had so far but would do) and got some much needed rest.

We then met the gentleman who organised our trip and he took us to the jetty so we could get the 9:30am ferry to Turtle Island. When we got there we checked in (our chalet was lovely and in the jungle area), had a rest and then headed to the main building for lunch and got to know a few other people. We then had the afternoon free to do what we wanted so we decided to head down to the beach and sunbath and snorkle. We then had to be ready for a video at 7pm, dinner at 7:30 and we then had to wait for when the turtles were on the beach. We finally got the call at 10:00pm and we all made our way down to the dark beach (no lights are allowed) and our guide showed us where the turtle was. By this time she had put herself into her trance so she did not know we were there and she started laying her eggs. We got a few pictures but they are not great and do not do it justice to the whole experience. Once she has laid her eggs she then was measured by the guide and they check if she has already been tagged so they can monitor her. While she was in the trance they had taken her eggs so we then went to the hatchery and relaid them in a safe pen where no wildlife could get to them. They will hatch in about 2 months. The last stage was to release the baby turtles that had been born that night. We all went down to the beach and released 53 of them into the sea. Good luck baby turtles! By this time it was 11:30 so we all made our way back to our chalets.

We were then up early for breakfast at 6:30am and we caught the boat back to the jetty at 7am. We then met our other guide, Laura and she took us to the Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre in Sepilak and this works closely with the UK. We went down the feeding platform and at 10:00am they put the food out and a baby Orang Utan came down. This is strictly in the wild so you do not know what will be there and we managed to the see the baby orang utan, mother orang utan and her baby and a load of other monkeys that all came charging towards us at one point.

We then left the centre at at 12:00 and headed for Sukau. This is where our river cruise was at Kinabatangan River. We got there at 2ish and checked in and made our way to the restaurant at 3:30pm. We then got the first boat at 4pm, dinner at 6:30 - 7:30, night cruise at 7:30 and back in rooms by 9ish and crashed out.

We were then up and out for 6am this morning (Wed) to do our morning cruise and just about had time for breakfast at 8:30 and back in the minibus for 9:00am. We then got dropped at some dodgy junction and waited 30 minutes for our coach and managed to get on it at 11am so we managed to get back to KK for 4pm. We left the trip with some great memories and on the cruise we managed to see kingfishers, fox bat, baby alligators, owls, snakes, various monkeys, lizard,black squirrel oh and a wild pig outside our room last night and some kind of ox/cow thing outside our room this morning! Unfortunately other the last few days people had seen the elephants but we didnt managed to see them on our trip.

We then done some much needed retail therapy this evening and had a bite to eat and Im about to crash out after finishing this blog. Stacey is already sound asleep so night night!

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Photos

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Stacey on the beach at turtle island

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And me! We sunbathed and snorkelled.

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Mummy turtle being measured after laying her eggs

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53 baby green turtles released into the sea