Sandakan

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We awoke at 5.30am ready for our Air Asia flight to Sandakan at 7.15am. Sandakan is the second-largest city in Sabah, on the north-eastern coast of Borneo. The area is infamous as the site of a World War II Japanese airfield, built by the forced labour of 6,000 Javanese civilians and Allied prisoners of war. In 1945, the surviving Australian prisoners were sent on the Sandakan Death Marches; only 6 of them survived the war.
The flight to Sandakan took 2hrs 30mins, which seemed to take longer than our flight from Stanstead to KL! After 45 minutes we had gone through passport control, collected our luggage and had a 20 minute taxi ride to our hotel. We were staying at the Swiss Inn, which is situated in the new part of Sandakan on the harbour front. Luckily our room was available on arrival so we didn't have to spend the day lugging our backpacks around!! We decided to have a relaxing day, recover from the flights, get our bearings and book a trip to Turtle Island. The weather was still extremely hot and humid but at 2pm the heavens opened, oh for hot rain, although it wasn't long until the sun was blazing down on us again! We were going to be picked up at 11.30am the next day by Gert, the owner of The Last Frontier Boutique Resort in Bilit, were we would be staying for two nights.

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