Sandakan & Sepilok

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After being in the wilderness for five days, we hailed down a bus to Sandakan. We enjoyed the relative luxury of having hot showers and going out to eat! On our first day, we headed to the famous Sepilok Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre. This is the most popular place in the world for tourists to see Orangutans. We were really excited about seeing these 'men of the jungle' in action and went early for the morning feed. From a viewing platform, we saw rehabilitating Orangutans emerging from the trees for a feast of fruit and vegetables. This is the first of many platforms that gradually go further into the rain forest with aim of Orangutans eventually leaving the feeding platforms and living back in the wild permanently. We were lucky enough to see a mother and her newborn baby swinging in for breakfast and it struck us how human-like these magnificent creatures appeared. Afterwards, we looked around the exhibition centre to find out about the centre's good work on protecting endangered species in Sabah. Due to logging and human-expansion, many animals are losing their homes and becoming displaced. SORC rescue many that are kept as pets or orphaned and slowly reintroduce them to unspoilt jungle. This process can take years to achieve. We watched a documentary on the development of the centre and some of the success stories. We decided to wait for the afternoon feed in the hope of seeing more Orangutans. It was definitely worth hanging around as six more emerged to play and eat. We saw these often solitary animals swing in and climb the trees above us with their long arms and nimble legs.

Although we had heard that there wasn't much to do in Sandakan town itself, we found it had quite a pleasant seaside-type atmosphere. We wandered around the central market and got talking to the Security Guard. After the often-asked 'Are you married?' question, he told us about the city and about the fishing trade. He has family living in Australia and is planning on seeing them soon.

On our last day in Sandakan, we went to the War Memorial Gardens. Sandakan was another city devastated by war but it seemed a lot closer to home as it was here that there was a Japanese POW camp was situated. Many Australians and British forces were held here before going on the infamous 'death marches' across Borneo to Ranau. It was poignant to read of the individual accounts of time spent here and terrible to think that of the 3,000 people who were held, only 6 Australians survived by escaping in the jungle. It was an apt coincidence that when we went to these gardens, it was Remembrance Day at home. Afterwards, we got ready for the long journey back to Kota Kinabalu before heading on to the tiny oil-rich country of Brunei.

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