Blogs from Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia, Asia - page 4

On 1st January 2011, me and my friends (all 16 pax) spent trekking in Tawai FR to reach the beautiful waterfall as one of our youth outdoor activity. The trail is followed by logging trek, which abandoned a few years. Actually, no guide accompanied us but we still going on it, as we planned. Some of us ever been here before, still not confident the way. Set-off from starting point at 9.18am, after passed through folk's oil palm, rubber and paddy farm and finally the old small bridge, little bit tilted. A few minutes from starting point we lost.....because there were 3 junction treks. We went to 2nd trek...actually the 1st one. We noticed that we reached the right way on noon at the slope hill. No regretted lost on the way because we found the ... read more

I'm heading to Sandakan in April - any tips on Jungle treks etc...from there ?... read more

Riki decided that we would stay in a place called strawberry hotel near the Kinabalu National Park , so we headed to the long distance bus station where we encountered our first experience of aggressive touts, everyone yelling and screaming where you go? Trying to take our bags and who knows what else as even if we wanted to use their services it was so chaotic that it was impossible. We finally made our way to the counter and got our tickets, we told the bus driver to drop us at Kundesang a town nearby the hotel, to our surprise the bus drove past our hotel and continued down the road for a while before it dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, we decided to head to a closer hotel which turned to be ... read more

We were picked up from Paganakan Dii at 7.30am for our 50 minute car journey to Sanadakan, where we would be catching a speedboat to Selingan (Turtle Island). Selingan Island is one of a group of uninhabited islands straddling the Malaysian and Philippine boundaries lying within the Sulu Seas. This cluster of islands namely three main nesting islands - Pulau Selingan, Pulau Bakkungan Kechil and Pulau Gulisan, covers an area of 1,740 hectares and are protected for the sole purpose of conservation and preservation of turtles and other marine animals inhabiting the area. Luckily Jane was feeling much better today, although her rash was still there, she wasn't feeling as upset with it. We arrived 45 minutes early for our speedboat trip as we had to go into the offices (hut on the jetty) of the ... read more

We arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 9.30am and to take us to the Gomantong Caves and then to Paganakan Dii, Sanadakan, were we would be stayiing for 2 nights. The caves were a 30 minute drive from TLFL followed by a 10 minute walk through the rainforest. The Gomantong Caves are an intricate cave system inside Gomantong Hill. The main cave system is divided into two parts: the more accessible Simud Hitam (Black Cave), and the larger Simud Putih (White Cave) which lies above. The names refer to the main type of nests produced by swiftlets in each cave. The cave system is home to many other animals, including massive populations of cockroaches and bats. The caves have been renowned for their valuable edible swiftlet nests, which are harvested for bird's nest ... read more