Orangatangs, turtles and a big mountain!

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Borneo

We finally get to Kota Kinabalu (KK), the capital of Malaysia Borneo. Brendon manages to get a 90 day visa, where he is suppose to only get a 30 day one (travelling on a South African passport doesn't have any advantages) which is great as we will be in Malaysia for close to 6 weeks.

Its late at night and there doesn't seem to be much in terms of cheap transport into the city centre, but we split the cab with a American girl, only for her to split before paying. If your reading this... you owe us 5 bucks :-). We are booked into a small hotel in the northern side of the town called Hotel 54 and the owner makes us feel right at home straight away.

Immediately you can sense that the country is more organised and technological ahead of some of the Indonesian islands, but only a bit! The shops are mostly in shopping centres and Brendon needed a haircut, so we manage to find one for £2. Hannah not wanting to feel left out asks if they are able to do a hair treatment. Sure they said - and after a head massage and treatment and blow dry she had to part with £1.50. Not bad! There are food markets by the waterfront and a couple of expensive looking restaurants, but we walk around the town in search of some local food.

After asking a couple of locals, we arrive at what looks like a massive open air restaurant under a big old roof half the size of a football pitch. There are about 5 or 6 different restaurants set around the central tables all showing off their freshest produce. Well you couldn't get it any fresher here. There are rows upon upon rows of massive fish tanks with every kind of edible sea creature you can think of. From live prawns, king prawns, oysters, stone fish, eels, sharks (little ones) crabs, shell fish everything you can think of, even a massive Grouper that is about 20kg in his own massive tank.

Our waitress, Connie, is super efficient and is shouting orders to porters, and kitchen staff and is still patient with us while we make up our minds. We select some King Prawns (almost as big as small crayfish), some crabs in chilli sauce, and some seafood rice and veggies. Doesn't sound like much but we realise too late that we have order food for about 6 people. All the food is brilliantly tasty especially when a kilogram of crab only costs 6.8 Ringit (which is less than 2 pounds). Note to self, next time order a LOT less!!

Borneo is a funny place with regards to independent travel. Most of the tour operators have grabbed particular routes or tours so its a bit of a shock when we had just begun getting use to travelling on our own way and steam. I am sure we could have done it, but it would have been a lot more hassle, and hey we are on “holiday”!

The following morning we head over to Sandakan about 1 hour's flight from KK on the East Coast. We have joined a tour for the next couple of days, so for a change its nice not having to worry about where to sleep, travel to or finding our next meal!

In Sandakan we catch a boat to the suitably named Turtle Island. There is a collection of islands that border the Philippines's that are home to one of the biggest turtle sanctuary's in this area. The island is only about 700m long by about 150m, but the locals have managed to find space for a football pitch. We look at the board that records the number of turtle landings, and how many eggs have been laid, so we hope that we are lucky as they don't come every night. We have dinner and play a game of cards to pass the time, and at about 9pm we are all called onto the beach to watch a Hawks bill Turtle lay some eggs. She goes into a sort of trance whilst laying up to 100 eggs in one go! We all gather around watching her pop her eggs into her newly dug hole.

Later we head over to the Hatchery. The turtle guardians transplant the eggs into holes in this compound, at about an arms depth, and the incubation period is around 25 to 35 days. Interestingly the sex of the hatchings are determined by the amount of sun they get whilst hatching. If they are in the sun then they are male and if under the shade of a tree they are female. So we head down to the beach again and this time we will be releasing the hatchings into the sea. They look like little souvenirs they are so small, and somehow instinct takes over and they move down into the waves. Sad fact is that only 1 to 2 hatchings out of a 100 make it to adulthood and it takes them 20years to become adults.

We head back to Sandakan, and whilst we wait for the bus to take us to Sepilok we cruise through the local market that is attached to the waterfront. What a great market! Fresh fruit, nuts, veggies, crafts and best of all fish. There were countless options of fish that the fishermen probably caught themselves that night or morning. At one particular stall, they were selling a whole yellow-tail tuna for £15. That is 10kg's of fresh tuna, normally you would pay that for just 1kg back in London!!

Back in the bus we now head into the jungle in the middle of the country so that we can see one of Borneo's other highlights. Monkey's and Ape's - in the wild. We have chosen a river package which means that we stay on the river for 2 nights and 3 times a day we head out on the river (dawn, lunch or dusk) travelling up and down the river hoping that we see something. Well we were not disappointed. We saw loads of probiscus monkeys (they have funny long noses that make them look almost human) and plenty of Mackay monkeys which have very long black tails and seem to be all over the place. But we haven't seen any Orang-outangs. The family we are sharing the boat with said that they have been here for 2 days and haven't see any yet! Oh well. We had back after one of our trips and our guide all of a sudden speeds up and races to where there is another boat parked up. We get there and in the massive wild fig tree, a very large male orang-outang is sitting. WOW, we are in awe. We are still about 20 to 30 meters away, but he is great to see, but he doesn't hand around and soon decides that there are too many people around disturbing his dinner!

Brendon does a night walk through the jungle with just a little torch - and just about everything makes him jump. But he saw some crazy bugs, birds sleeping and a fox like kind of animal. But it was dark, really dark. If you switch off your torch you couldn't even see your own hand!!

One of the mornings that we cruised the river, we saw loads of fresh water crocodiles, which quickly made us pull our feet out of the water! But the otters we saw were very cute. After a couple of days on the river we head back to Sandakan and spend some time at the Orang-outang sanctuary that they have set up here. What they have done is bought a massive piece of land and made it as natural as possible and raise and rehabilitate around 50 orang-outangs. Its doesn't feel like a zoo, but its possible to get real close to them. We are lucky as at feeding time we manage to see about 8 different orang-outangs, as normally only about 2 or 3 come out to the feeding platform.

They look so amazingly human and we spend as much time as we are allowed watching them. As we leave one of the younger males have “escaped” and is walking over the admin buildings , and his handler tries to get him down. Apparently it can take hours to get them to come down as they think its a great game to play!! That night we had our 1st tropical downpour and boy did it rain. We thought that we might be washed away at one point, but its quite normal around here.

After we have had our animal watching fix we fly down to the south to Tawu and then transfer about 1 hour to a small place called Semporna. Now Semporna isn't anything special. Its mainly a harbour town with a couple of spots for accommodation, but what is really is, is a gateway for some of the best diving in Asia! Sipadan! We shop around a little to try and find the best deal for diving and accommodation, and one place caught our eye immediately! Scuba Junkie http://www.scuba-junkie.com/ As the name suggests its all about the diving and more!

Brendon does a couple of dives as Hannah had problems with her ears, and the diving is just what you want, warm clear water, with plenty of fish and good looking corals and plenty of turtles. ! We stayed in one of the hotels in the town instead of the hostel as the price worked out about the same. After a couple of days we decide that we might be better off staying on one of the islands instead of paying the boat fee everyday to and from the mainland. We stay on Mabul island once again with Scuba Junkie. What a great place. It has it all. We are feed 3 meals a day (diving makes you hungry!) and looking at the cost of diving we were able to do our Advanced Open Water certification which allows us to dive to 30 meters instead of 18 meters.

One of the training dives that we completed is to do a deep dive to 30 meters, and do some simple exercises underwater. Brendon manages to get “narked” or Nitrogen Poisoning which isn't too dangerous but he said it was a very nice experience :-). We did manage to see a flamboyant cuddle fish at the 30 meter mark which is a cuddle fish that keeps on changing colours.

We spend about 3 to 4 days on the island, diving, eating and chilling and watching the sunset everyday. One of the nights we completed a night dive, which was “interesting” which translates in to scary! You do a shallow shortish dive, but only armed with a torch. It was great to see how different the ocean looked during night time, and that certain creatures sleep including turtles.

Both of us are on the short-list to dive at Sipadan island, which is a national park (protected by men with machine guns stationed on the island) and Jacques Cousteau named it one of the wonders on the underwater world when he came around here in the 70's. There are only 120 place available everyday, and every dive operator only gets a few a day. We decide to split up for the 1st time since we started travelling. Hannah is going to stay on Mabul as she has met some people to hang out with and try and get a pass for Sipadan island. Brendon is going to fly back to Kota Kinabalu and climb a mountain.

Brendon's account on Mount Kinabalu
Free at last …. (just kidding :-) After finally managing to get a flight to KK they didn't get my booking details and I had to fork out for another flight, I get to KK late and a little tired. Catching a mini bus to the base of the mountain which is a very steep drive getting to about 2000m elevation in about 20km. It feels strange not having Hannah around, but I know that climbing this mountain isn't really her thing.

After an overnight I meet 2 Australian girls that are doing the hike and join them and the guide that will take us up to the summit. The “walk” or hike is a 7.2 km walk but with an vertical climb to 4100m. So basically its the stair master workout from hell! It takes me about 6 hours to get to the rest camp which sits at around 3400m. I buy the most expensive cup of tea and chocolate bar but I didn't care, and carbo loaded for the accent tomorrow. Now tomorrow is actually just a couple of hours away as we get up at 2am and leave at 230am so that we can get to the summit before sunrise.

Well if the 1st leg was hard this is even harder. Muscles didn't want to co-operate and your physically knackered as you didn't get much sleep as there were some late arriver in my dorm. There were some really steep sections which required pulling yourself up rope ladders, and its dark of course! I was lucky though as we had a full moon and at certain sections we didn't even need a torch. I make it to the summit about 30 mins before sunrise and take some of the customary photos and start to get cold as I am not moving any more. (I didn't have any fancy climbing clothing, just a rain jacket and some shorts).

The sunrise it breathtakingly beautiful and the valley below slowly comes to life. One of the best view was a shadow of the mountain forming a pyramid on the clouds below. So time to head back!. Well you would have thought that it would be easier, but no, it is 10 times, no 50 times harder walking back down. The views take the pain away for a while, but I start to fall behind the guide. It was pretty cool walking above the clouds.

Back at the rest camp, I try and strap up my knees as the 6 km decent is going to be hell. I manage to cut some of my socks off and use them as a knee guard! (Hiking tip - bring straps if not cut up your socks they work great) I manage the walk down but it takes very long and every step hurts climbing down the steps, but I just keep thinking, if a 91 year old Japanese women can make it up and down then so can I!! Well I obviously made it as I won't be writing this update! I say my farewells to the two Ozzy birds and make my way back to KK to meet Hannah.

For once I lived up to the nickname I get from time to time “Grandad”. I could hardly walk. I was hobbling as my knees were just buggered. It took me about a week to be able to get up from a chair without going uuurrggghhh! But it was all worth it. It was an amazing hike and if you are in the area you should climb it, but don't do as I did and do a little exercise before hand instead of just laying on the beach sunning yourself. It doesn't get you up a mountain!!

Hannah's account of Diving

Now that Brendon was finally gone I was able to relax a little and do what I want.... Just kidding... well not really!
Sipadan Island is one of the few islands in the area that has an extinct volcano cone and stretches 2000ft from the ocean floor. Its an exceptionally rich marine area with more that 3000 different species of fish recorded. This is why the government only allows 120 people to visit this unique dive site per day. Well we had been trying to get one of the passes, but some people had booked 6 months in advance, and even the Lonely Planet mentioned that you need to plan this at least 3 months in advance. As Brendon is climbing a mountain (only he will know why that sounded like fun) it might be easier to find 1 dive pass instead of 2, and as luck will have it, Sipadan Scuba (http://www.sipadanscuba.com/) have 1 slot free the next day.

Well all of the hype that people have been taking about has been justified. There were turtle galore, loads of reef and white tip sharks, we had jacks's creating a vortex, we saw turtles mating, octopus mating and just crazy amount of marine life. Its no wonder it is voted the 3rd best dive site in the world. Truly amazing!


So we meet back in Kota Kinabalu and share our stories whilst Brendon hobbles along, and saying the “I missed you” and all that jazz we make another stop at the food market to have one last meal of Chilli Crab and this time we don't eat ourselves too silly.

From KK we fly over to Malaysia Peninsular side - Kuala Lumpur. But I suppose that will be for the next update!

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