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Published: October 14th 2010
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Two weeks ago we boarded our first flight since arriving in Bangkok over 2 months ago and flew to Kota Kinabalu, which is the capital city of the Sabah region of Malaysian Borneo. Here we spent our first few days exploring the city before heading to Kinabalu National park. We arrived the day before Laura's birthday so spent a n enjoyable day wondering around the park trails trying to spot the rain forest wildlife. Although it turned out there wasn't much to see during the day as most of the creatures are nocturnal but we did manage to see a snake...as well as a rat and a giant squirrel.
We had been hoping to do the walk to the top of Mount. Kinabalu but unfortunately it was pretty expensive and we realised we didn't have the right gear, it was really cold on a night even at the base of the mountain!!
Our next stop was Sandakan which acts as a base for visiting the local tourist spots. After spending a day looking at the few attractions in Sandakan we headed for Sepilok to visit the Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC) and the OrangUtan Rehabilitation Centre. At the RDC there
was a lot of information about the different species of plants and the different animals that live in the rainforest which was interesting, even if we didn't get to see most of them!! There was also a number of trials to walk and a canopy walk which was good.
On our second day in Sepilok we visited the OrangUtan Centre. Visitors are able to view one of the feeding platforms when the OrangUtans are fed at 10am and 3pm so we decided to spend the day at the centre so that we could go to both. At the first feeding time we saw about 8 OrangUtans, some were carrying babies as well. It was good to see how they swing through the trees to the platform so close to us. We were also suprised to see the dozens of waiting Macaques which quickly ran in to get the left overs.
After the first feeding time we went on another walk along a trail for a few kilometers before returning to see the second feeding time. As we arrived we were suprised and lucky to see that one of the young OrangUtans had come down to the walkway to
investigate!! So we got close to get some great photos, we nicknamed him George!!
We then went back to Sandakan to sort out the next few days. We were hoping to either go on a river cruise into the rainforest or visit turtle island however both these options were really expensive for what you got. So after a team talk we decided that we would have to wait til another trip with more money and decided to head back to Kota Kinabalu as we were tired of Sandakan. In the guide book it claims that Sandakan was once home to the largest concentration of millionaires but in reality this was not the case. It was really dirty and smelt really bad. The people were quite rude and would blatantly stare at us, which really started to annoy us... so we headed back to Lucy's Homestay in KK. The trip back however was another lowlight which took seven hours on a bus full of locals who all seem to get travel sick!!
The last few days were much more relaxing before flying back to KL today. Tomorrow we are heading down to Melaka, then on to Singapore. Then by
this time next week we'll be Down Under!!!
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Dad
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mmm the birthday breaky looks yummy
So Borneo isn't one you would recommend for a long bus ride then, Ha! well not with out a sick. Hope your flight to Oz is better. Missing you both xx