Uncle Tan's Wildlife Adventure at the Kinabatangan River

Laura -- With very sore legs after our big climb, we got on a bus to head to Sandakan, on the east side of Sabah. We spent a nice evening there enjoying good food by the water and a wonderful hot shower and very comfy bed at the hotel.

View from our hotel room in Sandakan

First thing next morning, we took a cab to Sepilok - about an hour away. We spent the morning at the Orangutan sanctuary there. We got there early to see the feeding. There was a big platform with lots of ropes leading into the trees. When we arrived there were about 10 small long tail macaques chilling on it, eating leaves and climbing around. They all knew to leave though as soon as the orangutans started slowly swinging their way over. A man came with a basket of vegetables and bananas, he spread some on the platform, and kept some in the basket to make sure all the orangutans would get some. Four orangutans came over the hour we watched, and it was funny to watch their personalities. One just sat and ate the veggies, one would take a handful of bananas and sort of hide to eat them, and one insisted on picking her own bananas from the basket, and wasn't happy unless she had a bunch in each hand, and occasionally each foot too! The last one just sat back and watched all this until the keeper left and then came to the platform to eat when the others left. It was pretty neat, we were watching all this from maybe 10m away!

After this we went on a short walk through the forest (our legs refused to go further once we got to a hill!) On the way back though Jerome somehow spotted a really cool stick insect on a leaf! He was very excited. And the rest of the walk took forever since he had to examine every leaf and stick!!

Stick insect

We then went just down the road to Uncle Tan's Ops base, where we checked in for our 3 day jungle adventure! We had a very tasty lunch, and relaxed a bit waiting for all the guests. At about 2:30 we got in a shuttle van for a two hour drive to the Kinabatangan River. We transferred to a small boat and rode down the river for 45 minutes to get to camp. On the way our boatman spotted two crocodiles, a small 1m long one and a medium 3m long one. We also saw quite a few long tail macaques in the trees.

At camp, we had a briefing, were assigned to huts, and we had a very tasty dinner with about 12 different dishes! Then at 9, after it was very dark, we got back in the boat for our night river expedition. The guide had a super strong flashlight he scanned the banks with. We saw amusing proboscis monkeys, more macqaques, sleeping kingfishers

The next morning we were up at 6 for another river cruise. This time we saw mostly birds: two types of hornbills, a sea eagle, kytes, a kingfisher as well as a small monitor lizard.

Two hornbills sitting at the top of the tree

After breakfast at camp, we went out again, for a jungle trek this time. Due to the time and heat, there weren't many animals, but Akin showed us all the jungle plants, telling us what was poison and what was medicinal. At some points we could hardly hear him over the cicadas! We saw funny red legged millipedes, long legged spiders and cotton bugs too.

Molted carapaces of cicadas

Caterpillar

After lunch it was extremely hot and humid, and everyone found a hammock or somewhere to rest and try and stay cool. At 5 it started pouring rain, just in time for our evening boat ride. We all got into our rain gear and rented rubber boots and on the boat. And boy were we glad. We saw tons of proboscis monkeys, silver leaf monkeys and a big group of flying fox bats flying overhead with a sunset background, as the rain finally ebbed.

As darkness set in, we landed on the river bank, and made our way precariously up the extremely muddy bank. Jerome got stuck and I almost fell helping him and the corner of our camera got a bit muddy, but was fine! The night trek through the jungle was very cool and a bit eerie. We spent about an hour following our guide who pointed out sleeping birds, jumping spiders, wolf spiders -one carrying a big egg sack, lantern bugs, a jungle crab and lastly a Bornean Blue Tarantula!!! Pretty crazy to see it just hanging out in a tree!

Sleeping butterfly

Jumping spider

Tractor millipede

Sleeping kingfisher

Lantern bug

Bad picture of the tarantula (on the right side of the tree)

Back at camp we had dinner and found a scorpion nest with a big one and several babies, a few metres from the dining hut. And joined in a birthday party for one of the guides.

Next morning we had one last river cruise. Saw more hornbills and sea eagles and I spotted a pretty big crocodile laying in the mud with his mouth open! Then made the return trip to Sandakan,where we had about 24 hours to get laundry done, get clean again, have a great night's sleep and eat some good food before catching a flight back to Kota Kinabalu where did some diving!

Kota Kinabalu

Laura -- We arrived in Kota Kinabalu after a short flight from Puerto Princesa. That afternoon,  we just explored the the town. Jerome was quite excited to get tofu-fa and spicy laksa from various market stalls. Durian also was prominent, but we didn't have any. We tried teh tarik or pulled tea, which is a sweet milky bubbly tea. Very good.

Spicy Laksa

Roti and curry

Teh tarik

One of the things I was very excited about in Kota Kinabalu (KK) was our trip on the North Borneo Railway. It was a few hour journey, on a wood steam engine from the 1950's! Sheldon would have been jealous! The whole train has been restored to it's original condition, and the carriages are decorated in the style of the early 1900's. This is augmented with the train steward's outfits!

The trip was about 4 hours long, traveling almost 40km each way from KK to Papar, passing through jungle, orchards, towns, rice paddies and even through a tunnel! It made several stops at villages and a buddhist temple. We had tea and pastries on board for breakfast, and a tiffin box lunch, which was very fun and tasty! Just before lunch, Jerome and I and a few others got to go into the engine, which had decoupled to turn around.  We got to see them start it going, we got to pull the whistle quite a few times, and ride in the engine to recouple it! It was pretty epic! The whole thing was an amazing experience.

The other thing we wanted to do while in KK was to see a Rafflesia flower. They are the biggest in the world! But they only bloom for about 10 days, every 6 months, so it's not as easy as it sounds. We had asked at the tourist center, who told us the Rafflesia center had 3 in bloom right now, and told us where to catch a bus for the two hour ride. So we got up early in the morning to go. After alot of bad directions, we found the shuttle bus to Tambunan which drives by the center, but were told unless we wanted to pay for a private taxi, we had to wait for 5 more people to come to fill the van. We almost gave up after an hour, but a group of three came along to complete the group. After 2 hours of very bumpy and windy roads -albeit with beautiful scenery, which Jerome enjoyed while I concentrated on not getting car sick - we arrived at the gate of the impressive Rafflesia center. We hopped out, and the driver came too, calling us to wait. There was a sheet of paper on the gates, with a handwritten note in Malay,  saying it would be closed today... So disapointed, we got back in the van for another half hour to get to the town of Tambunan. We ate lunch and walked around the whole place in an hour. Stopped in an internet cafe in hopes of finding something else cool nearby to see, but to no avail, so we went back to the bus stop to wait for another 5 people to fill it to get back. I think it was our first really disappointing day. But five hours in a van to see nothing, wasn't what we'd had in mind. We salvaged the evening with a visit to a craft market, tasty curry and a visit to the night market, where we bargained for binoculars to have for our jungle trip in a few days.

Then we started packing up and preparing for our trip to Mt Kinabalu park and the climb up the big mountain! This is the part I've been most nervous about of our whole trip! So stay tuned to see how it turns out!