We left Anna and Riku in KL and flew to Sandakan, Sabah on the 14th. Visiting Borneo was sort of a must for us, so we didn't change our plans of going there even though there had been some tourist kidnappings in Sabah recently. We weren't actually going near the east coast where the Filipinos had done the kidnappings, so we felt confident that Sandakan was still safe. Anna and Riku decided to change their itinerary and instead went to Bali. When arriving to Sandakan, we saw that there were lots of turists and also families travelling near Sandakan, which only reassured our feelings of being safe on our Borneo adventure.
We landed in Sandakan quite late in the evening and for our disappointment learned that our hotel was situated far from the centre. It was also pouring with rain so we decided to eat at the hotel's restaurant and go straight to bed. The hotel was strange, it reminded us more of an appartment block than a hotel.
Next morning we took a public minibus to the centre and headed straight to the travel agency we had been in contact with about our jungle adventure trip. We had reserved a 3D2N Kinabatangan river trip, which comprised of 5 cruises along the river and one jungle walk. We chose to go to Sandakan instead of Kota Kinabalu because of the Kinabatangan river. It flows through a pristine rainforest inhabited by e.g. orangutans, monkeys, elephants, leopards and rhinos. Chances of seeing wildlife at the river are quite good. Sadly this is caused by the rapid decreasing of rainforest that drives the animals closer to the river. The rainforest is cut down as palm oil plantations continue to spread in the area.
We had one day to spend in Sandakan before the jungle trip would start. We hopped on a bus to Sepilok where the Orangutan rehabilitation center and the Sunbear conservation center are located. After an hour ride we arrived to Sepilok and had lunch before first entering the Sunbear and then the Orangutan center. We were greeted at the parking lot by one orangutan who didn't really seem to mind that people where taking pictures of it.
The Sunbear conservation center was suprisingly small but we got to see many bears in their natural habitat which was amazing. Sunbears are the smallest bears in the world and still often taken as pets in Asia. When the cute little bear cub grows into an adult bear with long nails and sharp teeth, thats when the problems start. Sunbears are often closed into small cages and they might be sold at markets to restaurants as food. Their bile and gallbladder are also used in the Chinese medicine. There was no doubt in our mind that the center was doing important work to save the bears! They had at the moment 33 bears and were getting more all the time: two new bears were arriving that night. We were very interested in them since they differ so much from the bears we have in Finland. Sunbears are excellent climbers and they make nests in the trees. They also have an orange patch of hair on their chest, which is unique in its pattern for every bear.
Next we entered the Orangutan rehabilitation center, where we first saw a short documentary of how the place works. Then we were aloud to see a feeding of the already rehabilitated orangutans who could choose if they wanted to come from the jungle to eat or not. Four orangutans came around and had a feast with the fruits offered to them. Orangutans seemed so humane, almost like us but with orange hair :)
After returning to Sandakan by bus we had a stroll around the center and did some shopping. There was a roof top restaurant at an old hotel called Nak in the centre of Sandakan where we went for drinks and dinner. Lovely place and delicious food, yummy! We had to take a taxi back to our hotel since the public mini busses didn't operate anymore even though it was only 8 pm. Also the streets were totally empty and all shops closed which seemed really weird to us. Then it came to our minds that it was probably because of the kidnappings. There had also been shootings a couple days ago in one of the islands close to Sandakan, where two Malesian police officers had been killed. The police and the navy were in high alert all over eastern Sabah because of this and the streets were empty so early in the evening.
The next day we were picked up from the hotel for the jungle trip. The bus ride to Sukau took around 3 hours. We were staying in Sukau Greenview B&B, which had modest rooms with aircon, thank god. It was the most humid in Sukau that we had experienced yet in our trip in Asia. Unfortunately we had the only room with a broken aircon so we slept the first night with only a fan. The staff was nice enough to compensate us for it.
We had our first river cruise straight away after arrival to Sukau. Our boat headed to a tributary of Kinabatangan, where we saw lots of wildlife. It was strange how tame the animals seemed to be. They let all the tourist boats on the river get really close and didn't seem to mind us taking pictures of them at all. But then when we had our jungle walk, we didn't see any animals because they escape as soon as they hear people walking in the forest. Our guide explained to us that when we are on land, animals think we are hunting them but on the river they can tolerate us. But anyway, on the first cruise we already saw an orangutan, long and short tail macaques and proboscis monkeys.
That evening we took our first night cruise on the river, which was quite exciting. We drove in the pitch dark river near the shores trying to find nocturnal animals, such as birds or crocodiles. Our guide was using this huge torch to find animals from the trees. We saw two kingfishers, a stork-billed kingfisher, a blue eared king fisher and an buffy fish owl. Not bad but we were disappointed to not to spot any crocodiles.
The next day we had altogether three cruises and one jungle walk. On one of the cruises we visited a beautiful oxbow lake that was filled with waterlilies. We saw many monkeys, macaques and proboscis monkeys as well as silver lip monkeys. We also saw some birds like different hornbills (black, white-crowned and oriental white hornbills plus a brahminy kite, white-bellied and wallace eagles) a monitor lizard and a crocodile! The crocodiles are really shy and afraid of noises from boats and human, which makes it hard to spot them.
The jungle walk felt quite unnecessary since we didn't see anything. Our group was also way too big; 14 people walking in the jungle makes hell of a lot of noise so no surprise we only spotted insects and leeches. However, as our guide said, at least we were now one new experience richer :D
We enjoyed our time in Sukau and it was cool to see the animals we saw. We had hoped to see the pygmy elephant herd that lives in the forests near the river but it was wondering about near the palm tree plantations at the time. We met some really nice people at the B&B, an American couple and two Swiss sisters. The food was also surprisingly good at the B&B! And last but not least, we weren't kidnapped which was a really nice bonus ;)
After the jungle trip we had one day to spend in Sandakan before our flight back to KL. This time we picked a hotel in the centre of Sandakan, suprisingly called Hotel Sandakan. We didn't do anything special during that day, except bough a new smartphone for Rosanna. Lenovo Vibe X with a 13 mp camera (the only thing Rosanna was interested about) and hopefully all the things needed for the smartphone to work in Europe... We even ate lunch in McDonalds and dinner in the same rooftop restaurant just because we felt too lazy to find new places to eat in. The next morning we packed our stuff and took a taxi to the airport. It was time to leave the jungle and enter civilization (=KL) again ;)
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