Apr 2006

Friday 1 April

We'd looked at travelling to Borneo when planning our World Tour, as Sharon had always wanted to see Orang-Utans in the wild. We had to rule it out as the cost of flying to Borneo was prohibitive.

Until... returning to mainland Malaysia from Penang I spied a newspaper ad for AirAsia, a new budget airline which had an offer on flights to Borneo! Woohoo! We hastily booked a return flight to Kota Kinabalu (KK) on Borneo. Too hastily. The Orangs are actually to be found at Sandakan, a good five-hour coach journey from Kota Kinabalu...

Holy Mackerel!

Not to worry - to save time, we thought we'd buy a cheap(ish) internal flight from KK to Sandakan on arrival. We arrive at KK. "Sorry, all our flights to Sandakan are fully booked. Would you like a standby ticket?"

Cue four painful hours of waiting until -relief!- we find a plane with spare seats on it. It had been an arduous day by the time the taxi arrived at our lodgings. Tired and hungry we took the long walk to the resort restaurant and were surprised to be totally ignored by the staff! Various attempts at attracting attention were met with studied ignorance, to the point where we wondered what we had done to offend them. After a couple of years, the owner appeared and once she established that we had booked a room the atmosphere magically changed...

... in fairness, the beef curry which followed amply made up for any earlier misunderstandings.

Saturday 2 April
Orang = 'people' Utan = 'jungle'

This morning we wasted no time in heading off to the Sepilok Orang-Utan Sanctuary situated just five minutes' walk from our resort. We had to rush, as we learned that the Orangs were just being fed, and sure enough...

As human interaction with the Orangs must be kept to a minimum, we stood on viewing platforms a safe distance away. However, these platforms were fair game for every other monkey in the vicinity!

The Orangs are fed twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and so we returned to the sanctuary after lunch for more of the same...

Sunday 3 April

The day got off to an interesting start when one of the groundsmen at the resort took delight in showing us a large and clearly well-fed python he'd found near the restaurant that morning. We skipped breakfast and headed off to the Sanctuary.

By registering at the Sanctuary's reception and paying a nominal fee, you can take self-guided walks into the surrounding rainforest in the hope of seeing wildlife away from the crowds.

After attending the morning Orang feeding

we ventured into the rainforest on a 2km walk to a bird observation tower. Always assuming that these things will be easy, we were totally unprepared for the sodden, muddy quagmire underfoot and the intense humidity. We were sodden and filthy within minutes. A sudden screech from Sharon indicated that a small leech had attached itself to her hand. Persevering we eventually reached the old wooden bird tower. There were no birds in sight, let alone other wildlife! Oh well, you have to do these things...

A shower, change of clothes (and a shoe-wash) was in order when we got back to our room. YUCK! Sharon had a huge leech well stuck in to her back! With some effort I yanked it off and flushed it, and then, as we undressed, more and more of them appeared...

We got rid of about 10 leeches in all, but the merest mention of leeches gives Sharon the creeps now.

A final visit to see the Orangs being fed that afternoon helped to calm our leech-shattered nerves.

Monday 4 April

A 5am start saw us heading back to Sandakan airport for the first of our flights back to the Malaysian Peninsular, and the continuation of our journey south towards Singapore.

We left happy in the knowledge that another dream had been fulfilled.