Malaysian Borneo - Blogabond

We flew to Kota Kinabalu (KK) from Jakarta and spent a couple of days exploring the city and just chilling out. On the second night we found a nice hotel with all mod cons which, to be honest, encouraged us to stay longer than we probably should – we even managed to watch some TV! This is the first hotel we have ever stayed in where you get a choice of having a window or not, we opted for the windowless room as it was cheaper – the window/windowless room thing is quite common in Malaysia.

Kota Kinabalu - Fish market

Kota Kinabalu - Night food stalls

The main highlight of KK was the markets. During the day, there is a large wet market selling mainly fish with some meat. Come 4pm, an empty parking lot is transformed into a bustling maze of food stalls with smoking barbeques. To give an idea of size, the food stalls are probably as big as 2 football pitches, you then have 10 metre long trestle tables lined up with chairs. At the end of each length of table there is a barbeque, effectively each barbeque is a separate eatery.

Kota Kinabalu - Night food stalls

You can choose the fish you want them to cook for you – Tuna, Lobster, Snapper etc. At each table there is a mixture of condiments, fresh chillies, limes and soy sauce for you to make your own dipping sauce. The fish was fantastic, we feasted on Tuna and rice most nights for less than £4. One night the place where we went didn’t have any Tuna so we simply went to the wet market, bought two large raw Tuna steaks and took it back to the barbeque for them to cook for us!
From KK we took a bus to Sandakan, the buses in Malaysia are much more civilised and we got to watch Avatar on the journey. What was not so great was the lady sitting opposite us with 3 kids all of who were travel sick in a big way. We had a lunch stop (we were not feeling hungry) and watched in horror as the lady bought each of her kids an ice cream – we don’t need to tell you anymore.

Sepilok - Orang-Utan hanging around

The main reason for going to Sandakan was its proximity to Sepilok where the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre is based. When we visited, we were worried that we wouldn’t see any but fortunately one little cute guy (or girl) came out to play. A couple of Orang-utan facts which we didn’t know – they share 96.4% of human DNA and Orang-utan translates as man of the forest. We learnt quite a lot while we were there such as the loss of habitat to Palm Oil plantations - all quite sad. At the current rate, these lovely creatures could be extinct in 10 years.

Kinabatangan River - Proboscis monkey

We also booked ourselves on a river boat journey on the Kinabatangan river in the hope of seeing some more Orang-utans. We chugged up the river and on the way saw copious monkeys – long tailed Macaques and Proboscis, the Proboscis monkey is not the prettiest of beasts, it has a really large dangly red nose!! We continued on some more and were told that there was an elephant ahead. There in the middle of the river was a Pigmy Elephant swimming across, at times just the end of his trunk was visible – a bit like a snorkel!

Kinabatangan River - Cute Baby Pigmy Elephant!

On the bank of the river were about 30 elephants, including babies, some wallowing in the water and some on the bank – we were able to get quite close to them – truly magical, Em took a great video which includes an elephant trumpeting!!

Kinabatangan River - Pigmy Elephants

On the way back we stopped to observe a crocodile, this was a bit unnerving given the size of the boat and how low it sat in the water. By this time, it was getting dark, we have a very eerie picture where you can only see the eyes of the croc reflecting, nothing else. As a final bonus, when we got back to the lodge, we saw a snake, not sure what sort but it was about 1.5 metres long with black and yellow stripes, we were advised not to worry as it was only mildly venomous!!

Kinabatangan River - Mr Snake

Due to the current issues in Thailand, we have changed our route, so we are skipping mainland Malaysia for now. This will mean that should Thailand still be a no-go, we can travel through Malaysia with Polly when she joins us in July. Next stop Cambodia...

written by

Tim and Em on May 11, 2010 from Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

from the travel blog: Round half the world!

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Hi Tim and Em, we have been checking in to see where you are, it all looks incredible, especially liked Borobudur, the scale of it is incredible. Don't know where you are now but guessing you both hope it will never end, Kerry, Damian and Lula xxx

written by Kerry Green on June 6, 2010

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