First two weeks in Kini

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There will be no reference to that social media site in this post. Instead, it will be about more important things in life; cats, cocktails, sunsets and more booze.

We’re in Kini on the island of Syros. It seems to have everything you need for a small seaside village including two mini-markets, cocktail bar, four decent restaurants and a sandy beach that is so shallow a that a good distance walk into the sea results in still being able to stand.

The beachside restaurants face west and result in glorious sunsets that graduate from blue to deep orange every night. An early favourite of ours is Noho cocktail bar that has a great selection including “Greek Fizz”, “Noho nights” (both mastika based) and Strawberry delight (like an alcoholic strawberry sherbet). It is also 20 meters away from our apartment.

We chose well on our apartment, a big relief since we are here for 31 nights. It is everything that, sadly, is quite rare for an Airbnb; everything works and not just for show (yes, we’re looking at you Melacca one), the aircon is quiet and effective, it has enough kitchen stuff to actually make meals, it’s spotlessly clean and has simple things like a sofa that is capable of being sat on instead of one that could cause permanent spinal damage. Overall, it looks like the owners have actually lived here and not just created a web friendly place that is impractical to actually live there. And, it’s less than a minute away from the beach as shown in the video above.

There’s very little do in Kini. We have missed our not-so-little, 5am alarm clock, bundle of fluff a lot. Our cat (sorry, flat) sitter has been sending us lots of pictures of him and we can only conclude that he’s living the life and not missing us whatsoever, so when Chloe spots “Syros Cats”, a cat sanctuary just up the hill, we simply must go.

It’s a superbly run place that looks after over 70 cats and try to rehome as many as possible, in addition to an outreach programme that helps feed and neuter other stray cats on the whole of Syros. They warmly welcome us at the 7pm feeding time and we get our feline fix including massive hugs with the incredibly cute kitten and one that looks uncannily like our one back home. The question is whether our cat will greet us with such warmth when we get home?  Of course he won’t.

So, what else to do on Syros? Again, a top Chloe spot sees that they make Mastika here in a village along the coast. A short bus ride gets us to the Makryonitis Syros Distillery. We’re given a tour of the place that takes less than 10 minutes then it’s the trying out of their products.

Having thought it just produced Mastika, this also could have been quick. However, they produce Ouzo, many varieties of Tsipouro including fig, herby and carob. We are served a taster of nine different ones by our knowledgeable & euthanasic host and we learn many things including how aged Tsipouro (and whisky) gets its brown colour – from the barrels if you don’t know. 

This tour was entirely free. We feel educated, enlightened and amazed that one very small distillery can produce so many different types of spirits – all of which are very drinkable – although the extra strong 55% Tsipouro was a quite a challenge. We also feel a little drunk and buy quite a selection of drinks to have for the rest of our time in Syros or to bring home.

So, what will our remaining time in Kini bring?  Is there actually anything else to do?  Watch out for the next instalment in a couple of weeks.

Life on a Greek island: the LinkedIn chronicles

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We’ve been in Kini, a village on the west coast of Syros, for two weeks and our days have fallen into a pattern. Unfortunately, as our thoughts turn towards home and work, we are spending too much time on LinkedIn. In our opinion, more than five minutes is too much time on LinkedIn. So, how does a typical day begin?

LinkedIn version

0500 – Early wake up, cup of Greek mountain tea for antioxidants
0510 – Stretching and yoga session
0515 – Check in with overnight takes of social media influencers
0530 – Intensive language lesson
0545 – Meditation
0550 – Intensive language lesson
0605 – News burst
0620 – Culture boost (feed your mind!)
0700 – Caffeine shot
0705 – Stand up with team
0715 – Caffeine shot
0720 – Forward planning
0730 – Career development
0745 – News deep dive
0845 – Power walk to coast
0850 – Cold salt water swim
0925 – Power walk home
0915 – High protein breakfast
0945 – Social media deep dive & discussion (no limits to ideas!)
1030 – Power nap…

Real life version

Chloe’s up at 5am – the bed is small and sunrise means the birds are freaking out by this time. Realises she’s slept funny and spends five minutes in weird poses trying to iron out the kinks. Cup of mountain tea in hand (it really is good) she sits on the terrace and peruses BlueSky, which at this time of day mainly consists of Americans losing their minds.

Realising she has lots of time to kill, she opens Duolingo in her, so far, fruitless attempt to speak basic Greek. She can translate the sentence ‘I see a million multi-coloured butterflies’ but can’t ask the way to the post office. After about 15 minutes she realises she’s staring into space and gives it another go. She fears she’ll never reach Diamond League and eventually gives up and reads a book instead.

Allan finally surfaces around 7am, and it’s time for proper coffee so he can get his brain in order. While he is defenceless, this is Chloe’s chance to share the latest weird and scary stuff happening in the US – and show him cat videos.

A second cup of coffee and it’s time to plan the day. The hotter it gets, the less opportunity there is to actually go outside. This week it’s hitting 40 plus (feels like late 40s), so plans usually revolve around what time to go swimming, what to have for breakfast, and whether to go out for dinner. Sometimes one of us has to do some job-hunting.

An hour browsing the news sites and reading stuff out to each other, then we do the one-minute walk to the beach where we spend about 20 minutes floating in the blessedly cool and clear water. Home, shower, and a breakfast of fruit, yoghurt and hazelnuts, followed by another hour diving down various social media rabbit holes, only to occasionally come up for air with the phrase ‘did you know…?’

We are so exhausted by our high pressure lifestyle that a mini siesta before midday is not unheard of.

Conclusion

Both of the accounts above are technically true. LinkedIn is a horror hole of bullshitters.

Rights-free image courtesy of Austin Distel.

Seeing the old relics in Athens

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We re-join the EU in Corfu after our time out and it’s obviously via the bigger queue. Fortunately we have lots of time for our flight to Athens, even more so when Aegean decide to delay our flight for a couple of hours which then annoyingly coincides with the Athens rush hour.

Our time in Athens is shorter than our last hardcowtravels, so this time we’re not trekking around all the ancient sites of the city. Plus, we have a much more anticipated appointment – a meet up with the Hardy parents and their cousin John. They are squeezing in a stay in Athens between their trip to Aegina and seeing Auntie Val just outside Athens. It’s been over five months since we’ve seen them, so it’s a very happy couple of days, during which at least three conversations are happening at the same time – we’ve missed navigating that particular challenge!

One other thing that you’re guaranteed with the Hardys is huge quantities of good food. Normally this is cooked by Mary, this time we rely on a fantastic local pizza establishment and, one of our favourites from previous Athens visits, the magnificent To Steki tou Ilia – aka ‘the lamb chop place’. 1.5kg of them were ordered and only one (that’s one chop not one kg) remained. Note to self for later in the holiday – there’s another branch in Thessaloniki.

Allan introduced Mary and John to Negronis and they were very well received. We discovered that mastika is amazing served with lime juice and black pepper. Much catching up was done on news, politics, family news, and even Lidl. Two days flew in no time. Like Abdi and Faye beforehand, we feel overwhelmed that people have used their valuable time to meet up with us on our travels – how utterly lovely.

After the Hardys, we only have a day left in Athens. However much the Acropolis always appeals, the 30 euros entrance fee discourages us, so we decide to go somewhere else and for the first time, we go to the National Archaeological Museum of Greece.

We see antiquities from the 5th century BC. We see some iconic pieces including the Mask of Agamemnon (which graced the front of Chloe’s copy of the Oresteia that she carried around in her college bag for two years) and the Jockey of Artemision. We also see some statues with noses – something we commented on when visiting the Getty Villa a few years ago. It is awesome and needs another visit, as our two hours didn’t even get us close to the attention it deserves.

Our AirBnB was pretty good, most things worked and it was very handy for everything. It had a fantastic balcony wrapping round the apartment, although we were right on a six-lane ring road so apart from 01:00-06:00, it was pretty noisy outside.

So, it’s time to leave Athens. We now have 31 nights in a place that is promising a lot, but only has one review, in a town we haven’t previously stayed, on an island that we’ve never been to before and it’s the second most expensive (after the LA hotel) of the holiday. What could possibly go wrong?

Central and south Albania

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We move from Tirana to Gjirokaster with a four hour door to door taxi ride. There are buses, but they go from an out of town bus station in Tirana and arrives in one that’s down the hill in Gjirokaster. And, as you’ll discover later in this post, this place has a hill or two.

Our hotel is mixed. The room and terrace are good, the breakfast is not bad (apart from the worst coffee this side of Kyoto – seriously bad) and the location is very handy for sites. They however do mash up Laundry and we’ll come onto the “taxi” they ordered for us to our next destination.

Gjirokaster, like Kruje, is a castle town. We see it from our terrace, we see it from quick explore around town and we see it at breakfast. It’s just there. Chloe agrees to walk up to the castle, and, in a special birthday present for Allan, says that she won’t complain whatsoever on the journey up to the top. She is true to her words. The scenery is stunning with wide views across the valley to the mountains. An immense lamb dinner (paid for by the Hardy brother & sisters – many thanks!) completes a lovely birthday.

Gjirokaster is a beautiful town, although a five minute walk is often way more once you’ve been up and down a couple of hills. It has good restaurants, bakeries and a street bazaar that is just screaming to us to buy lots of brightly coloured bowls – we don’t as backpacks are already absolutely full.

It does however have a dark past. It is the birthplace of Enver Hoxha – the dictator who ran Albania for 41 years until his death in 1985. He ruled with an iron fist where enemies of the state were murdered, land taken, a policy of total isolation to the outside world and even banning beards.

We see some of this with a visit to his original house (it was huge), we see secret tunnels (which were not very secret to the local population) that would hold the great and the good in case of invasion or attack. These tunnels had a special room just for him in case he was in Gjirokaster. We see a video in one of the tunnels is pure North Korea leader adulation of their glorious leader. We also see an old traditional house that a family lost and regained ownership of that happened to be right opposite our hotel. A dark past that we haven’t really found anyone wanting to talk about.

We leave Gjirokaster to go to Sarande by taxi that the hotel organises for us. We soon realise this is not an official taxi and a driver who, after around 30 minutes of driving, proceeds to pass us a pre-prepared written note of “if police stop us, say that we are friends”. There’s not much we can do apart from google translating back to him to say that we will not lie to the police. We contact the hotel to say WTF and helpfully, they deny even organising the taxi for us.

There’s a police checkpoint around 15 minutes before Sarande, he stops before the checkpoint and says we must stay in the layby until the police leave. We finally persuade him to go through the checkpoint, the police don’t stop us and we’re the final run to our hotel in Sarande. Our “Taxi” driver however has other ideas and decides to ignore one-way streets and going a very long way around as we suspect that he spotted another police car.

Finally we get to our hotel. Our guy parked on the pavement – well, we were going down the wrong way on a one-way street, so he needed to park somewhere. Quite ironically, he parked on the pavement right next to Sarande port police station.

Quite appropriately since we’re a little shaken, not stirred, we seek out a bar that does cocktails. And we seem to have hit happy hour as they charged us nearly half price. They were excellent and went back there again the next night. All is okay with the world again.

Not much to report on our three days in Sarande apart from eating good seafood, seeing the sea again for the first time since Hoi An in Vietnam and of course, those cocktails. And, of course, time to see another Albanian homage to an American politician – this time it was Hillary Clinton.

Sarande was chosen is our entry point to Greece as it’s just a half hour ferry to Corfu, but is a pleasant enough place to spend three days. Just don’t inadvertently take an unofficial taxi there.

Three days in Tirana with the Best Woman and (we’re calling it) the Best Man

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We’re back in Europe and back within easy-ish reach of most of those we know and love. Chloe forms one third of that exclusive dining society, Wine Club (where there is sauvignon blanc and nachos to be tried, there you will find them). The other two thirds are Abdi and Faye and, as the minutes of the last meeting show, after much debate they concluded ‘let’s go to Tirana!’

It was beyond wonderful to see them. We were a bit concerned that we’d forgotten how to spend time with other people but should have remembered how easy they both are to be around. This weekend, Wine Club has four members.

Thinking they might be a bit knackered after their journey, we left the first night open but, troopers to the end, they decided to meet us at a bar in town. A couple of Aperols and a cheese plate? Why not. We all took it easy though – big day tomorrow.

You surely cannot conduct Wine Club on Tour without a trip to a vineyard? On the way, we saw a cow.

Kantina Shehi sits about 10km southeast of Tirana. Just 20 minutes in a cab and there are more mountains, green hills, and picturesque views than you can shake a stick at. We are welcomed by Enver, who shows us round the small estate and explains that, while currently owned by five brothers, not so long ago it was part of a huge state-owned agricultural collective. After the communist regime was ousted in the early 90s, people descended on places like this – literally pulling them up by the roots and exorcising demons in the process. As a result, vineyards like Kantina Shehi are still relatively youthful, though Albania has a long history of winemaking.

The fields and process were fascinating. Our host absolutely loved Faye. And the wine tasting was, in fact, an enormous feast. We tasted two reds and two whites (one award-winning) and all were delicious. The shared favourite was, surprisingly, the chardonnay.

After so much, ahem, culture, an afternoon nap was in order. We met Faye and Abdi at their hotel that evening and, somehow, managed to sip and chat our way through two more bottles of wine.

Saturday dawned hot (again). We had toyed with the idea of visiting the modern history museum based in an old nuclear bunker but a) Abdi definitely does NOT do tunnels and b) he brought champagne. Anyway, what’s time spent with friends for if not to catch up on the latest?

On the way to dinner, we skirted through Skanderbeg Square. One erudite man on a bench, refreshing himself with a can of beer, had a moment of blinding clarity. He stood up and declared to Faye, ‘you are the BEST woman!’ We could only agree.

Because they are political nerds, Abdi and Chloe scooted off to quickly see the Albanian Parliament building before dinner with a brief stop in at the Namazgja Mosque. Sadly, it’s hard to get near the, pretty low key, Parliament without pre-booking a tour and recess has just started. Maybe next time. On the other hand, the mosque is spectacular.

Sunday, and the day of Faye and Abdi’s departure, arrived too soon! We did manage to have a lovely outdoor brunch and, since their flight wasn’t until the early evening, a little more wine and snacks at ours.

As a reintroduction to Europe and socialising, and as a sign we are definitely homeward bound, we couldn’t have chosen better companions. There aren’t enough emojis or gifs in the world, guys!

Rejoining Europe

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We leave the 40-plus degree heat of Dubai on an early flight direct to Tirana, Albania. Unfortunately, our view is that Fly Dubai is the number one worst airline of the holiday. Cramped seating, staff whom came across as if they don’t give a fig, a silently farting fellow passenger, and re-routing to avoid Iranian or Israeli airspace all resulted in the flight feeling a lot longer than six hours. There were fantastic views over Santorini and other Greek islands, but we were very glad to arrive at the slight madness of Tirana airport.

We plumped on Kruje as our first ever place to visit in Albania. From our research, it seemed a reasonably quiet mountain town with a bit of history, and the accommodation we chose looked pretty good. Kruje delivered on all counts and much more.

First stop in Kruje was for a cheese pie at the magnificently named George W Bush Bakery. Dubya, along with certain other American presidents, are recognised here for their support both in the fall of communism and for the Albanian Kosovo people during the Balkan War. The main bakery man made a visit to Kruje – and has a statue in the next village along.

Moving back in history over 500 years, Kruje was at the centre of the, ultimately successful, Albanian resistance to the all-conquering Ottoman Empire. Albania’s national hero of the time was a magnificently moustached Gjergj Kastrioti aka Skanderbeg. He is still honoured today with many statues in Albania and elsewhere (we must go to Lancaster Gate in London to see one there) and his name on the national brandy. More on the brandy later…hic…

A very slow four days in Kruje involve: recovery from our flight; getting on the right time zone; and visiting the bazaar, castle, and museum. We learn all about the wise words of Skanderbeg and admire the magnificent views from our hotel. Chloe also gets extremely excited by a bust of Pyrrhus that brought back memories of earlier Greek history lessons – he’s the guy who the Pyrrhic victory was named after y’know.

Anyhow, back to brandy. We encounter a few instances of unexpected alcohol in Kruje. First was ordering an apple juice but receiving an Aperol (no complaints there). Then we were given a small bottle of brandy at breakfast by the hotel owner – Skanderbeg brandy of course.

Next day at breakfast after thanking our host for the brandy the day before, he brought us another one, plus a huge triple shot of home made raki for each of us to enjoy. This was at 08:15. We ended a magnificent breakfast slightly squiffy and had to go back to sleep. The next day, we avoid the boozy breakfast even though it was offered.

In keeping with most of the rest of Hardcow Spieltag IV travels, the food here has been top notch and good value: moussaka; veal in tomato, garlic and cottage cheese; lamb; stuffed peppers; and desserts to die for. All have been enjoyed. That, along with the history, the sights and the unexpected booze, has made Kruje one of our new happy places and we hope to come back soon. But maybe next time, we may avoid the raki at 08:15…hic…

Dubai and Benidorm-by-the-Burj

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We chose a short stop in Dubai for three days, as it was almost half way between KL and Albania and had direct flights for both legs. However, what happens when you’re making hurried decisions for a RTW trip? A sub-optimal choice of location and timing is the answer. So, who chooses to go to Dubai in June? It’s low season, but there’s a damn good reason why and it’s this…

The seven-hour flight and three-hour time difference leave us a bit knackered. The heat and the “similar to opening the oven door” wind whisks away all ambition and we spend the whole of the next day in the cool, cool air con of our hotel.

The following day we venture out. There were potential plans to see the old town, art galleries, and other such culture. What we actually did was visit two of the more ridiculous sights in the whole of the UAE.

First up was ‘The Frame’. It’s 150m (48 storeys) high, it’s huge, and it’s gold. And in the blazing sun, it’s shining brighter than our sweaty faces in the midday sun. It sells itself as showing past, current and future Dubai, which is quite a statement. Future Dubai seems to consist entirely of a CGI Mars base entirely covered in UAE flags, whilst Past and Current Dubai were “take look to your right and then left” when we reached the top.

However, having left our cynicism on ground level, it was actually extremely good fun. We loved it and thought it well worth a visit. At around £10 for entry, it was definitely one of the more affordable sights to see. Allan also managed to walk on the glass floor at the top without too much vertigo and we saw the Dubai skyline from within lovely, cool, air conditioned surrounds.

Next up, via an air con cab to avoid temperatures now approaching the surface of the sun, is the tallest building in the world – the Burj Khalifa. The size of this building is difficult to fathom, especially at ground level, but it is just flipping huge. For those who love the stats, it is 829m high (around three times the height of the Eiffel Tower and twice that of the Empire State Building) and 154 floors.

We don’t go to the observation deck, instead limiting ourselves to a brief look from the edge of the very confusing Dubai Mall next door. Maybe next time we’ll see this marvel of engineering at night, as there’s meant to be a superb fountain display and big buildings are often a lot more spectacular at night. But, we were a tad underwhelmed, especially compared to the magnificently pretty Petronas Twin Towers in KL. It could be that the Burj Khalifa is just too big at ground level to comprehend its sheer scale, as it does look a bit special when seen from a distance with the rest of the Dubai skyline.

And finally, a special mention to where we stayed in Dubai – the airport Premier Inn. The brand delivered its expected comfortable and (especially for Dubai) exceedingly good value accommodation at less than £35 per night including breakfast. There is also always the slight expectation of seeing Lenny Henry, but no luck this time.

We’ve been watching ‘Benidorm’ whilst on this break – an all too real parody of the Brits abroad in the sun, who are loving their full English breakfast, stupid cocktails in the bar, and eating British food at night whilst hardly ever venturing out of their hotel.

At the Dubai Premier Inn, we had full English breakfast, many Pina Coladas, sausage and mash – not forgetting the HP sauce – indulged in Curry Club Tuesday, Costa Coffee (roasted very near our flat in Vauxhall y’know) and barely left the hotel. Of course, given where we are, it’s unlikely that Lesley will be able to make an appearance.

That said, we feel like we’ve discovered our Benidorm-by-the-Burj. And, after four months in SE Asia, we damn well loved it.

Last night in South East Asia

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We say our fond farewells to Banana Garden Villa and this time it’s for real. 41 nights in total over three visits have been wonderful. It also marks out last night in Vietnam with the next stop, one night in KL airport.

We’re going posh for the airport hotel. You can tell it’s posh when we spot a fridge in reception just for cold towels, the TV remote control comes with its own leather folder – yes, seriously – and there’s a keypad to switch on lights and close the curtains.

So, what to do? It’s already 5pm as we have an early flight the next day. One option would be a budget challenging £20 and half an hour train ride away (not including a manic golf buggy ride to and from the airport station) to the centre of KL. The other option is to enjoy an evening in the luxury hotel with its remarkably good value food & drink.

So, we do the central KL option. This allows us to hit one of our favourite foodie places, Sushi Zanmai, get some essentials (i.e. fizzy sweets) from Mr DIY and blow out on a big bottle of gorgeous Oudh Lush shower gel. All of which are handily located at the central train station mall. We also see, from a distance, all the KL big towers one last time. Do we regret doing this? Not one bit.

A lovely & luxurious way to finish our time in Japan and south east Asia. Next stop is the cheap, unassuming, rainy & freezing cold of Dubai for three nights – errr, not on all those counts.

Hoi An Part III: ohmygoditshot!

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We had two weeks to play with in our SE Asia itinerary. Sadly, at the point we had to decide, Myanmar and Thailand had just been rocked by a devastating earthquake and it was unclear whether more would follow. So we decided that we would return (again) to Hoi An – not least because it would be Chloe’s birthday while we were there and who doesn’t want to be somewhere lovely on their birthday? Plus, the Doctor Who finale would be airing, making reliable(ish) internet a non-negotiable.

We’ve been to Hoi An in May/June before but, somehow, we forgot just how much the heat and humidity rocket. Instead of temperatures in the high 20s, it was mid 30s, with humidity that put the ‘feels like’ temperature in the late 40s. There’s a phrase we save only for days like these – ‘ohmygoditshot’. It was put to good use.

The first week was very relaxing; trips into town for a little light tailoring, cycle rides up the riverside. On Chloe’s birthday, the Banana Garden Villa staff showed they’re at the top of their game by bringing out a cake and flowers at breakfast to the strains of ‘happy birthday’. They do this with every guest who is lucky enough to be there on their special day, and it’s enormously sweet.

During the second week, temperatures rose and so did our ambitions. Back in April, we joined a group tour to some local sites, including the Marble Mountain, but the guide was in a hurry and it was too hot for Chloe to get all the way to the top in one go. She paused to let the rest of the party go up and come back down but the tour was scheduled to leave the mountain by a different route, so Allan had to peel off and retrieve her. Returning in June, we still had half a mountain to climb.

So, Marble Mountain take two. Here’s the good bit – we initially walked up from the bottom but there is an elevator that will get you a good third of the way up. Reasoning that we’d already ‘done’ the first bit, we jumped in the lift to take us most of the way to our earlier stopping point.

We still had a good few hundred uneven steps to the highest point and, even in the morning, it felt like 40+ degrees. Chloe busted out her signature strategy for getting through a gruelling climb, which mainly consists of a lot of swearing and wailing ‘I just can’t!’ until she gets to the top. Allan took it in his stride, while offering gentle encouragement. As you can see, he enjoyed the achievement immediately, whereas Chloe was glad she’d done it about four hours later.

Unwilling to lose momentum, we did the stupid tourist thing for the next couple of days – take bikes out in the extreme heat.

On day one, we battled hot headwinds to visit the Locust Cafe in the middle of Hoi An’s rice paddies. Lime juice and strawberry smoothies were our reward. The rice fields were in a different stage of cultivation compared to last time. Then it was all emerald acres, now the rice had been harvested and the bare, brown fields were being prepared for the next sowing.

On day two, we made it as far as the beach so we could see the sea before we left. Allan resisted buying yet another brightly coloured silk shirt, but we still left with a couple of presents for those back home. This time the sun was unrelenting on our return trip and we arrived back hot and soggy. Thank heavens for laundry services, who have been doing an average of 2kg a day of our stuff. We love them.

So, now it’s our last day in Vietnam. We hit the riverside last night and, along with the usual display of brightly decorated cruise boats of different sizes, we were delighted by the return of the karaoke boat. Everyone was having a ball. Sound on.

Malaysian Borneo, the place for BIG wildlife

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After a pretty bumpy, near three hour flight from KL, we arrive at Sandakan. We came here in 2011 and stayed in the same rainforest hotel, so it’ll be interesting to see what’s changed – both for better or worse.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that Sandakan is a seafood lover’s paradise. The Waterside Cafe was visited both before and after our rainforest visit. For Allan’s beloved prawns, there were three portion sizes on the menu. The smallest was 25 ringgits (around £4.50) for which you get 16 big prawns in any of the 18 sauces available. It was designated to be enough for two – or one Geordie sized portion. Bloody yum.

Last time, we likened Sandakan to Bournemouth-on-Borneo. There’s still a tea house where scones with cream and jam are served. It’s a very local city and tourism is still low key, but we’re very thankful for the tourist trappings of good restaurants, including a visit to one we went to 14 years ago making western dishes, a Zus coffee shop, and more local amenities like many 7-11s and a laundrette (and even that has all the signs and washing machine instructions in English, which saves us fumbling around with Google translate like we had to do in Japan).

Sandakan now also has a mall. Of course it does – it’s Malaysia. It seems like a good one and is certainly popular. The layout is very familiar; the usual supermarket on the ground floor, a Mr DIY on floor 3 (shock, horror, it’s always been on floor 2 in every other mall), a food court somewhere in the middle floors and a cinema at the top.

Our hotel is slightly odd – it has a Star Wars theme, with all sorts of memorabilia, posters, action figures, and meals and cocktails named after Star Wars characters, but also replica football World Cup trophies. They seem to have made all the effort on the memorabilia and not as much on the actual rooms as they look pretty dated. But, it does the job as it’s very central but still quite quiet.

After two nights in Sandakan, the rainforest and Paganakan Dii Lodge is our next destination. The terrible website should have been a clue to what it would be like, as that hasn’t changed (except for the price list) since we were here 14 years ago. It’s definitely rustic, probably even more so than our last visit. However, the staff are great, the food is excellent considering it’s bang in the middle of the rainforest (special mention to a great veggie noodles and equally good veggie curry), it has aircon, and the sights and sounds of the rainforest are truly superb.

And make it your life’s ambition to be as happy as Allan was with his giant leaf.

On the first couple of days we get a not-so-gentle reminder of why it’s called the rainforest. It pelts down like no tomorrow. But those views and sounds of misty mornings and noisy frogs will be memories not to be forgotten.



Our first visit to see BIG nature is to see proboscis monkeys, with their massive conks, at a nearby “sanctuary” (inverted commas, as this place is owned and run by the surrounding palm oil plantation owners). They kept a small space where the monkeys can be safe from further destruction by, ahem, well, the owners. Mixed views whether we should visit as it’s very much a tourist trap, with no rehabilitation or education happening. When we arrive, the monkeys are being fed pancakes, which just didn’t feel right. However, there’s plenty of other plantation owners who have just destroyed everything, so at least they did set aside a small area to preserve these amazing creatures – for that we are happy.

We’d say that the alpha male deciding to run right over the platform where everyone was congregating got everyone talking, but most people were talking anyhow, doing their very best to take away any peace that these poor animals (and those like us who just wanted to quietly observe) had at feeding time. There was another platform feeding happening in an hour and a half, but we decide to just go back to our hotel.

A new kid on the block in the rainforest is the Sun Bear sanctuary, which wasn’t here when we last visited. Sun Bears are the smallest of all the bears. They really do look like stereotypical bears, enough so that if we saw one eating a pot of honey we wouldn’t have blinked. It wasn’t feeding time, so sightings were not plentiful, but worth a short visit and this place does the full rescue, rehab and release. And the bears, despite claws that look like they could do some serious damage, are pretty damn cute.

Onto the main event – the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. This was a major highlight last time and one of the main reasons why we travelled all the way back to Borneo was to see these wondrous apes.

This centre is the polar opposite of the proboscis monkey centre. It’s educational, it’s well set out, and it truly is a rehabilitation centre where orangutans can come and go at will until they’re ready to return to the forest permanently. There are still feeding times, but what’s provided is fruit and veg, and there are staff on hand who move people out of the way if the orangutans and people get too close to each other.

The orangutans share the space with wild macaques. Lots of them. There are skirmishes, hierarchy, cheeky nicking of food, and peaceful family meals in equal portion. That, and some very cute young ones.

Onto the orangutans. Come feeding time, people are making way too much noise, including a woman next to Chloe who decided to talk and state the bloody obvious “oh, there’s an orangutan”, “oh, it’s walking towards the platform”, “oh, it’s eating something”. “Oh, for god’s sake, shut the hell up and enjoy the amazing apes”, is what we wanted to shout.

But, we see a couple of mums and babies, there’s one female who seems content to watch the crowd as much as we are watching them. The agility is awesome and they all look very healthy.

We did have a particular treat. A huge male orangutan appeared. He is a former rescue who has returned to the wild but still makes the odd appearance for some easy food from time to time. The photos below don’t really do full justice to how massive he was – but think the size of a person then add his arms that seem to be that size again – huge! Seeing him made our visit back here something a little special, and a highlight of the entire trip.

This return to Borneo really delivered BIG memories.

PS : Borneo also delivered something else big. Don’t look further down if you don’t want to see an unwanted guest in our open air bathroom – a lichen huntsman spider the size of our hands. It’s not deadly poisonous, or prone to attacking humans, but was just flipping massive.