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.
