Those who know me, know I have a fascination with primates. In fact, if I was younger and had time for yet another career, I would have loved to have been doing the work of Jane Goodall or Dian Fossi. Well I wouldn’t want to meet my demise in similar fashion to Ms. Fossi but would have loved to spend days studying the gentle giants in the wild. So having spent time in Uganda, I felt it only fitting that I spend a little time in Borneo visiting our orange relatives.
We flew from Kuala Lumpur to Sandakan arriving mid afternoon on Sunday. We were staying at a nice hotel, Four Points Sheraton, which had a lovely infinity pool.
After spending sometime poolside, we decided to take a stroll around the town. We came across a group of young adults apparently in some kind of scouts.
After I took the picture, they all wanted their photos taken. And what we were finding is that so many people were speaking English. I found out that they start learning English in school at age 6.
A band was playing western music on the street and a small crowd gathered for that.
Whenever I’m in a new city we always look for a bakery. We found one, which actually turned out to be a chain. There seemed to be one on every street.
Bruce and I bought a cookie to share.
For the most part, Sandakan looked fairly impoverished. Buildings appeared quite run down and seemed to lack some basic conveniences.
We had an early dinner at the hotel and to bed early.
We were picked up at 8 am by Vincent to tour the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary where we saw young orangutans at play.
The volunteers work with the orangutans to keep them off the ground. Every time the volunteer came out and put this young juvenile back on the boards, as soon as he walked away, the youngster was back on the ground.
At feeding time, a ton of tourists converged on the viewing area but no orangutans showed up. I was a little disappointed but we had a few days to see one in the wild.
We walked the boardwalk and only saw a brown tree racer.
We visited the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center and learned about the work they do to protect the endangered sun bear.
While walking on the boardwalk our guide pointed out a green viper in the tree.
There also were some Macaques in the trees.
As we were walking out, I said to Bruce “what keeps the orangutans from coming over here?” With that, a commotion in a tree and loud noise made us go, I guess nothing. The ranger was very upset and he didn’t want us there. He tried to get us out but those of us with cameras wanted to take some pictures. Of course they came out with nothing but a dark blob in the shot. Oh well! It was exciting at that moment.
We had a nice lunch at one of the local resorts.
We took a 2-1/2 hour boat ride across the bay and up the river feeling like we were in a jungle all alone.
Every so often we came upon a village and our captain would slow down.
We finally arrived at the Sukau Rainforest Lodge, our home for the next three nights.
We had a lovely villa where we could hear the sounds of birds and other wildlife.
We went on our first river cruise at sunset and saw the probiscus monkey.
and a colorful kingfisher.
Our next two mornings we will need to be up by 5:30 to go for a river cruise to spot wildlife. In pursuit of the orangutan.
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