Hotel London Sandakan

... room only stumble across a group of wild hatchlings that had just come up from their nest (i.e.just on the beach). As after nearly stepping on these we helped to carry them down to the sea - all very exciting for an animal nut like me.
The hatchling release process to me was an interesting culture clash, on the one hand natures scatter gun of producing hundreds of hatchlings and firing them off in all directions in the hope that a few live ...

... we went to our river side lodge in the jungle - this was more rustic than the first accomodation in the mountains. Having seen the colour of the shower water I vowed to limit my showering for the next couple of days and the mosqiuito nets over the beds meant that it was time to get the repellent out and keep it well away from my eyes this time as wouldnt fancy trying to get to a hospital from here as would take more than an hour!. In the afternoon we went on a ...

May Fair Hotel (No. 24, Jalan Pryer, 1st Floor. Tel. 089-219855, 219892 fax: 089-221827). First couple of nights had the last room available and paid 45R (not incl. Breakfast) the room smelled quite musty. After my trip to Sepilok I returned and am in Room 304 and is quite comfortable and costs 50 R. The Hawaii restaurant in Hotel City View recommended in Lonely Plant is not good at all and the service is very poor. However, if you want a real ...

... zoom setting on his point and shoot camera but he was getting some recognisable pictures for the blog at least.

Back at the camp they did quite a good buffet dinner and then there was an offer of a night hike which Martyn went on and had a very rare sighting of a malay civet cat.

A most uncomfortable night as we were woken by scuffling of rats and the loud calls of a lizard!

At 5.40am we were up for the early morning river trip and it was a different ...

... A couple came to the feeding platform and Ona, a 5 month pregnant young lady with a penchant for handbags came right down and wandered around amongst us - no doubt eyeing up the Louis Vuitton in the hope of lurking bananas. They've got such expressive faces and eyes & you can tell exactly what they're thinking. They kept quoting that their DNA is 97% the same as ours, which is pretty impressive until you realise that we're 82% the ...

... to steal bananas from the platform. They succeeded afew times which may be because the orangutans were full up. Also saw a random balck squirrel that ran along the rope that the orangutans used to get from the canopy to the platform. It saw all the monkeys, got confused and ran back. Quite a show although the orangutans weren't bothered by this display.

... back to the hotel where we finally checked in. A nap and then out to explore, dodging torrential tropical storms, we found what I was looking for - Tiger lager. No more watery Kingfisher, we were back on the real deal at last! The following day was a steaming walking tour around Chinatown, complete with a pleasing lunch with yet more rain dodging, so much so that we ducked into the cinema to watch the latest James Bond movie (okay, I thought, not as good as ...