Sepilok Jungle Resort Sandakan

After much deliberating I had decided to leave Australia. For good or for bad only time would tell. I was leaving the grand old lady Brisbane for the coughing Dirty old man of Batley. Batley was a place that treated me well during my formative years and not affected me nor any of my personalities detrimentally. During my trip I am hoping to visit Nepal & Tibet. There are 3 main ways of getting there from Australia. Flying via Thailand or China or overland India. I have chosen India. Fortu...

The bus to Sandakan was about 6 hours one a two lane winding road through the hills and rainforest of Sabah. The island is beautiful and green everywhere. Most of the trees were palm trees and palm oil plantations are very popular. I got to drive by Mount Kinabalu. Quite the sight to see! I thought about getting off the bus at the National Park, but when we got there it was raining. I didn't feel like hiking in the rain. I asked when I bought my ticket and when they collected my ticket to be ...

Was dropped off at the Round-about and then went to find a room. I opted for Sepilok Jungle Resort (www.sepilokjungleresort.com) mostly for the swimming pool that it offers at 5R for the day!! The SI Lodge looked great at 250/n (not incl. breakfast) but I picked the overpriced deluxe room (which wasn't really deluxe but the only one not "smelly") at 170R (incl breakfast). Way overpriced in my opinion as there was really nothing luxerious about it. Looked like many others that I had stayed in ...

Spent day in Kota Kinabalu, nothing to report, just waiting for plane to Sandakan. Smelly sewers!

How to begin writing about a time in your life that you have dreamed about? Being in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo was like a fantasy, I couldn't begin to imagine being somewhere equally exotic and wild as plagued with the problems of reality. Unfortunately for me, this moment was heavily marked with being as sick as I can remember in a very, very, very long time. Everything hit me at once, the never-ending headache, runny everything, plugged everything... couldn't see, hear, taste or really enjoy ...

Borneo Malaysian Sarawak Sitting in my hostel in Singapore, I was struggling with deciding on my next destination. I had to be in Australia to meet my girlfriend at the end of October, so had some time to fill. I'd initially planned on seeing if I could journey to Australia without taking any flights, but after researching this further it turned out it could be done, but not within my timeframe, or indeed without slightly jeopardising safety. So, I booked my flight to Darwin for mid-October a...

One down, 2 to go and our next stop was to Sandakan and the Orang-utan sanctuary at Sepilok! We arrived late afternoon and headed up to an observation point to watch the sunset over the bay...up more steps!!!! What's that all about! There's not actually that much to do in Sandakan so again we just soaked up the atmosphere, enjoyed good food and moved on the next morning to visit the Memorial Park. This place is based on the former site of a POW camp during WWII where hundreds of Australian an...

Wednesday 15th September Mt Kinabalu - Poring Hot Springs (cont) Back at the shelter, we talked and had tomato soup, and wasted most of the time we could have been resting, so packed our bags and started down about 10.30, just as it started to rain We had kept our thermals on, and were glad of this, as the rain got progressively harder. The 0.5 km marker posts seemed a long way apart, and at one point MP hurried on ahead to find a loo, and quickly, but painfully covered a full km without stop...

After a 4 hour bus journey I arrived at what looked like pradise, I was sure the Lonely Planet had been wrong, the place looked beautiful. I had a four dorm bed to myself, there was tropical garden all around and get this, a swimming pool! About 10 minutes after I checked in Amy, Hannah and Dave checked in & joined me in the dorm. I recognised their accents but being a bit rubbish and being capable of confusing Irish with Scottish I decided it was safer to ask than guess where they were f...

With a quick overnight at an airport hotel in Kuala Lumpur, we rose nice and early for our morning flight to Sandakan in Malaysian Borneo. During the last week in Vietnam I had been sending a few emails back and forth with a Malaysian company, trying to book some activities in advance as I had heard things can get quite full. Hence as soon as we arrived we were on a tight schedule. Firstly off we headed out to the jungle resort at Sepilok, a few minuites walk from the urangutan rehabilitation...