Westaustralia and Asia!: 19. Malaysia @ Borneo

It is said that some of Southeast Asia's richest wildlife areas await the visitor when going to the east coast of Borneo.

So we took a bus to the city of Sandakan after a couple of days stay in Kota Kinabalu.

The bus ride to Sandakan took about 6 hours. The road to Sandakan goes near the Mount Kinabalu so it was kind of mountainous. The views would've been great if there weren't all the clouds = we could not see a thing.

When we got to Sandakan we were told that there's no bus from the bus station to the city. The bus stations are usually always a bit away from the city. With a bit of stubbornness we "knew" that there is a bus. So we walked trough a bunch of apartment buildings and found our way to the bus stop with a lot of help from very kind local people. Later in a tour office the people laughed when they heard that we made our way to the bus stop. They were glad to tell us the name of the stop so we could take a bus back to the station when we would leave Sandakan. We never needed the name because we took a taxi to the long distance bus station when we went further.

The town of Sandakan has about 200.000 inhabitants and is the second largest town in the Sabah region of Borneo.

We found quite a nice and cheap hotel called City View Hotel.

This was our view from the hotel window when we woke up the day after arriving. Sunday market....

The William Pryer Monument. William Pryer was the first British Resident in northern Borneo and the founder of Sandakan.

We had a little stop at "the English Tea House".

The Tea House.

Having a break at the Tea House.

The gate to the Puu Jih Shih Buddhist Temple,

Buddha.

The temple was of course on a hill, but the view was very nice.

The view over Sandakan. Not a very pretty city, but we both liked it.

The coastline of Sandakan. We both think it is one of the nicer places on Borneo.

We stayed in Sandakan for a few days before going further.

One of the days in Sandaken we went to Sepilok Orangutang Rehabilitation Centre.

The center was founded in year 1964 to rehabilitate orphan orangutans.

The Center cares for young orangutans orphaned as a result of illegal logging and deforestation and those who have been illegally caught and kept as pets.

At Sepilok the new arrivals are given a complete health check before starting on the long road to rehabilitating them back into the wild, which normally take up to seven years, but in some cases never is a possibility.

Baby orangutans are cared for 24 hours a day, just like a human baby and as they grow older they join their peers in the nursery.

Today about 80 orangutans live in the reserve surrounding the rehabilitation center.

Now food time. It is food time twice every day at the center. The orangutans can show up or not as they live in the wild, but a free meal is often welcome.