We flew to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah on the Malaysian side of Borneo. Kota Kinabalu was a cute little city on the water. We were picked up by our hotel, which is so nice getting of a flight and seeing that someone is holding a sign with your name on it. It's not nearly as good as being greeted by friends and family, but it's still pretty sweet!
Our room was nothing special at Borneo Global Backpackers, but the staff were really awesome and helpful. Joey and I had tried to book a dive at Sipadan (For those of you who don't know it's one of the top dive sites in the WORLD) but were unable to with a couple of dive companies who were fully booked up. Sipadan was a victim of dynamite and cyanide fishing, so now it is heavily protect and is only allowed to have 120 divers a day. This books up pretty fast. We were so so so happy when we found out that the hostel who has a dive company at Sipadan had space available! Despite it being expensive, we were totally stoked.
A couple of other things we wanted to do while we were in Sabah was climb Mt. Kinabalu and see Probiscis monkeys. One thing that really sucked about Sabah was that EVERYTHING we wanted to do, had to be booked through some package tour. Every package tour Joey and I have ever booked on this trip has been not very good, and in general, are way way more expensive than doing it yourself. Climbing Mt. Kinabalu was out of the question when we learned it would cost us $300 CDN each. That's a lot of money for a 1.5 day climb up a stair case.
After a couple of days of enjoying the amazing seafood and friendly people of Kota Kinabalu we headed off to a city called Sandakan. Sandakan itself, has absolutely nothing to offer. It's the orangutan and probiscis monkey sanctuaries in the surrounding areas that are the prime sights. We were happy to stay in Sandakan because we found an amazing hotel for a reasonable price. The place was called Mayfair Hotel, and it wasn't spectacular looking but it was so clean. The highlight was the big screen plasma screen in our room, and the thousands of dvds in the lobby free for our viewing. All Joey and I wanted to do was veg out for a couple of days and do nothing! Which is exactly what we did.
The guy running the Mayfair was hilarious, in a non funny way. He was such a serious Chinese guy, but would say the funniest things with the straightest face. His gruff and rude demeanor made him likeable. Who would have thought? He also knew everything there was to know about Sandakan and the surrounding area. Great for asking questions.
One of the days in Sandakan we decided to go see the Probiscis monkey sanctuary. For those of you who don't know what it is, google it, and I'm sure you will be chuckling in no time. These monkeys are very very funny to look at. When we got to the sanctuary we were a bit disappointed to see that these monkeys were living in such a small area of jungle. A lot of Borneo is covered in Palm tree plantations for the making of palm oil. It's not what you would expect in a place with such a reputation for beautiful forests and unique animal species. It was actually quite depressing to have driven an hour and only seen plantations. Miles upon miles of palm trees.
The sanctuary was quite small, and there weren't trails to walk around, so we just waited until the monkeys came for their feeding at 11am. You could tell a lot of monkeys knew exactly what time it was because you could see them lingering in the trees nearby. When the food was down on the platform they came running. You could see that the monkeys had distinct families because different groups would wait their turn for different platforms. You could also tell who was boss. The bigger the nose, the more dominant the male. They also liked to announce they were coming with slamming of fists and big jumpy actions on to the platforms. The lower caste monkeys hid under the platforms hoping to get some scrapes! After the feeding we were transported to a resort for lunch, which was rather uneventful. The food was crap and overly priced. We had to wait around 2 hours for the next feeding.
The next feeding was similar to the first. Both of us were getting a bit bored, but were soon fascinated by these little fish who live in the puddles near the sanctuary, called Mudskippers. They can actually sort of walk around on the mud and can live through the dry season in holes they dig for themselves. They were actually quite cute! After the second feeding we headed home to watch some more dvds!
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