Borneo and Singapore - worlds apart

Kota Kinabalu is the largest city in Malaysian Borneo. It isn't very big or attractive or much of anything, really. There is a night market, which is quite nice and there you can get a Filipino barbeque that is amazingly yummy and quite messy to eat. Our barbeque evening in the market was probably the most interesting thing we did during our first 3 days in KK. Mostly, we just relaxed around our hotel pool. That's the problem with pools, you lose all incentive to go out and discover the city (not that there seemed to be much to discover). After KK, we took the bus to Sandakan. We meant to take the 10 am bus, but it was fully booked and we could only get tickets on the 1 pm bus. When our bus was finally under way, it broke down. We then had to wait in a rainstorm for an hour for a replacement bus to come and pick us up. It's not as bad as it seems, we were able to sit and wait in our old bus, didn't have to stand in the rain. Unfortunately, the replacement bus seemed much more dodgy than the broke one and I am pretty sure the driver didn't actually have a licence. He wasn't very good at the driving anyway.

So instead of arriving in Sandakan at two in the afternoon as planned, we got there at around 10.30 at night, missing a whole afternoon of sightseeing in Sandakan. We quickly discovered that may have been a blessing. Sandakan is, on the whole, rather an unpleasant place. Dirty, ugly, hot with stary, leery men, most of whom were hairy, but luckily not too scary. We ended up spending most of our time in our hotel, which luckily had a rather nice rooftop cafe and bar. We even stopped going out for food after I saw a rat (yes, a great big, revolting rat!) running around in the restaurant next door. Everyone in the restaurant seemed quite surprized when we cancelled our order and left, as if rats in restaurant are totally Ok. Ugh!

After a couple of days of nothing in Sandakan, it was time for our jungle trip. We were picked up and first taken to Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary, where they save orphaned or injured orangutans and train them to go back to the wild. Some of them choose to live in the surrounding jungle after they have been released and can come back for feedings of milk and bananas if they want. We went to see a feeding. Sadly, only one orangutan came out of the forest for a snack, the others probably weren't hungry. Happily, the one who we saw had recently given birth, so she had a teeny, tiny, baby with her. The Cutest Thing Ever!

After Sepilok, we were driven to our jungle lodge by the banks of the Kinabatangan river. There we stayed for two days, going on lots of boat rides on the river and one trek in the jungle. The boat rides were great (apart from hard seat-induced achy bum). We saw lots of wildlife, all kinds of birds, a few crocodiles and 5 different species of primates, including the hilarious and lovable proboscis monkeys and a very fine and handsome orangutan male. The trek was a little bit more hard work and slightly less rewarding. It took about 3,5 hours. We trudged through the mud to a lake, rested there for about half an hour and trudged back. The only wildlife we saw were insects, mostly leeches. There isn't really much of a chance to see anything else, because you have to keep your eyes on the ground to keep from falling on your face in the mud. It was still a good thing to do, just to have been on a jungle trek. And it wasn't as bad as I had expected. Even though we were walking along in over 30 degree heat and very high humidity, we didn't actually feel all that hot. We seem to be becomong acclimatized to the tropics. Jungle bunnies are we! Also, even though I was bitten by a leech, that wasn't too bad either. It didn't hurt at all and I didn't freak out. (Although I must admit, that is only because I didn't notice the bite until the leech had long since sucked its fill and slithered off. If I had seen it gorging itself on blood from my armpit, I'm afraid a full scale freak-out may have occurred). Our house in the jungle was really nice too. We had a fan and en-suite and electricity. Total luxury! After two nights there we went back to Sandakan via the Gomatong caves. These are caves where edible birds' nests (for soup) are harvested. The caves are very fine indeed, beautiful and impressive and it is lovely to see the swiftlets (and even the bats) flitting overhead. Not all good, though. The cave is filled with a mountain of guano and is consequently rather foul smelling. It is also a breeding ground for some horrible creepy crawlies like poisonous centipedes and masses of cockroaces. We quickly regretted wearing sandals in there!

After on last night in Sandakan (the night of the rat incident) we took the bus back to KK. In our absence, it seemed to have transformed itself into a gleaming, cosmopolitan place. A throbbing metropolis of lovelyness. Maybe that's Sandakan's reason for being; to make Kota Kinabalu look good by comparison. Anyway, we had a lovely last evening in Borneo, eating obscene amounts of pizza and flolloping in our gigantic suite. Yes, SUITE! The hotel was hosting some sort of conference and all the cheapo rooms were full, so they were forced to put us in a suite. Ha,ha,ha,ha! We felt slightly out of place in there, still in our jungle clothes, but we enjoyed it nontheless.

Now we are in Singapore. It is different from Borneo. Everything is clean and organized and safe. There is a bewildering array of shopping malls here. I'm talking hundreds of really massive shopping centres, pretty much covering most of the city. We went to the supermarket. It was like going to heaven. There was cheese, lots of cheese. And yoghurt. Yum! We got tickets for the tourist sightseeing bus and have had at least a glimpse of most of the city. We even went on a river cruise today. We have wandered around Chinatown and Little India and sat in all kinds of lovely cafes and restaurants. It is pleasant here. But now it is time to leave. Off to Cambodia in the morning. I wonder what that will be like?