Sandakan Wednesday

"As if we don't get enough of being in the wilderness, we paid five bucks to traipse in some 'rainforest'."

At eleven in the morning -- a time where no wildlife will show up, even for goodwill. And it's not as if we haven't seen our share. Since Sunday my list now looks like this:

- proboscis monkeys

- long tailed macaques

- an out-of-porportioned crocodile (small head, big long body haha)

- hornbills

- kingfishers

- egrets

- hawks

- a good number of other birds

- a tortoise

- two snakes

- two monitor lizards (one we almost turned into roadkill)

- a bushy black scampering squirrel

- a plantation rat

- a bunch of bugs

- sapi

- kerbau

- dogs

- cats

*meow*

Wednesday was our driving back to 'halfway point' day, so since we put up a night in Sandakan the night before, Claire and I decided to take in the town a bit. I realised that our sampling dates usually coincide with some kind of event which makes accomodation a bit of a problem. Like the last month when we were in Telupid, the Deathmarch was going on, so practically all the accomodation in that small town were full (all reads TWO places to stay).

This time, Sandakan is hosting the Sabah Games, while there are some other goings-on in Sepilok. Anyway, we gave up hotel-hunting and stayed in Swiss-Inn at Sandakan's Waterfront (which still had rooms).

YuLi, when I saw this, I was reminded of you :)

I've been to Sandakan for *lost-counted* times and yet I've never actually done any sightseeing. It's always been for work, with no extra time to spare. But this time at least I drove by and saw Agnes Keith's House and the English Tea House. And we decided to go look for 'pi dan kao' for breakfast.

'pi dan kao' = century egg dumplings

It's in one of those houses in the Chinese water village area in Buli Sim-Sim.

We next drove to Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre just to realise that we were one hour late for feeding time. So I yet again did not get to see orangutans and have to make do with BuBu till my next opportunity :)

And just for some unknown reason, Claire and I thought we'd visit the Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC) and paid 5bucks to go 'jungle trekking'. Come to think of it, that was oddly random of us. It's like fishermen paying for a boatride, or natives paying to spend a night in a longhouse, that kind of thing.

And it's not like we don't get enough sun everyday when we work haha

But yea, RDC is not too bad a place for amateurs who have never been to the jungle before. There's a Canopy Walk, observation towers, hanging bridges, the works.

We had to climb a lot of stairs to get to the walk.

But the view, as always, is good.

I love the rainforest because of the really really tall trees.

And the canopy is always wondrous. One day I hope I get to try out canopy climbing...maybe with the GCP.

This is how you walk on the hanging bridge without risking it to flip over.

And this is supposed to be some 1000-over years old tree...The Belian doesn't look that spectacular though..

I've been driving long-distance a lot and I absolutely love it! I'll blog about driving one of these days :)

x's and o's!