The first thing I did when I finished work was to go on holiday. The timing of my resignation lined up perfectly with our summer holiday we had planned several months before.
It was certainly a much needed break, yet the difference with this one was that for the first time in several years, I didn’t have work in the back of my mind, so I was able to relax without any underlying worries.
Our holiday was 2 weeks in Malaysian Borneo. We had considered Borneo as a holiday destination a few years ago, but decided to go to Brazil as we felt it would be cheaper.
Looking back I have no idea why we thought that as Brazil was much more expensive!! This year we decided it was time to revisit that idea so after much research we planned a trip to encompass the things we love in travelling.
There are no direct flights from London to Malaysian Borneo, so we had a short layover in Singapore for a few hours, before hopping on a plane to Kota Kinabalu (KK).
We had a short internal flight from KK to Sandakan where we were staying a night to get some much needed sleep, as door-to-door we were travelling for over 24 hours!
We didn’t allow any time to visit the town of Sandakan as we wanted to get straight onto seeing some wildlife.
The first stop on our journey was the Sepilok orang-utan sanctuary. This is one of the places in Borneo where they take in orphaned orang-utans and teach them the life skills they need to be able to survive in the rainforest, as they no longer have parents to help them learn.
This was not like a zoo – the sanctuary covered a large area of rainforest which provided a “protected” environment for the animals to live in.
Many of the orang-utans will spend the rest of their lives at Sepilok, however those that demonstrate they are ready to live on their own are released elsewhere in the country into an unprotected area of rainforest.
There are feeding times for the orang-utans twice a day, which is when the tourists are allowed in to look, but there is no guarantee you will actually see anything during your visit.
Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: Malaysian Borneo – Orangutans and Sun Bears
..