I arrived in Sandakan airport (Borneo) and took a taxi to my "hotel", uncle Tan. I had looked up different places to stay b...

Borneo

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 I arrived in Sandakan airport (Borneo) and took a taxi to my "hotel", uncle Tan. I had looked up different places to stay but at the end decided to stay where my tour to the jungle was going to start but I think it was a mistake! The place was super run down and a little yucky! The bathroom doors didn't close, the shower had more mold than paint and the sinks were brown and one sink even had a slug roaming around it! In my 23 1/2 hours there I peed twice, that's how yucky it was!


Looking at the place I wasn't the least surprised that I was the only one there for the night. 

The next morning I set out to the Sepilok Orangutan rehabilitation center. 

 The center consists of 73 open acres for orangutans to roam freely. They take care of orangutans that have been abandoned or injured and they have a hospital and rehabilitation center where they teach baby orangutans all they need to know to live independently in the wild. After the orangutans have acquired the sufficient skills they are set free, some within the rehabilitation center grounds and some other ones are sent to the jungle. The ones set free in the center are free to come everyday to the feeding platform, some orangutans come often and some are never seen after they are set free.

The center is open only for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon for tourist to see the orangutans eat. I got there at 9am, paid the 30 ringgit for entrance and the 10 ringgit for camera use, stored my bag in a locker, and entered the center to find some orangutans.


Since the center doesn't have the orangutans in captivity they don't guarantee that visitors will see any orangutans during the visit. With that in mind I prayed to see at least one! I entered the wooden path and followed the trail, after 3-5 mins walk I could hear some orangutan sounds. To my surprise a big orangutan was in the path! Apparently he is a big and naughty orangutan so the workers kept asking us to wait and tried to scare the orangutan away.


My first stop was a viewing platform where they take the orangutans from the clinic out; the viewing area was behind glass windows so not the best way to see the 2 orangutans that were out.



After 10 mins or so I decided to leave and head to the feeding platform. While walking there I saw 2 big orangutans, both looking mean and showing their big teeth!







Finally I was able to keep walking after the workers separated them and cleared the walkway. 
At 10 am a guy with a fruit basket came to the feeding platform and dropped off a bunch of fruit. A minute or so later came a big orangutan, he sat on the platform and ate ate and ate.


For about 30 mins he was the only orangutan, most people left and only about 7-10 people were left. All of a sudden a mom orangutan came to the platform carrying her little baby! 

They stayed there for about 10 minutes until another mom orangutan came and the other one left. I was super excited to see orangutans!! Malaysia and Indonesia are the only 2 countries where you can still see them! 
When you think about it, it is so sad to know that so many animals in the world are endangered and that probably in 30-50 years they will be gone! 




At 12:30 i was picked up and transported back to uncle Tan for lunch and to start my tour.

The tour was supposed to have 4 people but only one other girl turned up! At 2:30 the two of us where put in a van and transported an hour away to the kinabatagan river where we took a boat to the camp.

The boat cruise was So calm and peaceful, it felt great to be sitting there, no worries at all, feeling the nice breeze (and not sweating like a pig!)
The sight reminded me of the mokoro ride in the Okavango delta in Botswana... So fresh, so green, so untouched!!!

All the excitement about being in the wild stopped once we reached the actual camp grounds. It felt like grad school, you are excited about the idea of it, you go through the effort of writing an awesome letter, then you get into the program, and once you start classes you asked yourself why you thought grad school was a good idea!
Well, I had the same feeling about this camp. I was excited to go to Borneo, bought an expensive airfare because i really wanted to go and once I got there I asked myself "why do you do this to yourself?" I think it's my parents fault for raising me like a little princess and never exposing me to the great outdoors!

We arrived and the camp and it was indeed very basic! No Air con, no fans, no Electricity, no running water! Pretty much nothing but basic huts made out of wood. Every time I decide to go basic and get out of my comfort zone I always ask myself why?!?! It is so not fun to be hot and surrounded by mosquitos and so many insects!




The first thing they made us do when we arrived was to eat a noodle snack and then the guide started  to explain what the next 2 days would be li ke. While I listened to him I regretted my decision even more! Why why why?!? Will I ever learn my lesson?!? (Sadly, I don't think so!)

So the schedule went like this
Day 1: 
7:30am dinner
9pm safari cruise
Day 2:
5:30am wake up call
6am morning safari
8am breakfast
11am jungle trek
5pm afternoon safari
7:30 dinner
9pm night trek
Day 3:
5:30am wake up call
6am morning safari
8am breakfast
10am departure

My schedule went like this

Day 1:
Arrive and eat the noodle snack

5:30pm meeting with guide going through what we needed to know. He reminded us that there was no running but that the water from the river was ok to bathe and that the mud and dirt goes to the bottom... Me: feeling like I wanted to run away as far as I could from that place! (But couldn't)

5:45pm welcome to your home away from home! A mattress on the floor of a hut with a mosquito net! Me: ahhhhh!!! Will I survive?!? This looks... not good! I don't even want to think what the bathroom looks like.
I had to put food inside a bucket with a lid because animals can come and they know how to unzip bags, and if big rats smell food inside you backpack they will actually eat through your bag to get to the food! Lovely!


6pm- the rain started, it does not look pretty, will we get rained on in our hut? Thankfully no leaks! Yeay

7:30 dinner
six more guests in there for dinner, nice to have more people around.

9pm Night Safari
Hanmin and I left with Jeff, our tour guide, and did a night safari where we saw a couple of birds, some probiscus monkeys and some long tail monkeys. Thankfully no rain! Yeay!
A cute bird from our Night Safari

So many monkeys in a branch!

10:20pm return to camp.
Ok, I just had to pee! I took my torch and went on the dreaded mission of looking for the bathroom... in a path full of frogs! (I hate frogs!) My thought: Andrea, are you sure you can't hold it for 2 more days?!? Nope!
The bathroom was as expected... yucky! No running water meant peeing and then going out and get a bucket of yucky water and dump it in the toilet bowl to flush.

Bathroom facilities

Toilet

Yucky water! They told us this water is good for showering, that the mud goes to the bottom! I call that a lie!

10:25pm back to my hut, brushed my teeth with bottled water and spit it on the side of the Hut as there was no way I was going to the "bathroom" again. Put pjs on and went into my mosquito net.

5:30am wake up call for morning safari

5:40am... I really have to wake up?!?

6am ready for morning safari
During the hour and a half safari we saw more monkeys, some bats, and 2-3 birds. My eyes were closed for about half the safari.

Huge bats flying over us!

Probiscus monkey


8am breakfast
Ate quickly and wished I could sleep.. looked at my watch (aka my phone) and said to Hanmin: "we could take a nap" and off I went to my hut.

-- 2 Hour nap--

11am morning trek
hanmin and I both dragged our feet to get ready. I had zero desire of going on the trek. 
I needed rubber boots so my shoes wouldn't get dirty. I picked a pair and the guide gave me a roll of toilet paper, I grabbed some to clean the inside of the boots and saw a big spider! I jumped, I screamed! I really didn't want to go!
Then he took care of the spider and I cleaned the boots!

11:30am only thirty minutes behind schedule we left.
The trek was... horrible! Haha
Well, probably it wasn't but the freaking mosquitos were eating all of us alive! There was no wildlife and our guide showed us some plants and some bugs. He taught us how to make a trap for little mammals, and also how to use a leaf as a cup just in case we ever needed some survival skills!
We walked through so much mud! I remembered once when I went on a hike with the kids in Tennessee valley and we all just loved going into muddy puddles and splish splash! They would be having a great time here! 
We kept going deeper into the jungle and I didn't want to be a party pooper but that trek was 45 mins too long for me! It finally got too muddy and we had to turn around... ahhhh, happiness!
Right there and then I decided I was not going on a night trek! No way Jose! More mud and mosquitos with a touch of frogs?!? Ha! No thanks!

Arriving at the starting point


Walking through the jungle

Step one of making a trap!

Trap all finished!

Jungle critters

Giant bean!

Once back at camp the guys told the guide they spotted an orangutan so we keep going and checked out the Orangutan... up in the tree! So exciting!

1pm lunch time
I had lunch and the day had been just too exhausting! Walking through mud is hard work!

-- 2hrs and 45 mins nap--

4:45pm 
Awww... do I really have to go on another safari? Woke up and headed to the boat, then headed back to the room for a poncho since it looked like it would rain.

5pm Safari
Ok... this safari felt pointless!
They took us to the same place where we were last night, this morning, and it was the way to our morning trek! I literally knew the trees where the probiscus monkeys hang, where the long tailed monkeys sleep, and where the bats fly! At least this time I figured that I could lay on the bench of my boat! So relaxing!
The sky was turning dark, we were able to hear thunder and saw some lightning. The guide said we would go back but he literally did not move the boat for like 5 minutes! What was he waiting for?!?! The rain to come?!? 


6:30 came back from the safari and after 5 minutes it started pouring! It was a massive storm! Storm that did not stop all night!

8:45  Hanmin and I headed to the hut, assuming that it was understood that neither one of us would like to go on a night safari under such conditions! At 8:54 the guide came by wearing his poncho and said "ready for night safari?" Haha was he kidding us?!? Why would we ever want to go on a boat during a storm?!? Haha we said "no thank you" and that was the end of our day! Thank god, I survived the full day in the jungle (well, I slept through it!)

Day 3

5:30am Morning safari wake up call!
Ha! No way I was going! I didn't even open my eyes but said to Hanmin I was not going!
Woke up more than 2 hours later eager to leave the jungle!

9:45am
First time in the last 2 days that Hanmin and I had been ready before the scheduled time of departure!!!

My last 3 days in Borneo were spent relaxing at the beautiful forest edge resort and visited the Sun Bear Conservation center. The center was very small but was able to see a couple of sun bears, the smallest bears in the world!






 At the resort I spent my time with two other solo travelers and eating good food!
This is so much better already! 
Lounge area where I spent most of my days

New friends :)


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About Post Author

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!

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About me




Hi! It's me... Andrea!

In this blog you can live vicariously through my journey around the world!

Please feel free to share tips or places to go!
Contact me: andreaheartstraveling@gmail.com