Saturday, March 15, 2014

Time off

We've been back from Asia for well over a month now, and somehow, we already almost forgot that we have been on vacations at all. It feels like it was so long ago, and it has been so busy here since we got back that any rest we got just disappeared in a few days.
This is the first time I get back to the blog, and I just noticed that the pictures from the last post are not showing. I'll try to fix that later today, but before that, I wanted to close the loop on the trip. I'm sad I didn't keep writing as we travelled, but somehow, I just didn't find the time to do it. Maybe we just got too busy.

So here it is: After Kota Kinebalu, we went to Sandakan, where we quickly went to the Sepilok forest edge resort. Sepilok was an important part of our trip, because that's where the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre is, and not too far from there is also the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary, 2 places where we were looking forward to visit, especially that it is by promising my man that we would be going there that I managed to convince him to come along with me in Malaysia.

We were not disappointed. The resort was wonderful. We saw plenty of apes and monkey in the 2 days we spent on those 2 reserves. The Orangutan centre was in the rain forest, while the Proboscis one was in the mangrove, so we got to see 2 completely different environments. One of the highlights of these few days was to watch an orangutan eat a few doughnuts, clearly not enjoying the chocolate frosting on one of them. The doughnuts were left by an evil tourist (or maybe tour-guide, we think..) who wanted to attract the ape out of the forest so tourists could see them closer. It was so wrong, as the rehabilitation centre is making so much efforts to make them become independent, but it was still awesome to see.

We also spent a few hours on the Kinabatanagan river cruise, where we got to see more orangutans, proboscis and macaques in their natural environment. We also managed to see a very rare bird (I can't remember the name now, I'll come back to it when my man wakes up!)

Following those few wonderful days, we had a whole in our schedule, so we spent a few days in Sandakan. It was not really worth it, except for the visit of Agnes Keith's house, an American author who spent the 2nd world war in a Japanese camp near Sandakan and the visit of Sim Sim, a stilt village with an awesome seafood restaurant.

Following those few days, we left Borneo. But that will be part of another post, as that's already a little bit long, and I want to add pictures.

Orangutan!


Rain forest

doughnuts!


Curious baby





Proboscis monkeys

a very tired monkey







Hornbill


Another exhausted monkey

As fresh as seafood can get! 



Sim Sim

Agnes Keith's house

Drinks! 

Pot de chocolat with ice cream 
in the mangrove