Turtles!! I was very excited about our trip here. Tom not so much but I think he did enjoy it in the end! We almost didn't make it here and were extremely lucky to get a place. So the plan was that we would go across to the island, stay one night and be able to witness either a Green turtle or Hawkesbill turtle lay her eggs.  The advice was that to get the best deal you had to get to Sandakan and go down to the jetty where the turtle island people operate f...

So after getting back to our lodge we had some breakfast and left to go back to Sandakan. Not before a huge monitor lizard ran out in front of us as we slowly edged our way through the village in the car on the bumpy road along the river. Tom quickly wound his window down while I tried to take a picture but he was too quick. He stopped and took one look at us and ran off! They're pretty darned quick when they want to be! Pretty cool to get that close though....

After stopping in Sandakan for two nights to organise various trips over the next week or so we headed to the Kinabatangan river. We hadn't planned to go there initially but we had some time to spare before our next trip and it sounded a pretty amazing experience. Basically the river is in the middle of the jungle in the East of Borneo and you get the chance to cruise up the river in the evening and early morning looking for pygmy elephants, orangutans, probo...

After about five hours on a bus we were in Sandakan which was going to be our base for a bit as we had a number of things we wanted to do in the area. The journey was beautiful as we drove past Mount Kinabalu surrounded by cloud at the top and through jungle and forest to get there. Up and down across hilly terrain. Very excited to be here! We spent our time organising and booking things we wanted to do over the next week. Tom was excited that we could see bot...

Kota Kinabalu was our first stop in Malaysian Borneo. There wasn't much to do there really but it's the main entry point into Sabah which is the eastern region of Borneo and we mostly used our time there for planning the next few weeks. The city itself was modern and clean but not the sort of place for tourists. The only thing of interest we actually did was visit the fish market where there was lots of interesting sights and smells.  We ended up stayin...