Named after the stream originating from Cat's Eye Hill, this city has taken the cat for its mascot, which explains the feline statues on the roundabouts. I've found real cats everywhere too, as they are a very popular pet in Borneo, most having a truncated tail that is a feature of the local breed. This is all fine by me, since cats are not too likely to sneak up behind you and bite a chunk out of your leg! Well, not these cats anyway. The cities of Sandakan and...

A trip to Sarawak wouldn't be complete without a trip to some of the caves. I met a young English student called Roscoe who is planning to study botany at Sheffield, and we both agreed that dusk was the time to be at the entrance to the Great Cave in Niah. At that time all the other tourists had left and we could watch the "shift change" as the swiftlets came home at the end of their day, and the bats started to leave for the night shift. There wasn't a huge swar...

2-0AM: I emerged from a wooden bunkhouse under a clear night sky filled with millions of stars. This was a huge relief after many days of rain. I'm 3323m above sea level, and 50m above the large Laban Rata rest house where I will get "supper". Even though I was in bed at 7-0PM, I didn't sleep much as my head was pounding from the big change in altitude after yesterday's ascent through the clouds. 4-0AM: Sayat-Sayat checkpoint, 3668m. Some of the mountain's pinna...

Sungai Kinabatangan is the name of the river where I spent three days on a wildlife safari. There were several boat cruises, and a couple of jungle hikes (one at night). But given the excessive rain that has been coming down, the hikes were almost knee deep in water and mud, and much of the wildlife was nowhere to be seen. I didn't really expect to see Borneo's pygmy elephants that were only recently discovered here, but we did find their two-month old tracks - t...

If you think you don't know any words of Malay, then you are wrong. The word orang means people, and the word hutan means forest; so in case you haven't worked it out yet, orang-utan means forest people - also known as "the old man of Borneo". The information I keep reading from different sources informs me that the orang-utan is the only great ape that lives outside Africa; the other great apes being the gorilla and two types of chimpanzee. Aren't they forgetti...