Our leader sure loves Flying Lemurs! We came across a very excited Han on our way into the Sepilok rainforest discovery centre, this morning, - rushing to get his camera to snap the one he spotted from the canopy walkway. Luckily being daytime, and it being nocturnal, it hung around for him rather than gliding off. We had a good oggle at it for a while from the lofty walkway. The view of the surrounding rainforest from up there was superb, as were all the sounds....

Today was an exciting one - our visit to the orangutan sanctuary at Sepilok, where 50 rehabilitated, plus some wild, orangs live in the 4000 protected hectares of jungle/rainforest. At morning feeding, of the currently more dependant ones, we saw Ronnie (7), Mimi (older), Charlie (1) with mum Brit, and the dominant male Miscam. Ronnie in particular hung and swung in some amazingly acrobatic positions. Tons of monkeys, or macaques, also tried their luck at the fee...

Jealous? I would be! Boated over to Turtle Island (aka Selingaan - one of 3 dedicated to conservation) an hour from Sandakan. I got the roller coaster seat at the front :0 Greeted by this gorgeous palm tree. We were treated to a day of snorkelling and lolling around on the beach. We were well 'looked after' - we seemed to accumulate an extra 'lifeguard' every 1/2 hour. I got a little sting on my neck from a tiny jellyfish :( and lots of bites from pesky sandfl...

After showering the jungle off, we visited Newlands, the (re-built) house of Agnes Keith, an american author of 'Land beneath the wind', about life in Sandakan during the Japanese occupation. Motivated me to read her books. We took a quick peek at the English tea house, with it's croquet lawn but unfortunately didn't have time to take afternoon tea. The War Memorial, on the site of the WW2 POW camp, was our next visit and, as you can imagine, was a reflective o...

Welcome to the jungle! Our MESCOT guides greeted us on arrival at the village of Mengaris on the Kinabatangan river, with some yummy pancake things. We then cruised the croc infested water to our jungle eco-camp. Our itinerary was to be a wildlife spotting river trip and night walk but the torrential rain had other ideas. I have to say I was somewhat relieved about the latter :0 and the river trip was rescheduled for the next morning. So after a few rounds of th...