What a fantastic week, a nice holiday and break from the travelling lifestyle, with the great company of Miss Murray :-D

We stayed in a nice apartment with great sea views in Kota Kinabalu. Unfortunately, Jays suitcase didn't make it to Borneo with her so the first day we spent wandering around the city, shopping for an outfit for her to wear the next day!

The next day we went on a river cruise, we had a nice dinner and spent the afternoon spotting crocodiles, grey monkeys, probiscus monkeys and after dark watching the fireflies in the trees.

At the weekend we flew to Sandakan and then took a speed boat to Turtle Island. This island was a paradise, white beaches, clear seas and we saw colourful fish and Christmas tree coral when snorkelling. We learnt about the turtle restoration and protection project, and after dark we got to see a mother turtle come up the beach and lay her eggs, the guide then collected the eggs to put in the hatchery and then we went back to the beach to release the turtles that had hatched the night before. The little turtles were so cute and scrambling all over the place but eventually they all made it out to sea. During the day whilst we were all sunbathing some people got to witness a wild nest hatch and bursting through the sand was about 35 little turtles, that quickly scurry down to the sea and off they went. The guides said this was really rare as they aim to collect most of the eggs and the eggs usually only hatch at night.

After breakfast we got the boat back to the mainland and headed to Sepilok orang-utan rehabilitation sanctuary for feeding time :) we saw a cheeky little one that liked to show off on the ropes, a bigger guy who walked up and used the stairs instead of the trees and a mother and her young baby hanging on with all it's might. Jay has adopted a baby orang-utan called Chikita :) apparently she's very cheeky but top in her class!

In the afternoon we went for a walk around the botanic gardens, over the wobble bridge and up the canopy walks. Then headed for a very serious note to the Australian war museum were we learnt how the Japanese captured the Australians and kept them as POWs for years of hard work and torture before killing them all off but 6 that managed to escape on the death marches from Sandakan to KK.

Back in KK we went to the park near our apartment and watched the water fountain show which was good, but the desserts we had in the secret recipe cafe were better :-P