Kinabatangan Holiday: Day 1: To Sandakan and some more

Day 1 saw us arrive at Kranji in the morning. We were supposed to get there by 9. It says something for our eagerness that we all arrived well before time. By 9 we were on the bus to the causeway. Causeway->singapore departure->malaysian immigration->Kota raya->(45 minute bus ride)->Senai airport by 10:30->(lunch/shopping)->check in at 12:30.

I had a swollen ankle from a silly wrench I gave it on Saturday night. Sunday I spent prostrate and praying for it to heal. Monday saw me limp into my office. My intern, who was a medic when he was doing his national service, told me to stomp on it. With my weight and general striding habit, I ended up doing pretty much that. It felt pretty tenable by evening. The trip was still on. Problem was, because of the ankle, my normal shoes didn't fit. I left for this trekking trip with one pair of leather loafers (comfortable as anything you'd find, but not something for rough wear). Back to where I left off this narrative. I spent a lot of time in Senai trying to find shoes. No hope.

The AirAsia plane which took us to Sandakan. Bright and cheery on the outside, cramped and leathery on the inside

The flight was spent in doing sudoku and yawning. We arrived at 4ish in Sandakan and left for the OPS base in Gum Gum. When we arrived we were told the plumbing had gone bust and we had to find alternate accommodation at night. Luckily we found a quiet little lodge near the orang-utan rehabilitation facility at Sepilok.

aforementioned quiet "Jungle Lodge"

Willy and Jon just outside our room

Veron is on the job as we spot our first "rare Malaysian creature", a snail.

The restaurant and dining area

The pond by the restaurant

We unpacked, played uno, cards, walked till dark. Then we had some great food. We discovered an unusual delicacy. Jungle Fern. Its a stalk and leaf kind of green and it was cooked in some stock. We couldn't get enough of it. I was too busy getting seconds, but some people in our group got pictures of it. I'll post em when I get em.

When dinner was done we dragged ourselves up the slippery wooden stairs which led from the restaurant to the rooms. We took turns to take a bath and gathered in the common room. the girls had a long narrow room with four beds, which we put together to sleep as five.

The entrance to the girls' room

It had an attached bath room. The guys were in a dorm which opened out to the common room. We played Uno, bluff and a game called 98. The objective of 98 is to put your card on a central pile and adding up the card value to the pile value. The person to put the card when the total is equal to or exceeds 98, loses and then the games starts afresh with the rest of the people. We played and played till we broke up the party and went off to sleep by around 11.

It started raining around 11:30. The roof of our lodge was zinc sheeted. The rain beat down noisily all night and you could hear the wind whistle. It was wonderful to be snug and cosy under the sheets listening to that.

Moments from the day