Borneo - The King Of The Swingers

Anyone who knows anything about Borneo knows that it is home of the Orangutans.

These beautiful ginger fuzzy haired creatures are extremely loveable and Borneo is worth visiting just to go to an orangutan rehabilitation centre or orphanage and get a glimpse of them monkeying around.

Borneo also has a lot of other hidden treasure..

We only managed to go to a few places in Sabah (the Eastern province in Malaysian Borneo) here's what we did ...

Kota Kinabulu

The capital. I was expecting something out of the Jungle Book like canopies, greenery and lots of animals. In fact this place is very built up and also on the coast, so there are beaches a plenty.

We managed to stray into the national park to do some canopy walking (which was, at it's highest, 26 metres high). We also managed to see Mt Kota Kinabulu, a mountain half the size of Mount Everest. We didn't climb it, as we thought we'd climbed, walked, trekked up enough mountains/ volcanoes/ hills etc in Asia. We just took pictures from the ground.


Poring

The Poring Hot Springs is a natural bathing place. They have hot springs and also a cold pool. We spent about an hour in the hot water and about half a minute in the cold one. It was very refreshing though.

Sepilok

We headed to Sepilok (which is actually in the middle of the jungle) on a local bus. It was a six hour drive through the meandering mountain range.

We were in for the shock of our lives when the bus driver pulled up at the side of the road and called us off the bus. We'd been dumped in the middle of nowhere. Luckily some taxi man was driving past and picked us up. Realising we had no money we asked him to go via a cash point - which we later discovered, half an hour into the drive, was 12 miles away. Couldn't complain though, the whole trip including the six hour bus ride and taxi via the ATM cost about £10.50!

We stayed in a nice jungle lodge not too far from the orangutan orphanage, and managed to see some of the beasts at the feeding in the morning. They were very curious but at the same time shy. It was impressive seeing them swing through the over growth. Sad to also think that they are an endangered species.

We didn't have long in Borneo this time round. There are so many other things I'd like to do, like see the turtles and go scuba diving (it's apparently a very popular place to go).

I guess I'll have to go back. With so much to do it's definitely somewhere you could go ape.