The Borneo odyssey continues...

Wow! Its been such a mad rush around these past few days. Its hard to think how I've packed it all in.

When I last posted I was about to head out to the Turtle Islands for a night. That was very cool in that we did get to see a Green turtle come ashore to lay her eggs and we also got the pleasure of seeing a bunch of hatchlings being released out onto the beach to start their life in the sea. It wasn't a "wild" experience as the islands are used as hatcheries and the eggs are collected after laying and hatched under supervision. Though I did see one little turtle making his way down the beach on the one afternoon, they obviously missed his one egg whilst collecting. Unfortunately, typically of Borneo everything is done on package tours so I felt like us independent travellers were treated a bit like second rate citizens as other vistors had their own guides who enabled them to flout the strict rules about wandering the beaches at night and using flash photography. But that was the only blemish on an otherwise lovely adventure.

A youngster makes his break into the wide open Celebs sea.

Straight after getting back to Sandakan I headed out to the Sepilok Orangutan Reserve. There are only 3 such places in the world and seeing Orangs in their natural habitat is an undeniably wonderful experience. The Orangs are tempted out of the jungle by some food in the mornings and this gave us tourists the chance of seeing them up close and personal, instead of in a far away tree somewhere.

Such a poser! I think they're more interested in watching us than we are them...

From Sepilok I joined my group for a famous Uncle Tan's jungle tour. We headed out into the Borneon jungle about an hour and a half from Sandakan by car, and then an hour down river into the pristine jungle. Uncle Tan's is a very basic lodge with bucket showers etc. but I really enjoyed it. We did many wildlife spotting boat trips and hikes. Some of my group were lucky enough to see Orangs in the wild, but I didn't get that lucky. I did get to see the amazing Proboscis monkeys though with their huge red noses and fat stomachs. But even just chilling around the camp was great with many visits from bearded pigs, huge hornbills, monitor lizards, a reticulated python, and giant squirrels, just to name a few.

Sunset wildlife watching by boat in the jungles of Borneo with Uncle Tan's.

The male proboscis monkey. The Malay word for them means "Dutchman", in reference to the similarites with colonists back in the day! (Sorry, but I had to cheat and poach a photo from the internet here as I don't have the lens for such a shot...)

Macaques silhouetted at dusk.

I'm now in the town of Semporna on Sabah's east coast, near the border with Indonesia's Kalimantan province. I'm here for the supposedly amazing scuba diving sites, the most famous being Palau Sipadan, often rated as one of the best dive sites in the world. It should be an awesome 3 days.