Sadly, we somehow were already scheduled to leave our jungle experience. Caitlyn and Laura woke up early and went to the nature walk around 7:15. Before even stepping outside, Caitlyn heard the pitter patter of feet on the roof of our room, and walked out to find tons of macaque monkeys running around on top of lodge buildings. She spent some time watching the troop of monkeys swing from the trees to the roof top, and then continue on to the other side of the jungle.
After enjoying the macaques, Laura joined Caitlyn and they continued on through the jungle board walk to try and spot more wild life. About half way through the walk, Caitlyn caught sight of some rustling leaves in the distance. Using the binoculars we rented, she was able to find the source of the movement and had the treat of observing red leaf monkeys! This breed of monkeys are rare to see here, and especially this time of year! She was so excited to have spotted such a special animal, especially with it being our last day in Borneo. Riding the high of her good find, she continued on the path which circled back to the private bungalow section of the lodge.
After rounding the last bend and making her way past the bungalows, Caitlyn was feeling sure that the red leaf monkey would be the last wildlife spotting. She strolled past the final bungalow and started making her way toward the lodge. As she was walking, she heard some leaves rustling from behind her, and decided to double back along the path. She followed her ears which took her in front of the closest bungalow, where she saw some tree branches moving slightly, just behind the building. Seconds later, she sees a big orange arm reach up, and a mom and baby orangutan start to climb a tree 30 ft away. She quickly called to Laura who came rushing over. They both decided that this spotting warranted ringing of the lodge gong! To explain the gong, when we first came to the lodge, we were told there are gongs that will ring at different times. One gong ring is for meals, two gong rings is for new guests arriving at the lodge, continuous gong rings is for emergencies, and three gong rings is for a close animal spotting! So far during our stay, the gong had only been rung for one wildlife spotting, which was a hornbill from 2 days prior. In the excitement and wanting to make sure she didn’t miss out, Laura’s 3 gong rings more closely resembled a frantic tap. The guests of the bungalow right in front of the Orangutan came out to check out the wildlife sighting, and it was none other than the couple we had met the night prior from Singapore! They were so excited to have a wild orangutan sighting so close, and offered for Laura and Caitlyn to come on to their back porch to try and get a better view. By this time, Caitlyn was frantically texting David to tell him to come see the Orangutan mom and baby.
They continued to watch the orangutan as mom and baby made their way up the trees, through vines and branches, and eventually crossing above the walking path through the Jungle. During some points the orangutans got within 20 ft of the onlookers, seemingly unfazed by being so close to humans. At this point David came running to join in. A lot of people came to look after the gong, and we all enjoyed this special interaction. It was absolutely one of the highlights of our stay, and Caitlyn couldn’t help but feeling like she was born to be a wildlife spotter.
We stayed as long as we could to enjoy watching the orangutans in their natural habitat, but as time was running short before our boat departed, we returned to the room to finish packing our bags.
At this point, we left our bags in front of our rooms per directions, and made our way to the lobby to check out. We perused the gift shop one final time, and settled on a small stone painted with an orangutan to continue to cherish the special memories of our time at the lodge. We stopped by the dining area to enjoy our last breakfast at the lodge, although we could only enjoy a few quick bites as we had spent so much time searching for wildlife.
We made our way to the boats, where we were able to say goodbye to our favorite naturalist, Lee. We thoroughly enjoyed his presentation on orangutans and their behaviors, and experienced multiple wildlife encounters with him including this morning and yesterday’s orangutan sightings. He was definitely a big part of making our adventure such an incredible experience!
As we made our way on to the boat, we asked about which side to avoid sunburns and settled in on some nice seat on the left side of the boat. While we hoped to spot a crocodile or two on the way out, it wasn’t in the cards. We enjoyed the pleasant ride up the Kinabatangan River, amazed at how quickly our time had passed.
As we left the mouth of the river and made it back across the ocean, David suddenly felt a horrible burning pinch on his left arm. He looked over to see an enormous flying bug stinging his left forearm. He brushed it off of his arm and the bug landed on the floor of the boat just near his feet. David quickly stepped on the bug. Paul, hearing the commotion, headed over to see what was happening. Paul picked it up and told us it was a bee. We didn’t quite believe this as it didn’t look like any bee we had ever seen. We later looked it up and determined that it was a lesser banded hornet (which gives a horrific sting full of venom).
David’s arm quickly began to itch, swell, and turn red. Luckily, he had his handy dandy Benadryl stick on him to try and relieve some of the symptoms! We learned early on in our trip that David + itchy bug bites = “I’m literally going to die”. We of course, did not want that.
Soon enough, the boat began approaching the pier in Sandakan, and we took in our last views of the scenery before hopping off.
After unloading our bags from the boat and waiting some time for the second boat of passengers to arrive (we wondered what their hold up was about- maybe a wildlife sighting?), we made our way to the bus. We took a short bus ride back to the original restaurant and hotel we had stopped at for lunch on the way in. We were excited to try more of the delicious food, especially the build-your-own noodle bar.
After lunch, we went to the rainforest discovery center to enjoy the canopy walk. This was a metal walkway almost 100 feet up in the air, amongst some of the enormous trees of Borneo. We didn’t see much aside from some birds and lizards, but we continue to be amazed at how easily the guides are able to spot the wildlife, despite the animal’s best attempts to blend in to their surroundings. At one point, David did get yelled at by an older man who was trying to film some birds because he was “too loud”. Our guide Paul had his back, saying that he is an experienced guide and if the birds wanted to be there they would not care about the noise (thanks Paul!).
After making our way through progressively more precarious canopy walks (or at least, Caitlyn felt they were precarious), we found ourselves at the base of a “tree” observation deck, with a spiral staircase leading to the top. This is where Caitlyn’s apparent fear of heights really started kicking in. While walking up the staircase, her grip on the railing became tighter and tighter, as the combination of the height, wind blowing, and foot traffic on the stairs caused the structure to sway a bit. However, the view from the top of the observation deck was stunning and we thoroughly enjoyed taking in the views from the tree tops (as long as Caitlyn kept a healthy distance from the edge…)
After soaking in the views, we descended the ~150 ft to the rainforest floor, and continued our trek through the forest pathways. Along the way, Paul pointed out different unique fruits and flora to the Borneo rainforest, and we admired the sheer size of some of the trees and leaves.
We came to the end of the trail, which led us to a suspension bridge over a pond. We were last in line to cross the bridge, and most of our group made our way across before us (there was a sign limiting the capacity to 4 adults, so we were careful to hang back while so many other people were going across!) A few people from our group stopped in the middle of the bridge and decided it would be fun or funny to start shaking the bridge and making it sway. We politely stayed back, not wanting to partake in the swaying suspension bridge, or the potential collapse into the water. All but two of the people from our group had moved on to the other side, so we decided it would be a good time to start to cross. As Caitlyn got to the half way point, David called out to her to turn around to take a picture. As David was holding his phone to snap a photo, one of the girls from our group decided it would be a good time to start to jump and sway on the bridge again like it was an elementary school playground. Both Caitlyn and David had to quickly grab the rope hand rail to keep their balance, and David was frantically trying to tuck his phone away to prevent it from falling in the water. The offender was actually the annoying girl from the night cruise the second night. We eventually tried to continue on and she kept “playfully” swaying. David asked her to stop and she said “why?? you don’t like fun?” to which David very directly told her that he didn’t want to drop anything in the water from her antics, adding that we are all adults and should act like it. We think this made her feel uncomfortable as her and her partner left the group for some time after this.
We walked as a group (aside those two) towards the last portion of the discovery center, which was a choice between an indoor museum about Borneo or an outdoor garden. We opted to continue to explore the outdoor gardens with the majority of our group. In the gardens, we saw many common spices to the rainforest, including fruit trees, flowers, pitcher plants, and more. David even spotted a small snake camouflaged on a small branch which reminded us of the snake our guide spotted on the first night cruise.
We wrapped up at the discovery center, and popped over to a small shop across the street to grab a water for the road. Our flight wasn’t until about 8pm, while most of our group was departing on a 5pm flight. We were under the impression when we were booking flights that it wasn’t feasible to do the rainforest discovery center and make it out on the 5pm flight, which is why we had opted for the evening departure time. It turns out, it was possible! The bus first made their way to the airport to drop off much of our group, while the rest of us were later dropped off at the Balin rooftop restaurant. It turns out we weren’t the only ones with this good idea and everyone had requested it! The lower level of the rooftop bar was a hotel, who were kind enough to hold our luggage while we hung out. We went up to the rooftop to the reserved balcony seating area that we had reserved prior to departing for the Sukau lodge. We quickly discovered that it was way too hot with no shade, and with sun set still an hour and a half away, we made our way back down to the indoor portion of the restaurant. Since they were still setting up the rooftop area, they said it would be no problem to get a drink or two indoors and then transition to the balcony closer to sunset. We found a nice table, and ordered a round of drinks. While both Caitlyn and Laura opted for a blended drink, David got the Balin HH staple- a bucket of tiger crystal beers. We sat and sipped, enjoying the cool indoors before eventually ordering round 2.
Shortly after round 2 coming out, a couple passed by us to head up to the rooftop. By this point, sunset would be within the next 30 minutes. To make sure we preserved our spot (they didn’t put up a “reserved” sign on our balcony table), David followed the couple upstairs. Once up, he heard the couple saying they wanted to quickly grab the nice upper level. David informed them that it was reserved, which felt a bit uncomfortable. The couple didn’t mind, and found another seat where they were still able to enjoy the views. However, a surly older man scoffed at the interaction and shook his head and rolled his eyes. Oh well! Caitlyn and Laura made their way up with the drinks and our bags, and we all sat to enjoy the sunset. We ordered dinner and enjoyed the views, watching as the sky got progressively darker, with richer and richer colors coming out.
Right as peak sunset hit, our food was delivered. Simultaneously, the older man who rolled his eyes earlier came up and said “I think I’ll join you” and sat down without waiting for our response. It was a very large space, so we didn’t mind too much at first. The issue was that he would not stop talking, even while we were eating, taking pictures, or turned away towards the sunset. He was very nice and we felt especially guilty once he told us that he’s been trying to travel and be social since his wife passed away a few years ago. David was very kind and made polite conversation with the man, while Caitlyn and Laura exchanged pleasantries but at their food while it was still warm and admired the views. The food we ordered was: chili crab bao bun (pretty good, Caitlyns first time trying soft shell crab), spiced fried chicken (pretty good but tasted more like chicken fingers), and the lobster laksa pasta (tasted like standard spaghetti but Caitlyn still enjoyed it) as well as enjoying our share of cocktails and beers.
As the sunset turned to darkness, we saw a cool cloud emerge with occasionally bolts of lightening within it. We had a long debate over what the cloud looked like (see below). Caitlyn saw a revolutionary war era man with a powdered wig and pointy nose (facing the right). David saw a witch. (facing the left). If you have a vote on who is right, please let us know!
We weren’t expecting to stay very long, but our flight kept getting delayed all day long. Despite it being delayed over 2 hours, we decided it would be best to take a grab to the airport to arrive at the original intended departure time. A short 20 minutes later, and we had arrived to the airport. We were getting our bags out of the cab we saw a group of men sporting Hamas shirts and scarves standing at the entrance of the airport. We entered to notice that it was VERY small. Immediately on our left was a single bag screening station, followed by TWO whole check in counters. We dropped off our bags and tried to proceed through security when we were informed that we could not proceed through security until one hour before our flight departure. We ended up sitting in a row of seats in the same central room as the bag screen station and check in counters. Finally, our time came to head through security to the gates! This was pretty speedy, and on the other side we saw that there are only two gates in this airport. Our flight had been delayed so much, that by the time we found a seat at the gate the only small convenience store was about to close. They were literally closing their gates when David rushed in to get us a beverage for our wait/flight. After a LONG wait, we eventually boarded after 11:00 (scheduled for 8:15).
The flight was comfortable, but we ended up getting into Kuala Lumpur around 12:30 or so. We got a grab and headed towards our hotel. The driver was kind, but almost too “kind”. He asked us a lot of questions about our trip and eventually told us that our hotel is very far away from the normal hotels that go to the airport and that we would not be able to get a timely ride in the morning. Of course, he offered to pick us up instead, although he would do it “off the books”. We declined, as we knew that was likely a scam or a lie to get us to pay him more, telling him that we had booked a shuttle with our hotel. We arrive at the hotel and checked in. We got into our room around 1:15am and immediately knew that we were in for a rough night. If the strong, odd odor that met us at the door wasn’t enough of a tell, the sheets and pillows were stained with multiple colors, and there were several bugs on the walls and even on top of the bed. We checked google reviews and saw that people referred to it as a motel that even locals wouldn’t touch. David’s arm had been worsening all day after the bite, swelling and being painful to use as the inflammation was impacting the muscles in his forearm. It had gotten bad enough that it was uncomfortable to pick things up or to push off with that arm. We quickly rinsed off and Caitlyn decided to try to sleep in the bed, while David was very concerned and sat on top of the bed instead. We had to be up around 5:00 or 5:30 tomorrow to leave for our next flight, so we would only end up getting at most around 3 hours of sleep. David was convinced that with all of the bugs we were already seeing, if we turned the lights off, even more would come. He gave Caitlyn his sleep mask and sat up in the bed with the lights on. Eventually he decided to try to get some sleep, so he got out his tiny travel blanket, curled up into a ball, and tried to cover up his body and eyes to sleep.
Steps walked: 11,628
Miles walked: 5.39
Bluming Travelers 