The Excellent Adventure: Kinabatangan River Safari, Malaysian Borneo

And now for our next adventure! We headed east from Semporna to the small town of Sandakan. No one really goes to Sandakan to see Sandakan (as with every other city in Malaysian Borneo), but instead as a stop over on their way to the Kinabatangan River. The Kinabatangan is the second longest river in Malaysian Borneo, and it's surroundings have been largely protected from logging and clearing for Palm Oil plantations, so it's a popular place for some good old fashioned wildlife trekking. We were reccommended a company called Uncle Tan's Wildlife Adventures, which we booked the night we got into Sandakan, and left for the following day. (Again, I think we got lucky here--usually Uncle Tan's is booked up).

Before heading to the river base camp, we went to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center in Sepilok. I think our expectations were a bit too high for this (Preston thought he might be able to high-five an Orangutan), but it was cool nonetheless.

Our first Orangutan!

Later that day we headed to Uncle Tan's base camp on the Kinabatangan. On our way there, we were able to see a couple of Saltwater Crocodiles, a WILD Orangutan, tons of Long-Tailed Macaques, and a few bird species including a Hornbill.

The boat ride to base camp.

We've arrived!

Home Sweet Home. Although it may not look it, this cabin was much swankier than our huts on the Chiang Mai trek.

Living in the jungle.

The rest of our time on the river consisted of boat trips at various times of the day (evening, morning, night), and a couple of hikes inland, the highlight of which was the night hike. Walking through the jungle at night we were able to see lots of things up close that you can only get a fleeting glimpse of during the day. Daytime animals (obviously) can't see well at night, and thus don't want to fly/scurry around since they can't see where they're going. This was great for us, because we were able to get right up next to them and they still didn't move an inch. As our guide told us they are "totally like a plastic animal". Ha. It really was true. Below are pictures of the things we saw throughout our 3 day 2 night trek, along with when we saw them, and whether or not we actually took the picture (It was amazing to see all of these animals in the wild, they were pretty far away, and our dinky little $150 dollar replacement camera didn't cut it on the "wildlife photo" front... So, we were forced to steal pictures of the things we saw off the internet. But we SWEAR we saw all of these animals!) Enjoy!

Our first sighting of a Saltwater Croc. Taken on our way to the base camp for the first time.

This is what they look like up close. (Internet pic)

A family of Long-Tailed Macaques. Although we did see at least 100 of these guys, they're pretty small, and a bit skiddish. We never got a good picture of them, so this is an internet substitute.

Hornbill. We saw quite a few of these as well, but like the Macaques, were hard to take pictures of, so this is an internet substitute.

So this one is a bit of a "where's waldo" but in the center of the picture (if you look really hard) you'll see an orangey-brown mass that is a wild Orangutan. (We obvioulsy took this picture, haha.)

A Palm Civet. This is an internet substitute, but we saw one on our night cruise eating figs.

A Gray Langur monkey. We saw these on our night cruise. This is an internet substitute.

Oh, the Proboscis Monkey. Possibly the ugliest creature in existence, they are endemic to Borneo, and are quite a sight to see. We saw these from a distance 3 times, but never got any good pics. Internet substitute above and below.

Couldn't resist putting this picture up; it summarizes perfectly just how goofy this animal is.

Flying Foxes! These are the biggest bats in the world, the largest ones with a winspan of 6ft. On our evening cruise we saw probably 200 of these flying overhead. Above picture is from the internet.