Sabah Malaysia

After a very long day on a bus, I arrived in Sandikan with the intenion of doing a night at Uncle Tan's Jungle camp.

But as will happen, the bus zipped right past our drop off point, and four hours later a Swedish couple and I arrived at Uncle Tan's. We had missed the tour departure, so I had to make a few changes to my plans, and decided that a day at the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary would be a good alternative plan.

We set out this morning for before heading for the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary for a half day tour. This is one of 3 Organutan sanctuaries that exists in the world that works to rehabilitate sick and orphaned orangutans. Orengutan's only live in Borneo and Sumatra, and with most of the land in Borneo (Malaysian at least) being deforested to make way for palm oil plantations, the oranguatan amongest other wildlife have become an endangered species. The centre claims that it rehabilitates the 'man of the forest' such that they can successfully return to their natural habitat and live as nature intended them to live.

Whether you fully believe in what they tell you, that all the orangutans are successfully 'rehabilitated' to fend for themselves,etc, there's no denying that there is vital work being done at the centre. I learned today that Orengutan's have a genetic makeup that is 96.4% human, and stay with their mothers for a minumum of 4 years before they can become independent. Imagine what would happen to the orphaned and injured ones should there be no centre to house and care for them. It's also a great place to see the orangutan up close. We went around the morning feeding time, when the orangutans literally hang around waiting for the 'keepers'/'handlers' to arrive up on the platform with bunches of bananas. It's mostly around this time that the hords of camera happy tourist (that's me too!) get to see them up close.

There's also an information centre that show's a balanced, informative and well made documentary about the orangutan crisis in Borneo and how the centre operates. In addition there's also some information on the crisis facing other wildlife, such as the rhino, in greater South East Asia.

That was the biology lesson for the day. Then it was back onto another bus for 6 hours to make it to Kota Kinabalu so I can scale Mount Kinabalu tomorrow.

Time for bed!