Sandakan
Monday, April 30th, 2007Wow, I guess it’s been a few day since I posted…. hopefully nobody noticed. For those of you wondering where I was, we actually drove clear across Sabah to a place called Sandakan.
On Friday, we spent the day driving through the jungles and around the mountains from the eastern coast of Kota Kinabalu all the way to the western coast of Sandakan. The family friends who are here had to come visit some people and offered to take us along. The drive took about 6 hours or so but the scenery was awesome. The rainforest is SUPER dense and green… and with the mountains all around, it was pretty sweet. By the time we reached Sandakan, it was dark and we hit the sack pretty quick.
We were up bright and early Saturday morning to run some errands and have breakfast. Then Uncle Alex took us to a place called Sepilok… to see the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center! We watched the Oragutans play and eat for a bit but had to get out of there because we were sweating our butts off! The jungle is HOT! So, now I can check off another animal seen on this trip 🙂 .
Saturday afternoon was spent on Uncle Alex’s friends palm plantation. He has over 50,000 palm trees used to make palm oil! The property also has a couple ponds where they raise their own fish… which is where he took us “fishing”… I guess it was a bit of fun since you always caught something but at the same time, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. It wasn’t really fishing in that sense.
Afterwards, my uncle’s friend pulled out a .22 rifle (with a silencer!) for us to try to shoot a rock off of a stick about 25 feet away. Uncle Richard, you would be proud of me… all I needed was 1 bullet! I blew that rock right off of there 🙂 . That was pretty fun… haven’t fired a gun in like a year now. Didn’t do much at night… just had dinner at a local Sandakan place.
Sunday was also pretty cool. The guy who has the palm plantation also has an equestrian place so we got to see some of his race horses and the breeding center and what not. I think I had more fun playing with the dogs there though… man, I miss Fonzy. We later got to go to the Sandakan Turf club to watch the horse race… it was nothing like the Hong Kong Jockey Club but it was still pretty neat. Other than that, we didn’t do a whole lot on Sunday.
Monday was spent making the long drive back to KK.. and here we are.
cheng.ev