We had decided to spend christmas in the jungle. Therefore, we took a bus from KK to Sandakan. By passing through the Mount Kinabalu National Parc we could unfortunately not see Mount Kinabalu that hided behind some huge clouds. The bus journey was nice anyway and after 6 comfortable hours we arrived in Sandakan.
We stayed in a very cheap place to save some cash and indulged in some delicious and really cheap seafood. The next morning (christmas day) we went another 2 hours by bus and finally by boat till we finally reached our simple lodge at Kinabatangan (near Kampung Bilik). We went immediately on a 2 hours boat trip which was amazing. We saw long tailed macaques, proboscis monkey, hornbills, kingfishers, lemurs and a lot of other birds. We
celebrated christmas evening with Ryan (a canadian who works in Vietnam), Lee (an american who works in Manila), Gerda (a german who lives in the Netherlands) and Heinz (a german) and some cans of Tiger beer. We even went on a night walk through the jungle with a lot of rain (it is monsoon season and we are in the rain forest!). The next day we did some more boat trips and a 3 hours hike to spot more animals. The famous pigmy elephant however must be so small, we could not see it ;-). What a shame! It was a nice time anyway. Just in the evening of our 2nd day the lodge was invaded by hordes of tourists. Our small group was just lucky to leave - we had such a nice and quite time on christmas and theses hordes of organised tourists were simply annoying. Back in Sandakan we did our normal things while travelling: organizing the next days, washing our clothes (they were trenched by mosquito repellent) and eating lots of nice seafood and hanging out with some locals. Wow, the crabs in Sandakan are simply amazing! Our next stop will be Semporna. We are off to some serious snorkelling in one of the top spotsof the world: Sipadan.