Kota Kinabalu and Sepilok

Our Borneo trip started in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah’s largest city and seemingly home to the most gridlocked traffic to be found anywhere.

It was coming up to Hari Raya, the Malaysian holiday marking the end of Ramadan, and people were out buying in preparation for a two-day public holiday later in the week. We walked to the Sunday Market for a look around and were enveloped in the heat and crowds. It was even worse in the local shopping centre.

We stayed on the waterfront overlooking the fishing fleet, a bunch of somewhat tired-looking boats that never seemed to leave port, although occasionally a couple would do a kind of dance around each other and the the other moored vessels before pulling up somewhere else in the fleet.

Our proximity to the fishing port also meant that going outside meant not only hitting the heat and humidity after our over-chilled hotel, but also the smell - a mixture of the odours of fish both fresh and dried.

We went out to the Mari Mari Cultural Village for some insights into the ethnic tribes of Borneo and came back having tasted rice wine and rubbery pancakes and seen fire-making, cooking, blow pipe dart firing, tribal chief meeting and a cultural dance show that was pleasurably brief. It was a good afternoon; the large numbers of visitors were shuffled through with the precision of a Swiss Watch and the female guide was energetic and personable.

A flight with Firefly to Sandakan - $A35 each, 40 minutes flying, 1 hour 10 minutes queueing - brought us to our next destination.

We stopped at the War Memorial Park, commemorating the death marches that started in Sandakan and ended with the deaths of 2,434 prisoners of war. Only six survived. There isn’t much there other than a nice walk, a plinth and a few bits of ruined machinery, but it was a very poignant reminder of the human capacity for cruelty.

We reflected on the death march as we drove out to Sepilok, where tomorrow we will investigate the orang utan. In the meantime, we have enjoyed some lizard spotting and a pleasant dinner overlooking the lagoon.Read more