Note: I'm finding the location info in my photos a real bonus for easily navigating to the "where in the world was I when I saw that?".
Haven't taken photos of the difference, but KK has the feel of a city of it's size; infrastructure, development and big buildings. The retail and residential building (pictured above) our Airbnb is in is a case and point.
Interestingly Sandakan didn't have the same feel despite being similar populations. Technically these are on different sides of the island, KK is on the South China Sea and Sandakan is on the Sulu Sea and maybe the relative level of development reflects this. Not sure what I'm trying to say here about it except they are different enough that I was surprised to find they had same populations.
Anyway the main reason we came to Borneo was to see Jungle and Animals, not discuss its cities. We landed seven nights ago in Sandakan and went to Sepilok which is on the edge of a protected area of jungle where conservation efforts for Orangutan and Sun Bears (and general conservation) have been established. Sepilok is also the staging point for trips into the Jungle areas (best accessed by river), so that's what we were there for!
We opted for the two-night jungle experience staying in a very basic lodge on the edge of an oxbow lake formed off the side of the Kinabatangan river in a protected jungle area. It was hot, humid, basic, and fantastic.
We saw a bunch of animals, the herons, proboscis monkeys and the old man crocodile were my favorites, and while we didn't see some of the bucket-list critters, we did get bitten by fire ants, stung by a scorpion, nibbled on by mosquitoes, itched up by heat rashes and...
Annoyed by another tourist in the group. It's strange how other humans can colour an experience. Objectively we all had the same quality experience but this particular person fell in the glass half-full (more like empty actually) side of things and wasn't afraid to say it. At length, all the time.
I'm super impressed that my kids didn't allow this to reinforce any doubts and discomforts they were having. In fact it seemed to cement our whole family's resolve that the trip was a fantastic experience. Group dynamics are interesting and there is definitely some merit in a common 'enemy' that isn't in the family group!
I have very few creature photos to share that look great. Most of the photos do well to remind me of what I saw looking through the binoculars but are otherwise terrible! However this tree frog came out great taken on the night walk so will have to serve as the placeholder for the other photos (and videos) posted in the shared Google photos folder linked earlier.
Speaking of things that came out great on the night walk, Dixie got 'bitten' by something on the walk which we all assumed was a fire ant a critter that was expected and which had taken to my ankle a bit earlier in the walk (they hurt quite a bit). It wasn't till we washed her trousers back in KK that we shook them out and guess what fell out?
Anyway, she didn't die, and isn't particularly affected by the idea of a scorpion crawling up her trousers leg so that's a bonus!
The return to Sepilok after the jungle stay was extremely comfortable and delicious. We saw a young orangutan at the recovery centre (there's a great video of the main encounter here) and then it was time to head to KK.
We've been in KK three nights enjoying a different small city and catching up on delicious food (that's the night market we ate at twice pictured above) and some clothes washing. Today we head about an hour or two north up the coast to do some diving. Fun!
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