May 18, 2022: Sabah & Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Author: J)

Our final day in Borneo was the only one without an early wakeup time. Much to P’s disappointment, we did not request a final river safari, knowing that we were in for a late night. Instead, we slept until a reasonable hour – the sun was up and everything — before heading down for our final breakfast. It was another British style meal featuring eggs, baked beans, and the like. Our boat back to Sandakan did not leave until 9:30, so there was time to savor our food.

Around 9, one of the restaurant staff told us we could board our boat. We hadn’t been given any instructions about check out, so I handed our room key to one of the restaurant staff and we headed to the dock. We were promptly sent back to the restaurant as the boat was not, in fact, ready for passengers. About 20 minutes later, we saw other guests boarding the boat and went back to the dock. This time, we were permitted to board.

As we made our way up the river, our guide received a call. The lodge staff had not been told that we had a large account credit because of our cancelled cave tour. As a result, they believed we had skipped out on our bill. I explained to the guide that we had an account credit worth more than twice the amount we had charged to our room – and requested that the surplus be distributed to the lodge staff as tips. I am hopeful that despite the confusion and disorganization at checkout, the surplus credit made it to the staff. We had already tipped our guides, but the rest of the staff was equally deserving of tips. (As an aside, we seemed to be the only guests who tipped the guides during our stay. While we understand that tipping is not customary in Malaysia – indeed, it was listed as “optional” in our Sukau booking confirmation – we were mindful of the fact that much of the lodge staff was out of work for a good portion of the pandemic).

The remainder of the boat ride was very enjoyable. Between the perfect weather and the extra sleep I had gotten, I was able to stay awake for the whole time. And since I had slept through our voyage to the lodge, everything seemed new to me on the return trip. I particularly enjoyed bouncing along as we crossed the sea on our way back to the harbor in Sandakan. The sun, the spray of the water, and the mild thrills of a speed boat ride made for a fun final leg of our trip.

In Sandakan, we docked at the now familiar boat club and, after a comfort stop at the restrooms, we piled into a bus for one last tour in Borneo. Our plan for the day was to visit the Rainforest Discovery Centre and Sandakan Memorial Park before our 6:30 pm flight to Kuala Lumpur. If there is any silver lining to having to put off our trip for two years, it is that we were able to partake in these activities. In 2020, P was a first grader and we were wary of keeping him up past his bedtime, so we booked an early flight to KL. By 2022, P was routinely staying up later than D and I, so the later flight seemed more doable.

On our way to the Rainforest Discovery Centre, we chatted with the other travelers on the bus: a couple from California and sisters from England. The Californians had just come from KL. “There’s so much to do there, but it’s all closed,” they told us. This put me into a panic. Were we going to spend our two days in KL confined to our hotel room? I posted a question to the TripAdvisor forums and was quickly reassured that life was carrying on as normal in KL. (And, at the risk of spoilers, we were able to personally visit and enjoy some of the attractions that the couple claimed were closed. The moral of this story is, I guess, never trust someone you meet on a tour bus. Ask the folks on the TA forums instead).

Our final meal in Borneo was at a restaurant near the Rainforest Discovery Center. This was my least favorite meal of the trip. I ordered a vegetable curry, which was bland and undercooked. D and P ordered noodles, which were better than the curry, but still nothing special. After lunch, the couple from California headed to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, while we joined the English sisters for a walk in the Rainforest Discovery Centre.

I had no idea what to expect from this stop. The description in our tour itinerary made it sound like a zoo. It was, instead, a park set in primary jungle. We started out by visiting the Canopy Walkway. I was a little nervous because the Canopy Walkway was exactly what it sounded like and I am usually afraid of heights. Fortunately, my uninterrupted string of not being a wimp on this trip continued and I was able to enjoy the walk with nary a panic attack. This was our first experience seeing primary jungle in Borneo and I was amazed at how much taller the emergent layer of trees was in this area when compared to the secondary jungle around Sukau.

We weren’t far along the walk when we noticed an unpleasant smell that our guide quickly identified as orangutan urine. Sure enough, there was an orangutan in the treetops next to the walkway; we were at eye level! Because the orang did not have any sort of tracking collar or tags, the guide was confident that it was a wild born animal. We spent some time watching and photographing the orang while our guide chatted with some local families who were out enjoying the park. His enthusiasm for sharing his love of his country’s wildlife was inspiring. Despite all of the deforestation that we saw on our trip, it does seem like there are reasons to be hopeful.

After our walk, we visited the small museum at the Centre, which had interesting exhibits on local animals and plants, including a station where you could smell spices that came from the jungle. Then we loaded back into the bus and headed to Sandakan Memorial Park. Sandakan Memorial Park sits on the sight of the former Sandakan camp, a Japanese POW camp during World War II. Most of the Allied prisoners at the camp died, many in Sandakan death marches, a series of forced marches designed to prevent the liberation of prisoners as Allied forces advanced on Borneo. Because a handful of prisoners who escaped camp survived long enough to be rescued, the museum in the park contains first-hand accounts of what the prisoners endured. They are difficult to read. The park outside the museum is peaceful and beautifully landscaped, which allowed for some reflection after learning about the camp and the death marches. I was glad we had the opportunity to visit, although I think that passing on the experience when P was younger was probably the right call. At 9, he was disturbed by what he read, but had enough maturity to process it.

When we had finished at the Memorial Park, it was time to say goodbye to Borneo. Our guide dropped us at the airport where we had a long wait for our flight. It was so early that we could not yet check-in or go through security. The departures area in Sandakan airport does not have adequate seating for the number of passengers it handles, but it does have a nice selection of places to buy snacks. We treated ourselves to ice cream; it had been several days since our last dessert, after all.

We checked in for our flight at the first opportunity and headed through security to our gate where it was time for more waiting. We passed some of that time by visiting the two small gift shops and picking out a Borneo magnet. To my surprise, the clerk followed us out of the store. I was puzzled until I saw that P had a cat figurine in his hand. “You can’t take that out of the store! It’s stealing!” I screeched. P looked at me blankly for a minute; he had been so excited to show the cat to D – a cat lover – that he hadn’t considered the possibility he was committing a crime. We quickly returned the purloined cat and apologized, then returned to our seats.

What followed is a cautionary tale that I hope will spare others from the near heart attack I experienced. When boarding began, we were sent to a short line for families with children, and good thing too. We showed our tickets to the gate attendant, and we were told that we could not board because we had not cleared immigration. Apparently, it is necessary to go through immigration when traveling from the two Malaysian states on Borneo to peninsular Malaysia. That we would need to go through immigration for travel within the same country is something that never occurred to me. And because we had arrived at the airport so early, immigration wasn’t yet open when we went through security. Fortunately, immigration was just outside the gate area and the line wasn’t too long. Knowing that our plane was already boarding made the wait seem interminable, though.

When we arrived back at our gate, we were able to jump on the end of the boarding line. With a potential crisis averted, we took our seats. Malaysia Airlines gets additional thumbs up for this flight. Our very affordable ticket price included a hot meal and seatback entertainment. My favorite part of the entertainment was that any bad words in the films were dubbed over, but with words chosen to match the actor’s mouth movements, whether they made sense or not. Kudos to the crazy “son of an itch” [actual dialogue] who came up with that idea.

Of course, it was not all sunshine and bad movie dubs on our flight; we also had crying babies to contend with.  On this flight, there were not one, but three babies crying, and they were positioned to give us a true surround sound experience. I chalk this up to the timing of the flight, which had us mid-flight at the baby witching hour. (If you are wondering, we did fly with P when he was a baby. Mercifully, he never cried on a plane, something that subjects you to intense judgment in the US but appeared to be no big deal for any of the passengers on our flight to KL).

Upon arrival in KL, we had a very long wait for our checked bags and then a fairly long ride to our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental. Once there, we were whisked into the lobby where we stood out like sweaty, stinky, hiking boot-clad sore thumbs in a lobby full of beautiful people dressed for a night on the town. We made our way to our room as quickly as possible where we were greeted with a big, comfy bed and an excellent view.

May 17, 2022: Kinabatangan River, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo (Author: J)

As I mentioned – due to attraction closures — our day 11 itinerary was fairly similar to our day 10 itinerary. That meant an early wakeup for another wildlife watching cruise. Most of the travelers in our boat were interested in looking for monkeys this morning, so our guide set out for a branch of the river that usually yields good monkey sightings. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that our wildlife viewing would be limited to a few swiftlets and hornbills. An area palm oil plantation had set fires (not to burn down more rainforest, our guide assured us) and the smoke had sent any wildlife in the area running. I couldn’t blame them; the smoke smell made for an unpleasant journey, like sailing through a barbeque grill.

After our disappointing morning safari, we headed back to the lodge for breakfast. This morning, we had a Western style breakfast with eggs, beans, hashbrowns and the like. Since most of the items on the buffet were vegetarian friendly, we did not receive a special veg option.

We had a long gap between breakfast and our next activity, an evening safari. When we received notice that our cave tour had been cancelled, I was pretty worried about how we would fill the day. It turned out not to be a concern, even with the pool closed. We began by spending some time on the back deck of our cabin where we watched various birds and squirrels. When the mosquitos chased us back inside, we decided to take a walk on the boardwalk trails around the lodge. Just a few steps up the path, we noticed a swaying tree. Remembering what we had learned about how orangutans move through the forest, we staked out the area. Sure enough, a young adult male orang was foraging just off the boardwalk. We watched him for a while and then completed our loop of the boardwalk trail. On our way back to our cabin, we ran into one of the nature guides who was out looking for orangs and we were able to point him in the right direction.

Back in the cabin, I did the lion’s share of the unpleasant chore of repacking our suitcases. We then decided to head down to lunch early so that we could visit the gift shop for some final souvenir shopping. Because we still had a large account credit, we decided to splurge and buy a mug and two figurines. (Somehow, we got these fragile items home safely).

After lunch, we headed back to the cabin. We weren’t there long before we heard something in the trees outside. We grabbed our cameras and went to investigate. We quickly spotted a group of tourists looking up, so we did the logical thing and joined them. It turned out that they were watching two different troops of monkeys. The first was a troop of macaques playing in the trees. Those monkeys were responsible for the sounds we heard; from time to time, they came down from the trees to scamper across the cabin rooftops.

The second group was more unusual; it was a family of langurs being followed by a lone male proboscis monkey. The langur family was pretty adept at evading the proboscis monkey, making it hard to know exactly how many monkeys we were observing. But we did see at least two adults, one juvenile, and the piece de resistance, a baby. Baby langurs look like something out of a children’s show (specifically, Teletubbies). They have bright orange fur that comes to a point at the top of their heads. Try not to squeal when you see them. (Squealing is a sure way to scare off a troop of langurs). We spent a long time tracking the langurs and trying unsuccessfully to get an orange baby photo. Unfortunately, the proboscis monkey made that difficult because he kept the langurs on the run.

A guide later told us that the proboscis monkey seemed to be trying to install himself as leader of the langur troop. The langurs – understandably – were having none of it. Langurs live in small family groups of a mom, dad, and offspring, so the proboscis monkey’s behavior was a little like a random man showing up at your house and telling your kids that he’s their new dad.

The ability to explore on your own – something that is not feasible at every ecolodge — pushed Sukau to the top of the list of ecolodges we have visited. We tracked monkeys for most of the afternoon, stopping only because it was time for tea, followed by our evening cruise. The difference between our evening and morning cruises was night and day, both literally and figuratively. We saw multiple large troops of macaques, and smaller troops of proboscis monkeys and langurs. The highlight was spotting an adult langur with red fur. Sightings of the red morph of the dusky langur are rare; our guide’s excitement at finding one was palpable.

After our evening cruise, we enjoyed our final dinner at Sukau. It was tasty, as usual; we all agreed that we would miss the food when we left the lodge. P and I ended the evening with a final night cruise.