On our way back from Australia, we spent five days in Sabah’s
coastal city of Kota Kinabalu. It was our first chance to see the fantastic
beaches and to do some shopping.
During our stay we visited Tanjung Aru beach on the mainland
and two of the small islands close by. With KK being on the West of Sabah, we
headed to Tanjung Aru beach to watch the amazing sun set, stroll along the sand
and to dip our toes in the Chinese Sea, the beach is very popular with tourists
in the evening due to its great sunset, and it didn’t disappoint. Along the beach we also saw a washed up jelly fish and thousands of tiny crabs that dug out their burrows and left tiny balls of sand all around their entrance.


On our visit to Sapi Island we were joined by Gwen, a fellow
Cardiff university placement student. Here we spent the morning snorkelling in
the shallow waters, looking at the diversity of fish and corals. It was too hot
to lie out on the beach, so in the early afternoon after a few hours in the
water, taking pictures of the fish and attempting underwater selfies, we headed
back to the mainland to assess our tan lines and my burnt nose!


Naomi and I spent one afternoon at the Sabah National Museum, despite mixed reviews on the internet, the museum was great and had an exhibition of Roy Knowle’s work. The ‘Sacred Legacy’ exhibition contained photographs of people working in all areas Sabah from 1940’s to 1960’s, it showed young children dancing, women harvesting the crops and men building their houses along with royal visits and military gatherings. The rest of the museum was spilt into sections showing the military history, the wildlife of Sabah, the costumes and instruments of Sabah and a rather creepy section on head hunters, mainly consisting of skulls and killing instruments! Naomi and I were very surprised to come across two Banteng skulls displayed in one of the sections, but it once again reiterated to use the prize value of these beasts. The wildlife section contained replicas or stuffed versions of many of the animals of Sabah, including a very realistic looking Clouded leopard and rhino and super cute elephant calf.
The museum also had grounds, which contained an Islamic mosque
and replicas of traditional wooden houses from all different areas of Sabah.
Despite the paths between the sites of the houses being slightly run down and
the layout of the grounds somewhat confusing the houses and museum of Islamic
culture were great to see.
In KK we continued to make the most of normal food, having a
great meal of pie and chips in an Irish pub on the water front and other
restaurants where continental food could be eaten. We met Gwen for dinner on a
few nights and also joined her on the Friday night when she met up with the
Couch surfers at Borneo back packers. It was great to meet so many people who
were all in Sabah for different reasons, from just visiting to working as
engineers getting electricity into the small villages around Sabah. It was here
that we met Gwen’s friend Liam, who turned out to be from North Wales, he was
working in Ulu Papar a series of indigenous villages in Sabah, that are
threatened by prospects of a mega dam being built to provide water for the city.
He is also helping to put electric into these communities villages and was
running the Borneo half marathon on the Sunday morning.
Naomi and I dug out our flags that were still packed from
Australia and hung them out over the barrier. Liam came in just under 2 hours
and thankfully before the heat of the day and was surprised to see Gwen, Naomi
and I on the finishing straight waving our flags, it was the least we could do
considering they had just run 20 kms in 30 degree heat! As we continued to
cheer runners through we were staggered to see some of the juniors coming in
from the 10km race wearing only flip flops, to top this off they had just run a
sub one hour 10km.. crazy!
Our remaining time in KK was spent meandering around the
shops where we found lots of nice gifts to take home, although the majority of
shops either sell phones or phone accessories and out here hello kitty is a
teenage and adult character instead of a childs!
On the Sunday evening we caught
the night bus from KK back to Lahad Datu, arriving at 3.30am! After walking
back up to the house, we unpacked and headed back to bed for a few hours of
horizontal sleep without banging our heads on the window!
Before we headed off on
expedition we went back to Danau Girang Field Centre for a few days. The field
centre was involved in a land recovery act, where a local plantation had
encrouched on a patch of government owned land. The local people were fighting
to reclaim this 20 hectare piece of land and turn it back to forest. On our
second day at Danau Girang we joined Ben, the head of DG and some of the PhD
students, as the assistant tourism, culture and environment Minister spoke at
an event and then officially started the digging up of the palm oil trees. The
mini digger then continued to work, removing the rest of the palm oil trees, as
we began planting tree seedlings as part of the restoration project. After this
we were invited to a traditional Malaysian meal, where we were served rice
wrapped in a banana leaf and delicious meat and fish dishes, followed by a
sweet, green coloured, custard like pudding that looked interesting but tasted
great! The whole day was extremely successful and, hopefully, will lead to
other encroaching plantation being caught and further action being taken across
the state.
After a busy few hours at the
plantation event we headed back to the field centre and in the evening Naomi
and I joined 2 of the French boys and some of the staff for a night walk. The
night walk started well as we saw some proboscis monkeys and a malay civet,
along with many frogs and far too many ants. About two hours into the walk we came
across two tarsier, Naomi and I were very excited as this was our first tarsier
sighting and there were two of them! The next thing we knew the tarsier had
been caught by the Malaysian guys, and we were ringing back to the field centre
to let them know we were bringing them back, for data to be collected and to
put satellite collars on them. Having spent very little time at DG Naomi and I
had no idea where on the trails we were, so we just followed as the boys
hastily made their way back to the buildings. To keep the tarsiers calm, they
wrapped one in my hoody and another in a t-shirt before placing them in bags
back in the lab. Unfortunately the satellite collar was not working so after
taking samples from the very grumpy female and very quite male the boys headed
back out along the trail to release them where we found them.
On the Sunday we headed out in
the boat with Danica, to find one of her female proboscis monkeys using a
satellite tracker. The large group of monkeys were in the trees near the
riverbank and from the boat Danica could download the data of the monkeys
movements from the previous weeks.
On the Monday we said our goodbyes
to everyone at the field centre before heading to Sandakan and then back to
Lahad Datu to finish preparing for expedition. In Sandakan we took my plant
specimens to the Herbarium for identification, after spending hours carefully
collecting these specimens, drying them and mounting them, leaving them all at
the herbarium was a bit sad. Whilst in Sandakan we also picked up the new
mattresses, that were finally in stock, after ordering them in February, comfy
beds in the house.. yay!