This night food market was the best place to find fresh seafood. The little restaurant stalls lay out the catch of the day and cook it up in front of you. There was a rather large selection of seafood including lobster, mussels, cuttlefish and shrimp. Some stalls also offered barbecued chicken and other mystery meats..
By far, Aaran's favourite meal was this delicious laksa which he ate every morning for breakfast (just like the locals). It's a kind of noodle soup made with coconut milk, chicken stock, red curry paste and usually topped with cubes of bread.
Next, we made our way to Mount Kinabalu National Park which was just a few hours east of the city. We crammed into a van with about 8 other people and paid the driver a few dollars. The view of the foggy mountains on the way was spectacular. It was a bit less spectacular when we got out of the van and had to find our guest house on the side of the highway in the rain. Thankfully we had left our main luggage at our hostel and only had small bags with us.
One of the things to see in the National Park is this Giant Malaysian Pitcher Plant. It's a carnivorous plant that kills insects by trapping them in a sticky liquid that then drowns them.
We were then off to the Sandakan region to see some wildlife. Before going on our tour we stopped at the Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre. This is where they bring orangutans that are rescued from the palm plantations. It was very confronting to see the miles and miles of plantations that seemed to blanket Borneo. In the past few years the government has put an end to deforestation in an attempt to save the rainforest and its animals. There is still a lot of work required to win back the land that these apes need to survive on their own.
We then headed to the Uncle Tan's Operation Base to start our jungle tour. They picked us up in a van along with a couple from South Africa and a girl from Vancouver. After a 2-3 hour drive we arrived in a small village where we got on a boat with no roof in the pouring rain. We had to put our backpacks in garbage bags and give up all hope of being dry for the next 3 days.
It was a long 1 hour boat ride up the river to our camp. Thankfully we had bought ponchos on the way which managed to keep at least most of our torsos dry. Once the rain stopped we were able to see the surrounding jungle and most importantly hear all the wonderful jungle sounds!
This was our home on a swamp for the 3 days of our trip. The water rose by more than 1 meter while we were there... making the toilet block inaccessible... I won't give any more details about that! Thankfully our hut had recently been raised by the camp staff so our bed stayed dry. We also had mosquito nets that protected us from the army of insects that were all around us.
One of the mornings we went on a jungle trek. It was incredibly hot and humid but we had to stay covered up to stop from being carried away by mosquitoes. We saw an orangutan nest but no oranguatans. We were a bit disappointed but then we figured it's probably a good thing for them to stay away from humans.
Our favourite part of the tour was watching the Bornean Gibbon swing from branch to branch. We were shocked at how human-like they looked when the walked on the branches, swigging their arms at the sides.
While we would have loved to see wild orangutans we felt like the whole experience was worth it. Waking up to the sounds of the jungle was an amazing feeling and we were lucky enough to be with a great group of people. On the day we left a German couple arrived to start their tour but took one look at the flooded camp and left on the next boat!
We were happy to be back in Kota Kinabalu to take nice (cold ) showers and get all our stuff dry. Aaran had one last Laksa and we were back on the road. On the bus to take us to the airport and off to Singapore!
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