After a bumpy ride back from the Kinabatangan river including a broken down bus we were dropped off by our driver in what appeared to be the outskirts of Lahad Datu with a friend from uncle Tan's. We spent an hour or so wandering around the streets searching for a hotel in the blistering heat through what was clearly 'the wrong side of town' before finding an odd hotel where the staff seemed to be very confused by our presence. After our long search for a hotel w...

We had heard about Uncle Tan's wildlife adventures from cousin Alice (thank you!) before leaving the UK and had also heard lots of good things from other travellers - our favourite being from a couple we met on mt Kinabalu that had woken up to find a 2m python in their room! So even though we were a bit stiff from the climb we headed straight to the ops base in Sepilok the next day. After a visit to watch the feeding time at the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary (partl...

When we initially planned out our trip to SE Asia one of the main reasons for coming to Borneo was to climb mt Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in SE Asia at 4095.2m above sea level. The climb takes 2 days with the first day spent with an ascent to Laban Rata, the hostel at 3200m high. We arrived in good time after just over 4 hours of trekking and had an icy cold shower before an early night in order to get some sleep before our early rise the next mornin...

Having woken before dawn to catch our bus to Kualur Lumpur airport we finally checked into our hotel in Kota Kinabalu on Borneo Island at around 4pm - the room was great and included all mod cons such as hot water, tv, kettle, tea bags and best of all clean linen - something we had forgotten about since coming to Malaysia. After a quick rest we set off to explore the place, unfortunately we had pre-booked an out of town hotel in preparation for our walk so there ...

Having enjoyed the fresh air and trekking of the Cameron highlands we thought it best we head to Malaysia's capital, Kualor Lumpur and our flight to borneo before the celebrations for the Chinese new year started. Staying in the heart of china town we expected great things of the area with lots of fire crackers, fireworks and activity, in reality most of the Chinese left the city the day we arrived and we soon discovered the Chinese people celebrate their new ye...