Borneo, Malaysia Day 3: Sandakan Rainforest

We drove for six hours and if you know me you knew I slept mostly the entire time. We stopped at a side road store and got refreshments and used the restroom. Here, Ally found the best soy milk she has ever tasted and from then on she tried to find it again the whole vacation.

Close to our stop, we saw a macaque monkey cross the road. We didn’t catch it in time to get photos but we saw it.

            When we got to our destination, we took a jetty to our hotel; The BILIT Rainforest Lodge. We had time to each lunch and then take a little nap and explore the area. The lodge was literally in the middle of the rainforest and I loved it. I would like to go back there. The lodges were set up on stilts and there was a walkway all around the place. We walked the boardwalk and then went to the back where there was a jungle trail. We immediately say monkeys’ drinking water from the puddle but they ran quick when they heard us. We also saw elephant dung and are hopes got really high for seeing wild life on the river cruises we would be taking the next two days.

            That evening around 4pm, after a short nap, we were scheduled to go on a river cruise. On the cruise we saw macaques, hornbills, proboscis, silver languors, and pygmy elephants. We were excited to see the elephants because weren’t expecting to at all. The siting was only a glimpse of a mother and baby in the tall grass. We waited around for about 20 minutes to see if the elephants would come down to the water more. They didn’t, but while watching we spotted that the baby had a tracking collar which is a good sign of conservation of the elephants. The cruise for the night came to an end and we headed back to the cabins. We were in for a surprise. We had sworn that we shut and locked our door but something still broke in. We assumed it was one of the black squirrels we had spotted earlier. The animal dragged our food out to the porch, got into the sugar and tea and had it all over the floor, and knocked down our bathing suits that were hanging outside to dry. Later, we found out that the sock that was on our porch belonged to the people we were on the tour with. The animal had carried the sock all the way to our lodge.

            That night we had dinner and took another walk around the boardwalk. We saw an owl in the trees but it was too dark to get a good look at him. On top of finding all these wild animals, the lodge had many cats and kittens and of I became friends with them. We even had a Siamese cat sit with us on the porch that night as we played cards.