Sandakan and Orangutans
A five hour bus trip got us to Sandakan the second largest city in Malay Borneo. Most of the tourists opt for resorts out in the jungle or on the coast so the city does not seem to have too many touristy types like ourselves ambling about. We spent a few days here. We discovered a great Indian restaurant and ate a lot of meals there.
Our last day here we took a city bus out to the orangutan rehabilitation center. In Borneo they pronounce it oohrang oohtang. In Malay it means jungle man with long arms and smelly armpits.
These apes share 94 % of our DNA. I must admit that of all the apes and monkeys that we have seen orangutans are the most fascinating to watch and observe.
Anyways these apes have been rescued from the wild. They are rehabilitated and if possible returned to the wild. They live in a very big patch of jungle and if they so choose they will come to a feeding platform where the hoardes of tourists wildly snap their photos.
We were fortunate enough to see them in the wild on the Kinabatangan River.
