Stop 8; Sukau and the Kinabatangan river!

Sukau lies to the south east of Sandakan and Sepilok.  The jungle and forests have been left more of less intact due to the vast river networks and inaccessibility those rivers inherently pose.  This makes travel a bit of a bind also.  Luckily a local entrepreneur was on hand to help intrepid explorers like us... And make a pretty penny himself!  Not that we begrudge him that, he has a very simple side business.  At 6am Mr Choy drives his daughter to school in Sandakan and at 1 pm he drives her home to Sukau.  Phone him direct, book pick up from your accommodation, and you can join him in his 7 seater for the equivalent of a tenner a head.  I think he's the richest man in Sukau, he certainly dresses the best and has the only new vehicle in the village!

Sukau is a tiny village that sits along a section of riverbank on the Kinabatangan river.  Its simple and poor, but the villagers are self sufficient and a make extra money providing lodgings and guided river tours for tourists.  We chose our lodge on Mr Choy's recommendation and we were pleased we did.  We had a private bungalow each (our new travel buddies Jon and Caitlin in one, Bex and I the other), 3 hot meals a day, unlimited tea and coffee and 4 boat trips and 2 hikes (1 of each at night) with a proper ranger.

We threw down our bags and jumped straight in the boat for our first boat trip in the late afternoon leading into dusk.  Long tailed macaques and proboscis monkeys were clear for all to see in the first few minutes travel and shortly after we had our first crazy experience.

We caught sight of a splinter group of Borneo pygmy elephants, including mothers and babies, (our ranger believes the parade to be ~50 strong) feeding on the lush folliage of the rivers edge.  It was a long time before we moved off and we saw little other than more of the same monkeys and a few hornbills, but in all our opinions the entire visit was already worthwhile (and it was only dinner time on the first evening!).

[I later read that official estimates for Borneo pygmy elephants in the wild number only 1500]

After dinner we headed out on a night boat trip; "but its raining!" the ranger exclaimed when all four of us heartily agreed to carry on as it started to rain; he was clearly expecting, and hoping for, a negative response.  The rain seemed to convince the crocodiles to avoid the river but we saw some buffy-faced owls and had amazing up close experiences with stork-billed and blue earred kingfishers; with kingfishers being one of my favourite bird species this blew my mind as much as the elephants! Epic.

Next morning our already blown minds were rocked again.  It turned out a properly wild orangutan and her juvenile daughter had decided to pass threw the outskirts if the village... So basically straight over our accommodation, incredible!

Overall the trip was all we ever hoped for from Borneo wrapped up in to a few days; we went on to see 5 species of hornbill, bats, crocodiles, a pine civit, Jerdons bazas, swiftlets and probably even more that I can't recall!  We left very happy and headed back all the way to Kota Kinabalu before reluctantly leaving Malaysia and moving on to Indonesia.