Travel 015 : Sandakan, Sabah : 18 Jun 2012 : Kinabantan River

Today we will be checking out and heading towards the Kinabantan river.  Our plan is to self-drive all the way to the Kinabantan village, meet the bus (guide) and follow him to reach the resort in Bilit that we booked for one night stay.  It is about 80 km drive to the Kinabantan village.  We started at about 10am, visited the Sandakan curry house, had breakfast and packed some food in case we cannot get anything of our like as we are heading into the remote villages.  With food assured for the rest of the day, we drove all the way to the Kinabantan village by passing through Sepilok and stoping for a gas fill.  Reached at the designated meeting point at about 12.30pm and waited for our guide bus that comes at 1pm.  While driving behind the bus toward the Bilit village, we had to take a detour from the main road (as heavy road works took place) and had to drive through unpaved path for about 5km to finally reach the Bilit village.  Our resort is across the river and we cannot drive our car directly there.  So, we parked our car at this side with a house in the village.  A 20MYR will do for an overnight parking.  From here we took one-minute boat ride to cross the river to our resort.

The resort itself gives a bit of a jungle feel and more so when we see a small snake on the roof of our room near the entrance.  But unlike the other places we stayed, this resort is more targeting the wallet of tourists.  So much so that anything you want to use costs money.  At their "reception" where they had a briefing, one can see everywhere price tag handing (internet access cost, PC time cost, telephone call costs etc).  There is no mobile phone reception and I doubt if they purposefully put jammers.  Within an hour, we were off for our first wildlife watching on a boat.  This is only the best part of the stay at this "resort". 

On this day evening, we could able to spot elephants, lot of monkeys and some horn-bills.  There supposed to be a jungle night walk after this.  But, I had a very difficult time getting information like whether is it safe for my young children and the time was short.  So, we skipped the jungle walk.  Surprisingly, the dinner (and next day breakfast) had some vegetarian options. with our dinner, we retired back to our rooms for the day.

Travel 014 : Sandakan, Sabah : 17 Jun 2012 : Sandakan

Sandakan has a street market that gathers every Sunday and is very next to the hotel we stayed.  I was looking forward to that market as it will be a time for us to buy many things and souvenirs.  During my last visit to Kota-Kinabalu, I bought a lot of pearl necklaces and ear-rings and so thought my wife will be freaking out in this market.  So in the morning, we stepped out of the hotel and looked at the market.  It was a big disappointment for me.  Nothing compared to the Chiang-Mai's street market and not even comparing to the Kota-Kinabalu's street market.  It is so small and we buy nothing from the market. 

Later we took the car and visited the Agnes Keith house.  This time we visited the house and not the tea house.  The house is well maintained and very informative. 









 
It is our elder daughter's birthday today and we came to know from internet that there is an Hindu temple in Sandakan.  As we don't have much to see in the city for the rest of the day, we drove to see the temple (though the plan is to go inside only in the evening) and drive back and visited the water-village.  From there, we went to a long drive along the coastal road and return back to the hotel. The rest of the afternoon went in walking along the coastal road and buying some small things.

In the evening, we visited the Vinayaga temple.  It is interesting to visit this temple at a remote part of Borneo.  There is no crowd except for a couple of families.  Speaking to one of the elder couple, we get to know about Sandakan curry house which is supposed to have Indian vegetarian food in Indian style.  So far in Sandakan, we manage to get only prata and dal that come close to Indian vegetarian.  So, we drove to the Sandakan curry house and glad to find thosai amoung other Indian dishes.  I had a nice chat with the owner and had nice Indian food for the first time after we started from our home.  We pinned this place to visit later for tomorrow and day-after.