If You Visit Sandakan…

Despite many visits and much time spent in peninsular Malaysia, until this summer we’d never visited east Malaysia – made up of two states, Sabah and Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. But they’re definitely worth visiting in particular for the unique wildlife that’s found there. We spent a few days near Sandakan, in the northeast part of Sabah, hoping to see some of the species the area is known for – orangutans, probiscus monkeys, hornbills, sunbears, and others.

I wasn’t able to bring my actual camera on this trip, sadly, so these images are sadly just from my phone. That said, it’s amazing to get close enough to a wild hornbill (below) that even a phone can get a usable image. We did also see some wild probiscus monkeys, but even the serious folks with 600mm lenses that are much longer than what I own didn’t have an easy time at those distances.

The main point of this post, however, isn’t that you should go to Sandakan. It’s that if you do, then you should definitely reach out to Christopher, who drove us around in the day we spent near Sandakan city. He picked us up from our accommodation in the morning, brought us to the main nearby attractions – the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center, Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center, Rainforest Discovery Center, and Labuk Bay Probiscus Sanctuary, but also found great local spots for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, took us to some marvelous views from a hilltop Buddhist temple, and showed us a few other nature things we’d definitely not have noticed. Plus, he corrected rather foolish elements of our original plan that would have missed key feeding times or run into other issues.

There are a number of packages on sites like Tripadvisor that offer day trips like this, but that are essentially just middlemen that probably keep half or more of what you’re paying, with little guarantee of who the actual provider will be. Christopher was excellent, and I’m just lucky that I trusted some random Facebook post I ran into via Google Search (I don’t even have a Facebook account) who similarly shared that they had a great time with Christopher (though in much fewer words). There’s no guarantee he’ll be available on the dates of your trip, and he said he’s likely to retire in several years, but I can’t recommend him enough!

You can reach Christopher on WhatsApp at +60 16-837 6629.