Sandakan, Kinabatangan River, Gomantong Caves, Malaysian Borneo (February, 2014)

We stayed 3 nights at the Four Points by Sheraton Sandakan.  We originally redeemed 3,000 Starwood Preferred Guest points per night for basic rooms, but upon arrival we requested to upgrade to Club rooms which cost an additional 1,500 points per night.  So, we ended up getting Club rooms for 3 nights each for 4,500 points per night or 13,500 points total.  We spent the next day relaxing at the pool in the hotel.  We enjoyed a free buffet breakfast for everybody, free lounge appetizers (mediocre) and virgin pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris on 2 of the nights we were there.

The next day we rented a big bus to take us to the Gomantong Caves (smelly, hundreds of feet deep of guano and cockroaches crawling all over the platform and the bat poo).  We saw an orangutan on the way to the caves.  Eliza was too squeamish to enter the caves, but she did walk to the entrance.  After we returned from the caves, we went on a 2.5 hour river boat tour on the Kinabatangan River ($15 per adult and $10 for kids) where we saw a huge crocodile, orangutans, hundreds of monkeys, a monitor lizard, an eagle and tons of other birds.  The river cruise was awesome for kids and packed with wildlife since this rainforest has been mostly obliterated by the palm oil plantations that surround it and all that is left is a narrow strip of rainforest where all the animals are packed into one place.

 Entering the Gomantong Caves…the smell was pretty powerful by this point.

 Piles of guano a few meters deep and cockroaches crawling all over the place.

 Zander had a good ride through the caves, and Nash was a bit freaked out by it with all the bugs and cockroaches.

 Inside of the cave with some light penetrating through a hole in the top.

 A monitor lizard that we came across on the boat tour on the Kinabatangan River.

 We saw thousands of monkeys at very close range on the boat tour.

 Huge crocodile lurking in the murky water.

 Our group filled the whole boat…we wouldn't have it any other way.

 More monkeys.

 This monkey was just about to jump into our boat.

 The boys on the boat.

Crocodile crawling out of the water of the Kinabatangan River.

We gave a bunch of the local children candy and got back on the bus to head back to the hotel in Sandakan.

The next day we hung around the hotel, wandered out into the streets and bought some souvenirs and went shopping like the locals.  We rushed to the airport at night for our flight to Kuala Lumpur and back to Perth (after one quick night in Kuala Lumpur).