We have a long weekend as there are two public holidays for CNY, so I decided to go to Sandaken to help to oriatate myself, Toby the other volunteer kindly came with me to show me around. We managed to miss the bus in the orning but Mr Chee kindly organised a truck to take us there, Sandaken is quite a small provincial town but was originally the Britsh capital of Sabah.
I visited the Sandaken Death March memeorial which is on the site of the WWII POW camp in which only 6 of the more than 2000 POWs survived, a very harrowing story.
This is Sim Sim the stilt village which was the original town. All lif takes place on the water, there are some very fancy houses and gardens.
We visited the temple at midnight on new years eve expecting to see fireworks, but nothing materialised, perhaps because they are not allowed in Malaysia (although there were a few the next evening) It was interesting to see the chinese community come to honour their ancestors with incense sticks and other offerings. We also visited the big buddist temple on new years day to see the festivities.
We went out to the Rainforest Discovery Centre, which is next to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre (I am waiting to got to this until you visit Simonne) It is a fabulous learning resource and great to get up into the canopy although again it was too wet to see many birds. However did I see an orangutan? I was strolling along a trail when I could hear something moving around the trees, I was struggling to get my camera out and hold on the the brolly to keep it dry, what ever it was was a primate and orange, but it didn't seem large enough for a lone orangutan but too big to be an orange monkey sometimes mistaken for the old man of the woods, you look at the photo and see if you can tell. It was quite scary as I was on my own and very few people in the centre due to the weather and public holiday. 
I did manage to see a couple of birds too.
May the Year of the Dragon be good to you all.
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