From Sandakan we drove to Labuk Bay, a palm oil plantation where the owner has left an area as a jungle reserve, which is home to proboscis monkeys who swung through the trees to reach the feeding platform and were happy to sit on the fence watching us watching them. They are pretty docile – they fight by making noise at each other rather than tearing strips off one another and we saw an alpha male with his harem of lady friends. At the second viewing platform we also saw a hornbill – a black bird with a double yellow beak like a toucan and more common macaque monkeys; one ran along the feeding platform with his little baby clinging to his belly.
In the afternoon we went to Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, which is the largest in the world – orangutans are only found in Borneo and Sumatra and their forests are quickly disappearing, although there are more of them than of the proboscis monkeys found in the wild. The rehab centre was set up in 1964 to try and help orphaned orangutans (coming from the Malay meaning ‘man of the forest’) and those that had been illegally kept as pets. To begin with the orangutans interact with their human carers and are taught how to feed, climb and play – during this stage they can be viewed at the first feeding platform, where we saw a mother and baby and two young ones swinging off branches and munching on bananas in the forest. During the latter stages they are taken further into the sanctuary, away from humans, and eventually released into the wild.
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