Saturday/Sunday - Going wild

After a morning visit to the POW camp in Sandakan we headed to a water village to catch a speedboat out to sea and the mouth of the Kinabatangan River, where we were staying overnight. The boat cut through the cocoa-coloured river like a hot knife through chocolate as we headed up the jungle-lined river, passing white egrets perching on driftwood and proboscis monkeys straddling branches.

After a lunch stop we continued on to the lodge where we were staying overnight and transferred to a smaller boat to go on an evening wildlife-spotting cruise. As well as seeing more monkeys getting ready to sleep, we saw a streak of electric blue whizz past (a kingfisher), saltwater crocodiles, crested serpent eagles and giant monitor lizards chasing baby macaque monkeys. At the lodge geckos crawled on the ceiling and an oriental pied hornbill was sitting outside on the fence – at night the jungle was full of hoots and calls, drowned out by torrential tropical rain.

Sunday morning’s 6am start saw us heading back out on the river where we were greeted by a gibbon honking in a tree and a big group of hornbills – rhinoceros, oriental pied and crested ones. It was a good morning for bird-watching and we also saw dollar birds, datar birds and brahminy kites flying over lakes clogged with purple water hyacinths. We were all looking out for orangutans and a few sightings of nests and moving branches had us all a little disappointed as we sped back to the ship.

Luckily for us our guides were looking out and we had two proper sightings of the hairy apes hanging from branches and swinging through the trees. On our way back we stopped at the village of Abai to plant a tree, paid for by Orion, to try and help keep the ‘corridor of life’ alive along the Kinbatangan River.

As we left Sandakan there was a little bit of drama with an engine problem that caused us to run aground and so we were taken to a local hotel for the night. We’re staying in Sandakan now rather than going on to Tawau, but in true Orion style all the crew served us a gourmet seafood dinner with champagne by candlelight last night even though the ship had no power.

Now that’s my kind of adventure.