I haven’t really been all to clear about Borneo, so I will try to explain my trtip around in Borneo as well as I can.

When I landed in KK I got in a cab and drove straight to my hostel called Masada backpackers. When I got into the hostel one girl was sitting in the sofa eating noodles and watching a movie. She was the only girl in the hostel when I arrived. This is the top rated hostel on hostel world. Top rated hostels are usually packed with people. I quickly understood that Borneo was off the beaten track. I did expect Borneo to be unreal, which is not, at all. A few more people came in the door over the next few days, but it wasn’t any backpackers, not like in china. I stayed in KK for a few days, which was more than enough at the time. KK is a small city and there’s not a lot of things going on. I got on a bus to Semporna four days after I arrived in KK.

Semporna which is here:

Blue dot is KK, Purple pin is Semporna

On my way to Semporna I read in the Lonely Planet book that it was a dodgy place and crappy. This is how the buildings look like:

I don’t want to walk around taking pictures of stuff like that, that’s why I haven’t taken a lot of pictures.

Anyways, I arrived in Semporna, I was imidiatly approached by three guys that wanted me to go in their car. This was 18-19 year olds, and very intimidating. I said my hostel was just around the corner and got away by walking. My hotel for the night was actually right around the corner, but i still had to ask a local lady that told her husband to follow me there, which was indeed very nice. My bus arrived around 5am, and it was to early for check-in. I had to sit in the lobby for three/four hours, which I didn’t exactly enjoy. I was tired after a ten hour buss ride and all I wanted was some sleep.

When I was waiting down in the lobby a guy I met in KK ran out the door to get to a place he would get picked up from to go to Mabul Island in the Semporna Archipilago. I was suppose to meet him on Mabul, but i didn’t.

I eventually got into my room and fell asleep instantly. After five/six hours of sleep I woke up, I was hungry and went out to eat something. A lot of the places around looked dirty and not very safe to eat at, so I ended up at KFC, not really pleasant to eat there because outside my window was some kids knocking and begging for food. Not exactly what I expected from Borneo…

After dinner I walked around for a little bit and then headed back to the hotel(City Inn). Still I didn’t see any backpackers around. I booked my stay out at Mabul through a website called Sipadan.com. The next morning I was headed to the place where I was going to get picked up. I was still alone, no backpackers around. I was waiting in the office where I was told to wait, luckily they had some decent wifi so I wasn’t totally bored. I was told to meet up around 7.30am and didn’t leave the office until 10am.

I got driven out in the outbacks to what I thought would be a ferry port, but it was far from it! It was a wooden peer going way out in the ocean. The tide was low and the peer was high above the water. Normally I would expect them to have a latter or at least some steps to get down, right? No, what they did was to put a plank from the end of the peer and down to the bottom of the ocean. In that plank there was small steps. You could only fit you toes in each step, actually a bit painful.

We had to wait for the boat to arrive at the peer, and when the boat arrived a girl and a boy was standing socking wet in the boat. The first thing the girl said to me was: “you’re going to be wet, I hope you got some raincoats or something for your bags”. I was a bit cocky and said I was going to be fine. We lifted up their bags from the boat to the peer. Then it was their turn to get up, which they used quite some time to do. Especially the girl used a few tries. They eventually got up and I handed my bags down to a guy that was still in the boat, and then climbed down the plank. It wasn’t that hard.. We were sitting in the boat waiting for a guy for like 15 minutes. He came with a lot food that was for the hostel over at Mabul. We started driving and the driver put my bags under the steering wheel so it wouldn’t get too wet. It worked pretty good. The waves was rough, very rough. A tiny boat struggling to keep straight on massive mountains of water. I was sitting in the back a could see the huge valleys behind us. They were the biggest waves I’ve seen in a boat that small. It usually takes about 30-40 minutes to get there. We used a lot longer.

We got to the island, I was greeted with a glass of juice and a friendly staff. They showed me my room and the bathrooms. It was very nice, quiet and calm. Very laid-back, which was nice in the beginning. Still, not really any backpackers. There was a lot of couples that were in this area just to dive. So it was partially hard to get in to a conversation. A lot of people from Spain, and some from France, and the rest were from germany and south Africa. There was a good bunch of people there, but everyone kept to them self. The only thing for me to do was to read, tan and dive. Doesn’t seem to bad, but for me, that’s boring. I want a bit more action.. it was a nice sunset…

The diving at Mabul is supposed to be extremely good, and the dive masters in the hostel talked about it as heaven. They built up my expectations, which the corals didn’t live up to. It is one of the absolutely best divespots in the world. It’s way above the great barrier reef, however I didn’t think to much of it. Around Mabul it is a lot of small fish and creatures. In Sipadan it’s more big animals, like barracuda, giant sea turtles, sharks and just in general fish on steroids. When you dive at Sipadan you can see huge fish, and they are very easy to see, but around Mabul the small sea creatures are hard to spot. They got very got camouflage, and you need a lot dives to actually get anything out of it. You need to know what to look for. For me Mabul was disappointing.

One dive at Mabul is 170NOK, however, in Sipadan it’s 1500NOK per dive. You need book far in advance, because it’s only allowed with 120(!) divers each day. 120 divers in Sipadan is a lot of divers. You’re basically swimming in a line around there. Not the way I like to dive.

I stayed on Mabul three nights and I headed over to Semporna to stay there for one night and then head up to Sepilok.

When I arrived in Semporna I checked in at a place called Dragon Inn, it’s a big hotel built on piles over the water. It’s a traditional way to build houses in Malaysia and Indonesia. It’s very nice and you have to option of staying in a dorm or in luxurious cabins.
I was alone in my dorm for the first 30-45minutes, this guy walked in the door.

He knew where to buy a bus ticket up to Sepilok, and I knew where to stay. So we decided to stick together for the next few days. During the evening we just walked around, ate some food and chilled out with a few beers. The next morning we walked to the bus station and got on the six hour bus ride from Semporna to Sepilok. We got off the bus six hours later and we could either call the hostel for a pickup or walk the 2,5km to the hostel. We decided to walk, well… We actually didnt have much of a choice. A walk was very nice anyways.

We got to the hostel and arranged tours to the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center and the Porboscis Monkey Sanctuary, both in the same day, the day after he left for the turtle islands, and I went to the Rainforest Discovery Center, and took a bus to KK the day after.

Sepilok got four main attractions.

• Orangutan Rehabilitation Center
• Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary
• Rainforest Discovery Center
• Kinabatangan River Cruise

It’s hyped up in the Lonely Planet books so my expectations for this was great. I expected it to be more like the Giant Panda Breeding Research Facility in China. It’s big, you can walk around and look at the work they are doing. However, in the ORC and the PMS you can only stand on a platform to watch the monkey eat on what I would call a stage. The main difference between the panda center and ORC/PMS was that the monkeys are actually free. They walk around where ever they like, and they do in fact come up to you. Like this…

I did on the other hand expect it to be a bit more information about the history and results. Some information about the monkeys and such. It wasn’t very big either, so you could easily do ORC, PMS and RDC in one day. The panda center you needed almost a whole day, that’s what I expected.

So after the RDC I went to KK, I stayed in Masada Backpackers again, mostly because I knew what I was getting. During the evening I arranged my pickup to go to Mañana. Mañana is nice, it’s on a private beach, and very relaxed. I enjoyed my one night there. I met some people there that is working in different parts of Borneo. We spent the night with them and I really enjoyed their company.

–picture–

In mañana I met a girl called Carrie, I met her the first time up in Boracay. We stayed in touch beacause we knew that we both were going to the same place. We met up in mañana and decided to go back to KK the day after and to head down to Brunei together.

We got a ride from the man in the picture above, but only half way to KK, so we found a mini bus that took us to KK. That was indeed crowded in that bus! Me and Carrie was the last two to get in and with our big backpacks and everything we barely got in there, I thought it was great fun! Carrie didn’t feel very well, but she was a good girl!

So, we got back to KK early, and we handed all our cloths to the laundry service and tried to figure out something to do. We did find something! We went to the movies!! Saw the new Smurfs movie! It’s so funny :D I loved it!

Later that night Carrie worked on her PC and I was out on the balcony talking to some people. We sat there to 5am! Such a good chemistry between all of us so nobody wanted to leave! It was great, it wasn’t that great to wake up this morning, but I don’t care to much about that.

I recharged my camera, iPad and iPhone, my cloths are finally clean and I bought some new underwear! (no pictures of that, sorry girls). I am ready to go to Brunei, I only need tickets! So I’ll go find Carrie now, and I’ll make sure we get our tickets.

To sum up Borneo.. It’s amazing nature and wildlife, however, it’s expensive and it’s hard to actually see the real deal. Tourist attractions suck and there not enough people here. I felt very lonely at times. It’s a lot of poverty and you can see it up close. I would recommend Borneo for tourists with a month and a lot of cash in their pockets, but to travel in as a backpacker I didn’t like it. I know some people really enjoyed Borneo, but most of the people I met is not a particulare fan of Borneo.

I think it will get better in about ten years, more laid out for tourists and the country just needs time to build up their tourist attractions.

Borneo is perfect to visit all year round. They have one season and thats summer. If you want to trek far into the jungle, high mountains and see some unique wildlife Borneo is the place to go, but you need to plan Borneo ahead of your travels. You cannot get here and expect to do everything like I did. Traveling around can be done by bus or plane. If you got the extra money I would recommend flying, but busses are in general nice.