Going North, leaving diving behind

Next morning I jumped on the bus towards Sandakan, it was going to be an almost 5 hour drive. The traffic in Borneo is not something to brag about. It is super slow because of the great amount of trucks on the roads, carrying palm oil nuts. Lots of people passing the trucks on windy roads, making the driving extra exciting. The bus driver seems to be pretty aggressive, just my style, except he is smoking while driving and then spraying a deodorant to remove the smell of smoke. At some point the bus started veering a little too much, turned out he had dropped the cigarette and was trying to get it up again, haha

I didn’t have to go all the way to Sandakan, but was jumping off the bus in Sepilok already, where the Uncle Tan office was located. After driving for 4.5 hours the guy sitting in front of me asked if I wasn’t going to get off at Sepilok? I said yes, it is here, he said. I had told the bus driver 4 hours ago that I wanted to get off at Sepilok, he had nodded and repeated the stop, Sepilok. It wasn’t until he saw my face again, that he remembered I had talked to him. Anyway, there I was in the middle of Borneo not sure if this was even the right place to get off the bus. Actually I was pretty sure it was not, because the description had said something else. What if this was a second entrance to this place called Sepilok? Oh well, they would know what I was asking about. I did feel a little alone for a second, no phone, no money, no internet… This is old school traveling. Scary, haha

After walking around for a few minutes, I found a sign pointed towards Uncle Tan Camp base camp. Here I checked in and was served lunch and then repacked my bags to only carry what I really needed.

We all headed towards the river in a small minivan. It took more than 1.5 hours to get there and it basically meant driving halfway back the same way I had come from Semporna. Not very optimal, but not so much to do about it. On top of that I had the luxury of having a driver that, like my mom, thinks that 5th gear is only for going really fast, so he was beating the hell out of the diesel mini van using the rev limiter as speed limiter. Poor car

There were 4 people from Holland, 2 from Belgium, 2 Malaysian from Kuala Lumpur and then me as guests. It just happened that the couple from Belgium were from the part that spoke Dutch as well, so they had already grouped and isolated themselves into a Dutch speaking group of 6. I could understand some of it, but they didn’t really look like nature people, so I was kind of wondering what they were doing here.

The last hour of transport was by boat and after just a few minutes we saw monkeys in the trees and everyone started finding their cameras. The boat man didn’t want to stop, "These monkeys are everywhere", he said. Ok, but it is not every day that we got to see a monkey swinging in the tree next to us.
Finally I had arrived at Uncle Tan campsite which was going to be my home for the next couple of days, in the middle of a big botanical garden, aka the wild Jungle of Borneo