It's been a quarter of a year that I did not step myself to the Land Below the Wind.
I went there to fill my mid-semester break as a vacation.
I departed LCCT at 0715 hours by a boarding Flight AK 5160 and reached the airport of Sandakan at 1000hours.
After getting my luggage and the immigration procedure to settle, I took a mini van @ mini bus to the town.
I reached to about an hour before noon.
At there, I checked into a hotel before going for my lunch.
I had some grilled fish as my lunch before heading to the house of our cousins, the Orang Utans at the Sepilok Rehabilitation Centre for Orang Utan.
The centre is situated a mile from the Sandakan branch campus of University of Malaysia Sabah (UMS).
At there, I get to get myself close to our cousins which has about 96% of our genetic informations.
Then, I had a can of 100 PLUS to quench my thirst after having an hour of walking in the forest of Sepilok.
Right before dawn, I went to the Rotary Club Observatory Pavilion situated on top of the hill where the site of house of a well known author, Agnes Keith. At the pavilion, you can have an awesome panorama of Elopura.
From the pavilion, you can also see that the traffic is not as worse as the want we face in Cheras though, the population of the city is approximately equal to Cheras.
It is more common for you to find roundabouts compare to traffic lights.
I had steamboat as my dinner at a restaurant in the central market.
I'm served with seafood such as shell fish that include oysters, lala and abalone, crab, prawns and tuna with an interesting price that is not available in Kuala Lumpur, RM18.00 only!!!
That night, I had a walk along the coastal area and had a cup of bubble milk shake. For your information, North Borneo Chinese is highly influenced by the culture of Hong Kong Islanders and Taiwanese because most of the Chinese community of that state have very long and established trading activities with Hong Kong and Taiwan. Thus, it is not a shock to see certain food and drinks of those countries can be found fondly at Sandakan such as the bubble milk shake and Taiwanese pancakes.
Before I go for sleep after a day long of traveling about a thousand miles, I checked my e-mail using the WiFi connection of the hotel.
The next morning, I had 'Roti Kahwin' and a glass of hot chocolate as my breakfast before starting my journey to explore the city with plenty of 'Timber Tycoons'.
I went to a incredible temple built in 1987 that is funded by most of the 'Timber Tycoons'.
It is located on the peak of a hill facing the harbour of Sandakan where timbers are collected and exported to several East Asian countries.
Then, I had Nasi Minyak as my lunch to gain some energy to continue my trip.
My next checkpoint is the infamous site of the camp of the Prisoners of War (P.O.W.) during the occupation of the Land of the Rising Sun where now stands the War Memorial of the Death March. There were only six survivors of the brutal Death March.
A structure aged more than a century is my last stop of the day. On the way to the mentioned structure, I passed by an ancient Chinese cemetery site and it is said to be existed in the late 1790s. The mentioned monument is the St. Michael Church that took 20 years to be completed and it survived the bombing of Elopura by the Allied during the Japanese Occupation.
That evening, I had Gado-gado(Similiar to Mamak Rojak) and Bakso(noodle dish with meatballs) to fill my roaring stomach. Honeydew with sago drink as the dessert.
The next morning, I took an express bus to Lahad Datu to meet some of my NS mates.
My trip to the City of Nature is an enjoyable moment and I hope that I am able to have a night stay at Pulau Penyu of Sandakan to observe turtles laying eggs when I come to visit this lovely city.
J.Z.Wong
