Sabah Adventure - 2nd stop Kinabatangan

After the gruelling, activity-packed Kinabalu stop, time to relax a little by sitting through 2 days of river cruise - Kinabatangan River Cruise near Sandakan. An early morning flight (7am) took us to Sandakan airport before 8am, and a few bus hops and we were waiting to depart to Kinabatangan via mini-bus (RM20 each). We chose MisoWalai Homestay for our river cruise, where we stayed with the local Malay villagers. Our 2day package cost about RM200 each (include accomodation, food, river cruise and jungle trek).

The green house

Our host family was Kuling (based on phonetic, not sure if it is spelt that way). We got confused with the number of people appearing in the house as it started with the father, the son and daughter, then suddenly more kids appeared and seemed like they lived in the same house. Finally, we kinda figured out that those kids were cousins. But it was confusing when we kept seeing people in people out..Sleeping arrangement - JJ and Edric in 1 room on mattresses, and Me in another room by myself with a bed!!

After lunch (simple homecooked meal), we embarked on our jungle trek and river cruise. The jungle trek took us into the marsh land (muddy ground) and our guide (Braun) pointed out herbs, poison trees and such to us. Who needs to buy a manicure filer when u can use nature!

Then it was off to the river cruise where we saw monkeys, loads of them! At times, we just parked our boat by the side and watch the monkey show

Oxbow LakeAlong the river cruise

ANd we saw a flying monkey!!

River cruise ended around sunset, and we witnessed a beautiful sunset by the river. Off back to our home, with homecooked dinner and at night, nothing much to do but played cards for a while and slept..

Next morning, it was 6am wake up call for our river cruise (which I overslept cos the alarm was off because I though the phone alarm would work even if I switched the phone off). So anyway we started our cruise at 630am, and saw pretty much similar animals, but more birds this time.

Simple but nice lunch of vege and curry

Dinner was nice too!

Breakfast of homemade donuts and crisp...

Now I have to mention some of the really cute kids we met @ Kuling's. The little boy - Chai, whom I think I had a connection there! 1st time he met me, he came up to me direct (not JJ or Edric) and asked me to open his tidbit for him. He was sooooo cute. He grew a tail out of his hair! But he is shy towards the camera.. The other cute little girl was his sister (we guess) and she is soooo cute! Her eyes are soo big! And she kept 'flirting' with Edric because of his camelpack hydration water. Yes, Edric used his hydration pack to 'seduce' the kids into drinking out of it..

Drinking out of Edric's hydration pack..They were estatic when they did it

Me and Chai. He was sooo lively but when the camera points at him, he froze

Edric doing the human trophy with Chai

Then it was off to wait for the bus to Semporna by the bridge...Which will take us about 3-4hours