Sepilok and Miso Walai Homestay

After our exciting time at Misompuru Homestay, we had Cobra arrange us another Homestay, Miso Walai. However, one of our main goals of coming to Borneo was to see the endangered Orangutan and the best way to see them is in Sepilok at the Orangutan rehabilitation centre. Therefore, with this in mind, we arranged a Homestay near Sepilok (or so we thought).

After Misompuru, we ended up back in Kota Kinabulu, the hub of Sabah Malaysia for the night. The next morning we departed by bus to Sepilok (and if you don't pronounce it Sep ee louk, you will never get there....the locals stared at us for 5 minutes when we pronounced it incorrectly). Our 6 hour journey to Sepilok was mostly through mountainous terrain and we even passed the famous Mount Kinabulu which is just over 4000 m high and was a very prominent mountain on the drive. The bus ride was long, especially with the women behind us throwing up the whole time, but since it was a two level bus we moved to the second level away from her at the lunch stop (4 hours in to the journey). Now to get to Sepilok by bus, you need to get on the bus to Sandankan and then tell the bus driver the you want to stop in Sepilok. We did this and there was still about a 1.5 km walk to our accommodation which was not fun in 35 degree heat with 50 lb packs on but we made there around 3:30pm.

We cooled off a little in the outdoor lobby, and then met a couple (Reuben and Becky) who told us about a night hike they were going to at the rainforest discovery centre....we told them them we were in for this. The night hike was amazing, first we walked along these elevated walkways which were halfway in distance from the bottom of the primary forest trees to the top of the trees (about 200 meters off the ground). The guides took us there because it is where you can see flying squirrels, YA, we saw flying squirrels. Sorry, no pictures of this, we need better cameras for night pictures. Then we hiked the forest where we saw two types of bats, glow in the dark insects, big spiders, and masssive ants. I'm glad we went on this as the sound of the rainforest at night cannot be described.

The next morning we woke up early to attend the morning feeding at the Orangutan Rehabilitation Center. After watching a brief video which explained a lot of facts about the orangutans, like that their genetic code is 96% of what a humans genetic code is, and that they are 4 times stronger than us, we walked to the feeding platform. At 10am, a bunch of papaya came out to the platform and this is when one of the greatest memories of Borneo occurred, The first Orangutan came swinging through one of the many ropes set up for them in the forest, to eat. over the next hour, we saw between 5 and 7 orangutans (we are not sure if 2 came back or 2 new ones came out). We even saw a monkey Orangutan showdown at the end of our stay there, hopefully the video works below and you can see it too. Sepilok was a destination that I'd recommend everyone see.

Link to Sepilok Orangutan video - click it

Orangutan Buffet

They are watching us like we are on display

These guys have travelled across Europe and Asia in This 4x4 RV, we saw them in Kudat and now at the Orangutan Rehab Center

The Miso Walai Homestay had agreed to pick us up at the Orangutan sanctuary, and this is where the next part of our journey began. We thought the Homestay was close to Sepilok, but it was about another hour away. We arrived there and were greeted by the lodge that runs all the Homestay. We were shown our 3 day itinerary and were given the a bill with an extra 160  Ringit transport charge, let's just say it was not a great first impression but we decided to stay positive. We met our tour guide for the 3 days...Engky (Inky, which was easy to remember). Then we were off to meet the host family, the Isa family (Isa was the name of the lady that the house belonged to). Immediately we were welcomed as one of the family when we arrived. We met Isa and her husband ( I would say they were in their early 60), Julia (Isa's daughter), Denis aka Mr smiles and Adam (Julia's sons), Otto (Isa's son), his wife and their son. One thing to keep in mind is that through the three days, there was no shortage of Julia yelling Denish (how she pronounced his name) and Aaaa- Dam as they were quite active kids. They were cute though so it was funny. Julia spoke English very well and we were able to communicate with everyone very effectively over the three days. They greeted us with fresh baked coconut cookies (tasted similar to a shortbread and delicious) and another local cookie which had a honeycomb appearance.

Traditional raised home of the river people

Us with Isa and Adam, We noticed Isa is very happy until it's picture time

Julia and Denish (Denis)

Our first activity was an evening cruise along the Kinabatan river, the second longest river in Sabah. The night cruise was awesome, it was a little cooler along the river and we saw some great wildlife. We were able to see two types monkeys; the famous proboscis monkey and long tail macaques, a large king fisher, brahminy kite eagle and a black hornbill. The river cruise was great but we wished it would have went the two hours they budgeted.

Proboscis Monkeys, they hangout at the top of trees

That night we returned to our host family and met Adly, one of Isa's grandsons who is a local English teacher for basic English. We then had dinner which consisted of a local fish, some veggies that came right from Isa's husband's multiple acre garden and lots of rice. Dinner was delicious especially because I enjoy the fish. We then tried on some local clothing which originated from their ethnic group in this region, we couldn't understand the Malay name but it translates to river people. That night we went to bed early as we had another river cruise scheduled for the morning. Chelsea really enjoyed the rats growing crazy in the wall beside her headboard in the early morning, which I thought was a little funny.

Our room, someone is hiding in her bed

The next morning, Isa gave us a basket with a packed breakfast, so nice of her and we were off to the river for another cruise. This time we saw huge monitor lizards, a blue eared king fisher, rhinoceros hornbills flying, and a silver leaf monkey ( which has multiple stomachs). It was a great river cruise but once again cut short for some unknown reason. We then went back to the lodge and ate our packed breakfast, which consisted of hot tea and delicious noodles with some coconut cookies for dessert, it was a great breakfast.

Early morning river cruise

Monitor lizard swimming across the river

We then waited for the jungle trekking we were to do. After about an hour of "free time", we hopped on the boat and travelled 5 minuted up the river to begin the hike. To summarize, the trekking was 300 m or 10 minutes of walking, we didn't see too much but the highlight was that the leeches seemed to be attracted to Chelsea and our guide rather than me. After the hike, we stopped at a camp lodge on a small lake where after about 10 minutes Chelsea noticed she had a leech on the back of her neck. There may have been some brief moments of panic, some bouncing around but it is safe to say that as of right now, Chelsea is leech free.  We did see another large monitor lizard but the walk was not very eventful and too short to be called a trek. We then went back to our host family for about 4 hours.

Our 300 meter trek ended here, Chelsea is currently not aware of the leech on her neck

At Isa's house, Julia taught us how to prepare some local food. We learned how to make a curried fish dish which smelled so good. One thing I learned is that when your making a curry dish, you mix the curry powder in water before it is added to the wok. We also chopped up some local greens and cooked them in oil and some salt and pepper. The river people really like their garlic, which makes me happy.

After lunch we went to the local burial caves called Batu Tulug, which is a large hill (small mountain) that contains a series of caves where the people of 900 years ago were placed when they died. The coffins are carved out of the iron wood tree and the higher you are placed on the hill, the higher your status in society. It was a little bit of a climb to get to the caves, and once we made it to the first, we were greeted by a lot of bats flying around. Engky told us that the big coffins were for women as they take all their important possessions with them, and the small ones were for the men who would take only their machete. Once we reached the top, we had a beautiful 360 degree view of Kinabatan.

Batu Tulug, this was the lowest cave

Different angle of same cave

Coffins carved from iron wood tree

When we returned to the lodge, we had more "free time". Unfortunately, Misompuru homestay lead to us having high expectations for this Homestay and our abundance of free time made us feel like they were taking advantage of us as the price was very similar. Even though the activities we did during the three days at Miso Walai were very fun, it only amounted to about 3.5 hours of things to do whereas at Misompuru, we had full days of activities. I guess having a deck of cards was a good idea. We have no complaints about the host family, as they were amazing but the host family and activities ran as separate entities at his Homestay program.

That evening we played volleyball with he locals in the village by the lodge and then returned to our host family's home. As we would be waking up quite early the next morning to return to KK, we said our goodbyes and had one more very delicious meal from Isa. Thank you very much to the Isa family for your hospitality and making us feel at home.

Us with Engky, our guide.

Back to KK we go.