Sandakan, Malaysia

We’re having a really good time in Malaysia, the people are very friendly and it’s a beautiful country – plus no mozzies or sandflies (it’s the wrong time of year).

However, Richard did get properly leeched. A ground leech crawled up his shoe, down his sock and found a nice fat blood vessel on his ankle. The leech was very fat when he found it. We got it off and Alice flushed it down the toilet – but it started crawling back up the bowl. Do not flush a leech down the toilet if you don’t want to be paranoid about using the facility! Fortunately, leeches don’t hurt you and don’t leave an itchy bite – but you do bleed for a while. And it’s pretty gross having what looks like a slug sucking your blood. We don’t like leeches.

Prior to the leeches we went to see the Orang Utans at the rehab centre and the Proboscis Monkeys.

Orang Utan

Infront of Orang Utan feeding platform

Proboscis Monkey

We had our first taste of Malaysian food when we sneaked off during the city and war memorial tour and got roti and satay – very nice. The nature resort has the worst food EVER. They are trying to cook ‘western’ food to make us feel at home – we definitely did not expect mashed spuds and sausage at a fancy Malaysian resort.

Death March map at Sandakan at the remains of a WWII POW camp. Of 2500 POWs at the camp during WWII (Mainly Australians) only 6 survived - because they escaped.