Sandakan Heritage Trail

After Turtle Island we had a couple of days to explore Sandakan. A bit of info about Sandakan (from good old wikipedia): It is the second largest city in Sabah. The area is infamous as the site of a World War Two Japanese airfield, built by the forced labour of 6,000 Javanese civilians and Allied prisoners of war. In 1945, the surviving Australian prisoners were sent on the Sandakan Death Marches; only 6 survived the war.

We had been told by people before we left that there wasn't much to do in Sandakan and although it was nowhere near as busy as KK, we felt it had a nice small town feel to it. They have tried to bring in tourists with the Turtle Island and the Orangutan Sanctuary. They also had a Heritage Trail which covered all of the main tourist attractions of Sandakan Town itself. It does take a full day so we thought we would do that on one of our days.

We started off quite early and luckily for us the starting point was right next to our hotel. The attractions included war memorials, a Chinese graveyard, the Agnes Keith House, English Tea House plus many more. You can click on the map to see what it covered.

(I really wish my surname was Funk. How cool is that?? Yep, I was totally soaking up the culture here....)

The Chinese graveyard was really interesting. I had never seen graves that were so big. They were decorated beautifully with tiles that had rainfalls and rivers painted on them. But the grave itself was huge. It did seem like a waste of space to me as 2 graves could have easily fit into one of the big ones but there must be a reason behind it all I'm sure (I really hope I haven't offended anyone!)

We went to see the Agnes Keith House next. She was an American author who wrote 3 autobiographical accounts of her time in Borneo. It was a beautiful house decorated with 40s furnishings and appliances.

This English Tea House was lovely. It had a 'proper' English feel to it and all their food was 'English'! (They had scones!! If that isn't English I don't know what is!) It was so quaint and seemed completely out of place in Sandakan. We ordered fish and chips (obviously!) and I've got to say they were just like the real thing.

(Earl Grey)

(Love the sail on the fish!)

The best part? You could play Croquet! They even had an old fashioned rule book and instructions. So we got our mallets and had a game and I won! Yes there was a bit of cheating going on and yes technically Zaheer probably did win but I'm going with me winning. It was a lot of fun.

This was our last stop, a Chinese Temple. There was an incredibly strong smell of incense as they have them burning all the time but you do get used to it. It was very colourful inside and they had lots of different gods around the room. The man working there was very friendly and told us all about the temple and what the gods symbolised. It was a really nice visit.

And that was the tour. We were tired as it was a whole day of walking.

We ended the day with a happy little boy:

and a burger from the night stall:

We had a really good day in Sandakan but that really was all of it! It was worth the visit though.

Next: Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and...............attack of the leeches!!!!!!! (well one leech....)