It was so good to be back to Sandakan again after my last goodbye to it four years ago. I was stationed there for four years and I gotta say it had shaped me a lot as a person – the experiences that I gained while I was being there were invaluable. Before coming to Sandakan, the eastern part of Sabah was quite alien to me so I was eager to explore. And true enough, my job had required me to go all over, even traveling far out into the ocean and spending hour after hour after hour on a boat ride which could turn rough at times, to remote islands that I never knew existed and to villages that could only be reached by river.
It really was a down-memory-lane for me. I went to those places that I used to go to when I was still stationed there. I loved Sandakan back then and I still do when I returned again 4 years later. Sandakan has not really changed much. I mean, there are new buildings here and there, with new hotels springing up like mushrooms after a long rain but overall it still looks pretty much the same to me. I noticed the existence of McDonald’s, Secret Recipe, Kenny Rogers and even Big Apple of which all I missed having around back then.
I went to the world renowned Sepilok – this time not to see the ancestors – but to the Sepilok Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC) which I believed I didn’t quite explore enough when I went there last time, a few weeks before I moved out to KL. I remember how I found this place almost by accident while waiting for the feeding time at Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary and it was a wow at the very first hello.
The fact that it is so well-maintained and that it has some of the most amazing canopy walks that I’ve ever seen, RDC is always worth coming back to over and over again. I mean, getting close to nature can’t get more structural than what they have to offer here. Being a structural engineer myself, I really wish I was part of the designing team. It would have been a great accomplishment to tell to my grandsons and daughters in the future – if I’d ever have any. Heh.
There didn’t seem to be many visitors when I was there so I had the best of time totally immersing myself in the tranquility and be at peace with nature until – a bunch of teenagers came and took it away from me. I don’t know which species they came from and for a moment I was so tempted to ask because seriously, they acted as if the conservation area belonged to their father/s or something.
They’d talk and laugh and holler at the top of their lungs and they’d go up to the tower and do the super-annoying Tarzan yell. It was so annoying that I really wish one of the Orang Utans would come and smack them hard in the head – any of them. Grrrrr! Seriously, loud people shouldn’t come to a conservation area unless they know how to behave. It might be conservation for animals but it doesn’t mean that they should behave like one kan.
Some of the interesting plants at RTC Sepilok
It was quite windy but I liked it just the same. I did a little bit of hiking along one of the longer trails and it reminded me of how good it feels to be so close to nature. I was enjoying every moment of it. I happened to bump into a group of photographers who were there to capture pictures of wildlife, although I didn’t see any when I was there. But then again, photographers capture things that we non-photographers might don’t see.
Apart from the RTC, I also made my time dropping by the Sandakan Memorial Park in Taman Rimba. This War Memorial Park is the exact location of the POW (Prisoner of War) camp where thousands of POWs, mostly Australian, were imprisoned by the Japanese during the World War II. When I was still working in Sandakan, I’d go there to attend the Anzac Day every year just to see first-hand how they do the memorial service.
I’d buy a stack of flowers and place it on the table that the organizer had prepared specially for visitors to lay flowers on. Being the exact location of the torturing where more than 2500 people were killed, it’s no wonder that this place is said to be haunted. A friend of mine who had a house just outside of the compound told me how he’d sometimes see people in uniform marching past his house in the middle of the night.
I’m not really a believer of ghosts but there was one time when I was at the exhibition room when something of a smoke with the shape of a human flew right in front of me and I had time to see it disappeared into the thin air – just like that. I had a goose bump but I just shrugged it off and continued reading. Of course it didn’t stop me from coming there again. I mean, what harm could they really do right? They are nothing but shadows. Heh.
The Sandakan Memorial Park is probably best known for what is called the Death March in which about 1000 POWs – the leftover of a much bigger number, were forced to walk some 260 km away right from the camp all the way to Ranau. Of course back in 1945, it was not easy. They had to walk through swampy terrain in the beginning, then through dense forest across mountains in very poor health and conditions.
Kulang and Bariga – the two local heroes who helped the Death March survivors to escape
They were not well-fed so many of them are believed to have died of starvation, succumbed to injury or deadly infection or simply caught a disease and died from it. Of course some of them were shot or bayonetted and their bodies were left to rot on the track. Quiet miraculously, two of them managed to escape and continue to live and tell the story to the world – thanks to two locals named Kulang and Bariga who helped them escape.
News is swirling around that some Hollywood movie that portrays the march would be filmed here in Sandakan in which Hugh Jackman would be the leading actor. Rumors are also going around that they’ll get locals to act in the movie. May be I should go for the audition and offer myself to act as either Kulang or Bariga. After all I am a genuine Dusun and I believe my Dusuness will fit me right in for the role. Heh.
I also took the opportunity to visit the Agnes Keith House. Agnes Keith is an American lady who was married to an English man working as a Conservator of Forests and Director of Agriculture for the government of North Borneo under the British Chartered Company. She stayed at the house with her family for years – until they got captured by the Japanese and sent to Berhala Island until somebody came and picked them up.
The Agnes Keith House has changed a lot from the last time I went there, with more information on the writer and her family and their life in and around the house was put up. I was especially amused by how she described kangkong – which was part of her daily meal while in captivity at Berhala Island. Agnes and his family did come back to Sandakan after the war but her husband was later transferred to the Philippines so it was the end of their 18 years’ stay in Sandakan.
Agnes Keith is probably best known as somebody who had first named Sabah the Land below the Wind through the title of a book that she wrote about her and family’s life in Sandakan. I did buy the book actually, and gave up reading after the second chapter. To tell the truth, I found it quite boring but then again, the book had left her the legacy she deserved – the Land below the Wind – the tagline after which Sabah is famously known nowadays.
Of course I’d never leave Sandakan without going to the Puu Jih Shih Temple. I’ve been going to so many temples all over Malaysia and beyond and I can always say that Puu Jih Temple is one of the most beautiful in this country. The fact that it is located high on a hill and overlooks the beautiful Sandakan Bay, the view from there was something to die for (but don’t). It was just the perfect time to go there when Chinese New Year was just around the corner so there were hundreds of beautiful lanterns in different colors swaying on the strings as the wind blew in from the Sulu Sea. Majestico!
Oh well, nobody comes to Sandakan without feeding himself with seafood for which Sandakan is well known for so I was all over trying to satisfy my craving for what I consider as a thing of luxury back in KL. But of course, I’d spare it for my next post.
One Response to Back to Sandakan