The first leg of our Borneo tour! We arrived in Sandakan late on a Wednesday night after a short flight from KL. The town was pretty deserted, but we were easily able to find the place showing the England game by following the cheers. This local pub had really gone to town on the event, and both James and I were made to pose with the World Cup replica trophy the landlord had created. Ingeniously, he had also hooked up a projection screen on the building opposite, so we could watch both matches at the same time.

It was a nail-biting game, made more so by the oohs and aahs of the party of locals enjoying a hookah pipe at the table next to us. One of these men won 10,000 Malaysian ringit (about £2k) as a result of a bet he'd put on England and USA emerging victorious. Pronouncing us lucky charms, he insisted we enjoy a beer on him before we were allowed to leave.

Sandakan once boasted the world's greatest concentration of millionnaires, though there's little evidence of that today. Now it's really just a jumping-off point for exploring the local jungle. We used the local bus to head to Sepilok, home of the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. This is one of only four orangutan sanctuaries worldwide, and is particularly necessary here. Thanks to logging and the ever-expanding palm oil plantations, the “man of the forest's” home is rapidly being destroyed. The apes are brought to the centre to be rehabilitated into the Kabili-Sepilok Forest after getting lost or being kept as pets by locals. Visitors are able only to see one of the feeding platforms used during the early stages of an orangutan's treatment, in order to keep human contact to a minimum.

After watching an introductory video written and narrated by an ex-Newsround presenter, we were allowed to venture out to the platform and silently await the apes. We saw 3 orangutans in total, who one by one came swinging into view along suspended ropes, to feed on bananas and milk provided by the centre's staff. Sadly we didn't see any of the babies whose faces are plastered on all of the sanctuary's marketing material, but we did enjoy the attempts of the various monkeys who also live in the forest to steal the orangutans' food – they were incredibly cheeky, especially the little ones. It didn't quite match the panda sanctuary in Chengdu, but it was still interesting to see orangutans for real, rather than at the zoo.


Now Sandakan wasn't exactly a culinary paradise (the condiment of choice, which comes with everything, appears to be mayo) but on our last night we happened upon a little rooftop bar called Ba Lin, which wouldn't have looked out of place in Ibiza or the Med. Candles and cushions were the order of the day here, and we chilled out on oversized sofas, whilst admiring a great view of the town. My salad still came drenched in mayonnaise, but somehow in this setting, I didn't mind quite so much.