A day in Sepilok

An earlyish start to our day as we have a 9am shuttle to catch to make it to the morning orangutan feeding.

That’s why we are in Sepilok – it’s got one of the best orangutan sanctuaries, as well as a sun bear sanctuary and rainforest centre.

A breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast and jam is included with our room. We booked on Hostelworld.

It’s a beautiful spot in a small patch of rainforest with private huts and a big longhouse with dorms.

My boyfriend Miles and I have a hut with a bathroom that opens to the rainforest and a cute deck perfect for catching the afternoon sun.

Breakfast is served in their open kitchen/dining spot/chill area overlooking the rainforest. After inhaling our food because we are late (as always), we hop in the free shuttle to the sanctuaries.

Seeing the orangutans is definitely a highlight! A mother and baby, teenager and big old orangutan come to the feeding platform in the morning. All the older orangutan have been rescued from forest destruction or human’s pets and rehabilitated in the rainforest here.

This is the closest feeding platform, but they have others up to 1km into the rainforest to encourage them to explore further. Eventually some never come back and live fully wild again. They are mainly fed “boring” food like bananas to encourage them to find their own.

We stay at this platform for a while after they leave and watch all the macaques clean up the rest. They are super funny but then try to attack us so they’re definitely not my favourite monkey!

The orangutan sanctuary also has a nursery for baby orangutans where they teach them how to find food, socialise and even grip and swing on ropes so they’re ready for trees when they get older. We watch the young ones play for a while. Super cute!

Orangutan sanctuary 30 MYR30 MYR

For lunch we just eat snacks from a little café there while hiding from the midday sun.
25 MYR25 MYReach.

We spend the afternoon at the sun bear sanctuary across the road where we see lots of bears, a snake and a cheeky young orangutan who is hanging out in the trees there. The sun bear is so small and cute looking that people illegally have them as pets. These bears are all rescued from that.

Sun bear sanctuary 30 MYR30 MYR

Both the sun bears and orangutans really highlight how terrible humans can be to animals and their environment but also how much love and effort goes into looking after them by others.

Next, we pop back to the orangutans to watch the afternoon feeding and hang out at the nursery again.

Our free shuttle picks us back up at 4pm and takes us home.

The resort does lunches and dinners so we have a classic cheap Malaysian noodle dish and chill out for the rest of the evening.
20 MYR20 MYR

We are a backpacking couple so we booked a private room at Paganakan Dii Tropical Resort.
400 MYR400 MYRwith free breakfast.
A nice hostel is around 40 MYR40 MYR per night.

Total spent: 305 MYR305 MYR