Smoking in Sandakan

Our arrival back in Sandakan was filled with the usual tasks, fuel, gas, and groceries. Being only a short dingy ride from the markets, it was also a good place to get long term, hard to carry stores.

Being the second largest town in the state of Sabah, Sandakan also had a “Giant” supermarket. Out the front some guys were doing the hard sell on Zero Gravity chairs, supposedly designed by NASA. For a joke I convinced Amanda it might be a good idea to take a rest before the trip home.The whole thing somewhat backfired on me when I found myself carrying the chair home on the bus.


We visited the bird park in the hope of seeing some of Borneo’s exotic birds and we rewarded with a couple of sightings of the colorful brown sparrow. Even that was while walking from the bus stop to the park. I’m not sure what the story was, maybe it was to hot?


The evening before our departure back to Kudat, I came across a very cool power tool. It’s a rat killer that sounds like a leaf blower when running, shoots a flame out the front and injects a diesel and who knows what combination of chemicals at the nozzle. The end result is lots of noise and smoke.

Someone I spoke to said that they had seen a similar device used in India to kill rats after a small outbreak of the plague. I think it’s a stretch of the imagination to think Sandakan has a plague outbreak but lets weigh the anchor anyway. Can’t be to sure about these things.