Where to Stay in Sandakan, Sabah

What is Sandakan known for?

The Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary both lie within reach of the city, and between them they account for most of the reason travellers pass through Sandakan. The city itself has a record. Agnes Keith House, the Chartered Company Monument and the William Pryer Monument keep the years when the place carried the name Elopura and served as the capital of British North Borneo.

What are the main landmarks in Sandakan?

Heritage here comes in five parts. Agnes Keith House, St. Michael's and All Angels Church, the Sandakan Heritage Museum, the Chartered Company Monument and the William Pryer Monument make up the record Sandakan keeps of its years as the capital of British North Borneo. Two sanctuaries stand apart.

The Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary are what most visitors travel for, and neither of them is a building.

What is the history of Sandakan?

The city has answered to more than one name. Sandakan carried Elopura for part of its past, and it later became the capital of British North Borneo, which is the chapter its monuments were raised to mark. Two of those monuments name men.

The William Pryer Monument and the Chartered Company Monument attach that administration to particular figures and to the company holding the charter, while Agnes Keith House ties the same years to a private household. The founding entry for the city reads 1658. Sabah took over the frame.

The city became the seat of Sandakan District and the administrative centre of Sandakan Division, second in the state only to Kota Kinabalu, and its position on the Sandakan Peninsula kept it central to the east coast of Sabah. Wildlife came to define the modern city. The Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary both draw on the forest outside the built-up ground, and they have given Sandakan a role with nothing to do with its administrative past.

The Sandakan Heritage Museum holds the older thread. St. Michael's and All Angels Church stands as the built survivor of the same period, and between church and museum the city keeps a line back to Elopura and to the years when the territory answered to a chartered company.

Where is Sandakan?

The peninsula gives the city its shape. Sandakan stands on the Sandakan Peninsula along the east coast of Sabah, with the forest holding the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary immediately behind it. Kota Kinabalu lies across the state.

That crossing separates the two largest cities of Sabah, and it leaves Sandakan Division facing the sea on one side and the interior of Borneo on the other.

What is the climate of Sandakan?

Damp air is the one constant in Sandakan. Sandakan lies within the tropical band on a peninsula the water surrounds on more than one side, so the range through the day stays narrow and the air keeps its weight. Rain runs the calendar.

The forest around the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary depends on it, and any visit to Sandakan Division is planned around wet and drier spells rather than around warm and cold ones.

How do you get to Sandakan?

Kota Kinabalu is the way in for most. The larger Sabah city sits across the state from Sandakan, and the run between them is the usual approach to this coast rather than anything arriving from the interior of Borneo. The sanctuaries come after.

Both the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary and the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary are reached outward from the city, so Sandakan works as the base and not as a stop on the way.