"Sandakan ~ The Little Hongkong" Sandakan by chiabh

Sandakan, in north-eastern Sabah, has one of the most beautiful natural harbours in the world... The waters of the bay open up to the Sulu sea, just south of the Philippines... If you stand on top of Twig Hill and look toeards the harbour, you will know the reason for calling it Little Hongkong... The view is just like that if you look down on Hongkong harbour from The Peak...

The town derived its name from the Suluk word “sanda”, which means “to pawn”... Exactly who pawned what to whom is none too clear, the truth being lost in the murky annals of Borneo’s history... In the early 1870s, William Clarke Cowie, a Scottish adventurer and engineer, delivered guns and ammunitions to the Sultan of Sulu, who needed them to fend off a possible onslaught by Spaniards who had by then overrun much of the Philippine islands... In return, the Sultan granted Cowie permission to set up base in Pulau Timbang, a sparsely inhabited island within the bay...

Cowie christened his territory “Sandakan”, but strangely enough, it soon became known as “Kampong German”, due perhaps to the increasing number of German traders who dropped by to visit the Scotsman... In 1879, the settlement was relocated to a place on the mainland known by the quirky-sounding name of Buli Sim Sim... Cowie renamed this new settlement “Elopura”, or beautiful city... The name, however, didn’t catch on and soon reverted to "Sandakan"... The British North Borneo Company, which was governing Sabah, then moved its capital from Kudat in the northern tip of Sabah to Sandakan, which then went through a building boom...

Sadly though, the Allied forces, in their attempt to liberate it towards the end of World War Two nearly bombed the new Sandakan to smithereens... The Japanese, in retaliation, finished the job by burning it to the ground, thus wiping Sandakan from the face of the map in June 1945... The following year, the capital was moved to Jesselton, now Kota Kinabalu. Sandakan was and still is a port for the export of timber...

With its strategic location, it soon grew into the bustling metropolis it is today... Today, it is more well-known as the gateway to Sabah’s rich nature and wildlife reserves in Sepilok, Lanyakan islands (leatherback turtles), Sukau and Labuk Bay (famed for sightings of the rare proboscis monkeys) and the world-famous wildlife park in the Danum Valley...