Sandakan-My Lovely Hometown

I was born in Sandakan, a small city on the north eastern coast of Borneo. Sandakan is the second largest city of Sabah. Sandakan was named as "City of Nature" because Sandakan is the gateway for ecotourism destinations in Sabah, such as the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, the Rainforest Discovery Centre, Turtle Island Park, Kinabatangan River and Gomantong Caves. Basically Sandakan seems a place with well-preserved of the old buildings, nature and friendly folks. As mentioned by one of the famous blogger Kenny Sia, "Sandakan completely free from the evil wretches of commercialism and globalisation" which is so true. Only recently we have chain restaurants like Secrets Recipes and Old Town Kopitiam. I hope there will be more food chain coming in especially McDonalds so that children in Sandakan can have more fun with the Kids Happy Meal :)

Sandakan has another name which is "Little Hong Kong". I am not very sure why Sandakan got this name but most of the people in Sandakan, around 90% can speak good cantonese! Sandakan cantonese almost the same with cantonese in Hong Kong. People will never thought Sandakians can speak good canto unless they visited Sandakan before. I still remembered when I was in my industrial training, a new friend in the company could guess I was from Sandakan with just a clue from me. Guess what? I just mentioned to him that I was from Sabah in cantonese. Sandakan is the only city in Sabah that use cantonese as daily language. You will find out more the reason Sandakan known as "Little Hong Kong" from the clip below.

One of the most famous TV programme in Malaysia is "Taste with Jason". By it's title name, I am sure you will know that the programme introduce good food around Malaysia. And yes, the crew came to Sandakan as well to introduce our fresh seafood. Supposingly they just came to shoot one of our famous restaurant namely "Ocean King" but the crew was fascinated with the sea environment in Sandakan and decided to shoot the fish hatchery in Sandakan as well in order to add more interesting to the programme. And, guess what? They chose to shoot my in laws hatchery farm. When you saw a couple interviewed by Jason, the host of the programme, at a hatchery farm that's my in laws :) The clips are in mandarin except during the interview with my in laws. If you couldn't understand the language, you may read the full story here.

I will be going to Sandakan next month for a holiday and I will update more on the tatsty food in my hometown in future. In the mean time, enjoy the clips!