Sandakan is no zombie town

I READ with real interest a recent report on Sandakan trying to shake off that rather dreary “zombie town” label. Yes, development matters. Investment matters. Momentum matters. But my first thought was this: what a pity that Sandakan should ever need rescuing from so lazy a label in the first place.

Sandakan was never dead. It was merely under-told. Some towns are not short of life; they are short of storytellers. Sandakan has long had the ingredients: wildlife that can humble your ego, food that can improve your theology, history that still walks the streets, and people who know how to welcome without turning hospitality into theatre. This is a town of orangutans, old souls, seafood sermons, sea-breeze diplomacy and enough character to embarrass louder destinations.

In other words, Sandakan did not need a defibrillator. It needed better narratives. That is why I have always felt that Sandakan should be promoted not merely as a destination, but as an invitation. Not simply, “Come and see.” More like: “Come-lah. We will host you properly. And before you leave, the orangutans may judge you, the seafood may convert you, and the town may quietly adopt you.”

That, to me, is Sandakan. I say this not as a passing tourist with a camera and a temporary opinion, but as someone who welcomed many people there over the years. During my IJM days, I hosted guests, colleagues, visitors and ambassadors in Sandakan. Many arrived with titles, itineraries and proper schedules; many left remembering not the programme, but the atmosphere – the conversations, the warmth, the easy sense that Sandakan was not performing hospitality but simply practising it.

Sandakan already possesses what many destinations would happily overprice and over-market: authenticity. Long known as Sabah’s second-largest town, once called Elopura and fondly nicknamed the “Little Hong Kong” of North Borneo, it carries more than postcard nostalgia. That old name hints at migration, trade, reinvention, harbour life, and a rich multi-community texture that gives the town flavour rather than mere frontage.

And that difference matters. Infrastructure may impress, but it is affection that brings people back – and sends them home as the most convincing promoters to their own circles.

The orangutans are not here to entertain you

Take Sepilok. The orangutans there remain one of Sandakan’s defining attractions, though in fruit season they may be too sensibly occupied by the forest buffet to show up for human convenience.

That alone is worth admiring. The orangutans of Sepilok do not work for us. They are not performers. They are Borneo’s orange-haired philosophers, swinging through the trees with the confidence of beings who have never needed a management retreat. They look at us, I sometimes think, the way elderly relatives look at younger family members with too much ambition and too little common sense.

Next door, the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre adds another chapter to Sandakan’s animal kingdom. Visitors see the world’s smallest bears from elevated walkways, safely and respectfully. Sandakan, in other words, is one of the few places where your day can include both deep reflection on conservation and the cheerful sight of a bear looking like it has just woken up from an underfunded committee meeting.

Then there is the Rainforest Discovery Centre, with its canopy walks, forest trails, birds and night sounds. Places like this remind urban people that forests are not empty spaces waiting to become car parks. They are living libraries full of wings, shadows, calls and lessons in humility.

And if Sepilok gives you orangutans and sun bears, then the Kinabatangan gives you a whole river opera. Proboscis monkeys, crocodiles, macaques, pygmy elephants and plenty of swampy mystery: that is not a bad cast list for an afternoon cruise.

Other places sell “river views.” Sandakan offers proboscis monkeys with profile, crocodiles with attitude, elephants with quiet authority, and enough atmosphere to remind you that nature does not always need special effects. The proboscis monkeys, in particular, deserve some sort of municipal medal. With those splendid noses and unapologetic faces, they are the perfect emblem of a town that does not need to fit somebody else’s beauty standard to be unforgettable.

And then, of course, come the turtles. In an age of short attention spans and algorithmic nonsense, there is something deeply dignified about watching a turtle do something ancient, unhurried and utterly indifferent to trends. Sandakan offers that too: not just excitement, but perspective.

A town remembering itself in public

Yet if one speaks only of wildlife, one risks making Sandakan sound like a zoo with better weather. It is much more than that. Sandakan is one of Sabah’s most storied places. History here is not hidden away in an archive to be visited by appointment. It lingers in slopes, steps, buildings and memory. The Sandakan Heritage Trail links mosque, memorial, churches, temples and old houses in a way that feels less like sightseeing and more like a town remembering itself in public.

Sandakan has seen migration, commerce, fire, war, rebuilding and reinvention. Once formally named Elopura and later reclaimed as Sandakan, it had to find its footing again after wartime devastation and the movement of Sabah’s capital to Jesselton. Which is why I bristle at the phrase “zombie town.” Sandakan has been through too much history to deserve such shallow shorthand. A place that has endured trade booms, destruction, decline and uneven recovery is not lifeless. It is layered.

Agnes Keith House, for instance, is no mere old residence perched politely on a hill. It is a literary lookout post over North Borneo’s past – part memoir, part museum, part well-mannered haunting. Here, Sandakan’s memory feels almost domesticated, as though history once came in for tea, settled into the drawing room, and absent-mindedly left its shoes by the door. Even the ghost stories add to its charm, as if the walls themselves have refused early retirement and still insist on narrating one more chapter after dark.

Then there is the Sandakan Memorial Park, a quiet but necessary keeper of memory. It reminds visitors that the region’s wartime story was no footnote to history. It was painful, human and terribly costly. To walk there is to remember that history is made not only of dates and campaigns, but of flesh-and-blood human beings whose suffering must never be reduced to a passing mention. In Sandakan, the Memorial Park insists that memory must have its place at the table.

Last year, I interviewed Lynette Silver, whose work has long kept alive the memory of the Sandakan Death Marches. That conversation stayed with me, along with the conviction that the Sandakan-Ranau Death March trail needs to be better connected, interpreted and told – not crudely commercialised, but respectfully presented so visitors can grasp the scale, geography and suffering of what happened.

There is still more to be done. Australians, British, Japanese and others can be invited into this story with dignity – not for spectacle, but for remembrance. A more fully connected trail could turn scattered memory into a fuller act of witness, inviting younger generations to stand where suffering once stood and leave with a deeper commitment to peace. That feels all the more urgent now, as the present realities of the Middle East remind us that war is never safely confined to the past. Lest we forget, yes – but also lest we remember too little, and too late, together.

Seafood that could end a disagreement

Then there is food, which in Sandakan is not to be treated casually. Let us be clear: Sandakan seafood is not merely “fresh and diverse.” It is persuasion with soy sauce. It is diplomacy served steaming. It is one of the few things in life capable of ending an argument simply by arriving at the table.

Sim Sim Water Village, in particular, has long stood as one of Sandakan’s most memorable eating spots and one of its most visual symbols: homes, jetties, eateries and sea-breeze life balanced on stilts above the water. Fishermen bring in their catch there, and locals linger over breakfast while waiting for seafood straight from the sea. In some places, freshness is a marketing claim. In Sim Sim, it is practically still wet.

And Sandakan does not stop at seafood alone. The foodie trail spills into nasi kuning, seafood bak kut teh, pan mee, grilled fish, buffet seafood in many places, and the civilised pause of scones at the English Tea House.

This is what makes Sandakan dangerous in the most delightful way. It does not simply feed you; it keeps changing the menu until your self-restraint resigns on moral grounds. If orangutans win the heart and history stirs the mind, Sandakan’s dishes do something equally strategic: they persuade the stomach to become an ambassador.

The A and O opportunity

Another storytelling opportunity lies almost mischievously in plain sight: Sandakan and Sandokan – one real, one fictional, separated only by a single vowel and a century of imagination. Link: https://www.theborneopost.com/2026/03/15/sandakan-meets-sandokan-a-tourism-story-waiting-to-be-told/

In an earlier piece, I explored how Emilio Salgari’s pirate hero Sandokan, well-known in parts of Europe through novels, films and television, may well echo the very name and maritime aura of Sandakan itself. And German scholar, Dr Bianca M. Gerlich, traced historical threads back to Sabah – Sandokan is real!

To me, this is more than literary trivia. It is an untapped tourism idea that no place in Sabah has yet truly harnessed: the chance to turn a happy coincidence of names into waterfront storytelling, themed walks, murals, café corners and cultural conversations linking Sandakan’s real history of trade, piracy, resilience and harbour life with a fictional hero who once sailed so vividly through European imagination.

And yes – if Sandakan must endure that weary “zombie town” label a little longer, then it might as well have the wit to turn the joke back on itself. Not by surrendering to it, but by out-storytelling it. After all, if the world can happily embrace pirate legends lie in the Pirates of the Caribbean, fantasy villains and even fleets of zombie pirates, Sandakan can surely do something far more clever – make the label walk the plank, and sail its own story instead.

Stretch the idea a little further and one can almost see it already: a Sandokan Cruise sailing out of Sandakan and linking the east coast to Kota Kinabalu, Labuan, perhaps even onward to Sarawak – a voyage stitched together by sea, story and a little theatrical flair.

Not a mere ferry with better upholstery, but a storytelling journey across waters that once stirred the imagination of Europe through the legend of Sandokan. After all, many great destinations thrive not only on landmarks, but on lore. Paris has the Three Musketeers. London has Sherlock Holmes. Transylvania has Dracula. And here in Sabah, Sandakan already has Sandokan – one A and one O, one real harbour and one fictional hero.

What a globalised story this is. Imagine an Italian, Emilio Salgari, dreaming of distant seas he never sailed to write about Sandokan. Inspired by a Spanish adventurer-turned-priest, Don Carlos Cuarteron, whose life may have stirred that imagination. A German scholar, Dr Bianca M. Gerlich, tracing threads back to Kota Marudu and figures like Syarif Osman. Then comes cinema – from actors, Indian Kabir Bedi, to Turkish Can Yaman – carrying the legend across continents. The stories are watched and loved by Europeans and South Americans, with museums in Italy and Spain preserving a tale rooted in North Borneo.

And yet, somewhere along the way, the narrative drifts. The geography blurs. The story shifts – sometimes even relocating itself away from Sabah. Which raises a quiet but important question: If the world has already discovered Sandokan, what are Sabah and Sandakan doing to reclaim and tell their own story?

In a tourism world hungry for experiences with character, that is not a gimmick drifting about without anchor. It is a narrative waiting to be boarded. It would be a pity if this A-and-O, or Alpha and Omega opportunity were left quietly at anchor.

Muhibbah and the missing flight

Perhaps that is Sandakan’s real tourism secret: not only in what it has, but in how it feels. This is a town where Muhibbah is still lived without needing a slogan designer – one table, many backgrounds, shared laughter, and different faiths and family histories finding common ground in ordinary warmth.

That is why Sandakan’s future must be told through welcome as much as infrastructure. Yes, new projects matter. So do hotels, investment and, crucially, connectivity.

One missing link cries out for restoration: the return of direct flights from Singapore to Sandakan. That route once existed. Today, its absence feels less like a scheduling gap than a small act of geographical bad manners.

A town like Sandakan should not be made harder to love than necessary. Travellers heading for Sepilok, the sun bears, the Kinabatangan, Turtle Islands and heritage sites still have to perform a little aviation choreography before reaching a place whose appeal is otherwise immediate.

The extra stop adds time, cost and uncertainty. For a town that offers so-so much, the least aviation can do is cooperate. This is not merely an airline matter. It is a chance to replace detour with arrival.

Home, grumbles and the grass-elsewhere problem

One observation, if I may. Some Sandakanians seem to become unpaid ambassadors of discouragement the moment outsiders appear. Put friends from other Sabahan towns or West Malaysia in front of them, and out comes the familiar recital: roads bad, town sleepy, prospects dim. One would think we were quietly contesting the title of Most Improved Complaint.

Of course, Sandakan has its weaknesses, as do other towns, and no sensible person should deny that. But there is a difference between honest self-criticism and the very human habit of shooting our own feet, then wondering why we limp.

Perhaps it is simply the old grass-is-greener-elsewhere syndrome at work – not unique to Sandakan, nor even to Sabah. Human nature does this everywhere. We grumble about home, admire somewhere else, and forget that what has become ordinary to us may seem distinctive and delightful to others.

The irony is that foreign visitors often appreciate Sandakan’s wildlife, food, history and warmth more generously than locals do. Yet for many of us, home is still home – imperfect, exasperating, familiar, and quietly beloved. We may sigh at its shortcomings and compare it with somewhere shinier, but beneath the grumbling there is still affection. That is why Sandakan deserves neither blind praise nor endless self-diminishment, but something better: honesty, perspective, and a little more loyalty in the telling.

Not resurrection, but recognition

Even as Sandakan seeks new flights, new investments and a more confident future, I hope it does not make the common mistake of trying to imitate louder places. Sandakan does not need to become glossier than it is. It needs to become more confidently itself. Tell the story better. Walk the heritage better. Host visitors better. Weave together the wildlife, the food, the memory and the people into one living experience, rather than leaving them as a pile of separate attractions waiting for a brochure to do all the heavy lifting.

If I were to promote Sandakan now, I would not begin with sterile taglines or polished slogans that sound as though they were approved by a committee allergic to personality. I would begin more simply.

Come to Sandakan. Come for the orangutans, who have better hair than most influencers.
Come for the sun bears, who prove that size is no barrier to charisma.

Come for the Kinabatangan, where the river carries monkeys, elephants, mist and more stories than most cities manage in a century.

Come for the turtles, who still know how to arrive with dignity.

Come for the heritage, where mosque, church, temple, memorial and old house remind you that history here is plural, bruised, resilient and alive.

Come for the seafood, that tastes like geography finally fulfilling its purpose.

Come for the people, who still understand that hospitality is not a product line but a way of being.

Sandakan is no zombie town. It is a town with sea breeze in its lungs, wildlife at its doorstep, history in its bones and welcome still warm on the table. What it needs now is not resurrection, as though it had died. It needs recognition – and above all, narration worthy of its soul.