Sandakan.....

I attended a tender briefing in Sandakan yesterday. I checked in Sandakan Hotel, which was located at the town center, and managed to tour around the town on foot.....and took some photos.

The buildings in the town center look kind of old and lack of maintenance. Look like Kuching in the early 70's...

In the town center, mostly are foreigners...illegal as I was told......

Thus, when it enters the night......the town is completely standing still, so quiet that it looks like a dead town to me, no night activity at all....

Shops close as early as 7.00pm.....According to the hotel's staff, most of the commercial activities were shifted to the inner part of Sandakan, at Mile 4 & Mile 5 commercial areas.....

This was mainly due to the illegal immigrants colonized the Sandakan Town and the locals were forced to move to the inner areas due to safety reason......

The town is still very busy during the day......

Some of the streets have heavy traffic as well like in Kuching...

And, of course there are some new buildings coming up around the Sandakan town center too...

What Kuching short of is this attractive sea front......which Sandakan can offer...

But, unfortunately....Sandakan's sea front is mainly nominated by unpleasure scenery......

contribution of the illegal immigrants......

which is a common scene around Sabah too....

But, they contributed to the GDP of Sabah as well......if they mind not to create any security problem for the State of Sabah...

Time is too short for me to visit the inner commercial areas in Mile 4 and Mile 5. According to local, those areas are much more vibrant, especially during the night... Ya, Sandakan is rich due to Oil Palm planatations....and in the 70's it was called `Little Hong Kong' due to its commercial activities....the timber industry.. which attracted a lot of investors from Hong Kong. Now, the local Chinese dialect is still Cantonese....