For things to do in Borneo I’m going to go over the tour we did with Amazing Borneo, which is one of only a handful of companies that offer tours into Borneo. You For things to do with kids in Borneo, you can visit Toucan’s Tip’s For Kids. We spent about 11 days in total and did a lot of travelling and in hindsight, you don’t need to go to both Kinabatangan River and Danum Valley. Anyway, here’s a bit of a recap of what we did which is pretty typical.
Danum Valley Rainforest Tour
Day 1 you get picked up from your Lahad Datu hotel, get driven to their office, check in and leave at 9:30. It’s a full two and a half hour drive into Danum Valley Rainforest Lodge, mostly on gravel, bumpy roads but nothing to panic about. Once you check into Danum Valley Rainforest Lodge you get a briefing, have some lunch, few hours rest then we did a walk through the Rainforest at 3:30p.m. This lasts about an hour and a half, saw some Gibbons, lizards and a bunch of bugs like centipedes, spiders and the like.
You then go back to your room, have a rest, then out again around 6:30p.m for a night walk which lasts about 45 minutes. More lizards, frogs and some small snakes nearer the lodge. Have some dinner, then bed time. It’s a long day. Surprisingly there’s not a lot of mosquitoes, there’s some about but I’ve seen much more at beach resorts. Neither of us got bitten the entire time we were here. You can buy leech socks, which are essentially these dorky looking rain jackets for your feet, supposedly to keep the leaches out.
Some of the track is muddy, but I didn’t really see how you could get leeches on you unless you’re really deep in the mud. You’ll be fine in a long pair of pants and long socks tucked over them. Guide told us that he had taken some people out, one lot wearing leech socks, another in shorts, the pair in leech socks got leeches, so it’s a bit of luck. I’d be fine walking around in a long pair of pants and long, thicker socks. No need to go all out on bug spray and all geared up for a wild rain forest experience, everything is on tracks so it’s all good.
Day Two
Day two you head up to a lookout point, in total about 3-4 kkm from the lodge. The trek uphill is about 1.2 km, nothing strenuous but a good little workout. Unless you’re totally unfit and overweight you won’t struggle. Grobbler was a bit tired going up and didn’t feel very well, turns he had a bit of diarrhea and was fine once getting it out back in the lodge. The views pretty good, saw some monkeys on the way down and a nice cool looking lizard. On the way up you check out some burial grounds, not every exciting but okay.
This is supposed to take 3 hours but we finished in about 2 and a bit, which is fine. Had some lunch, then back into another forest walk at 3:30 followed by a night tour. The 3:30 walk was about an hour, nice walk through the Rainforest but didn’t see anything except a monitor lizard and another lizard. The guide seemed to have a fascination with millipedes and got every excited every time we came across one. We then had a few hours break before the night tour at 6:45p.m.
For this you get taken on a golf cart down the entrance road probably 3-5km. Guy shines a spot light in the trees. We saw some apparently rare bird that birdwatchers would have apparently got a stiffy over, a deer, some glimpses of flying squirrels and tarantula on the road on the way back. You don’t get out of the cart so no need to take anything and your small torches in the room won’t do you much good. Back to the lodge around 7:30ish then do what you want.
Day Three
We originally were scheduled to leave at 10:30a.m but changed tat. If they ask, leave at 1:30p.m because it really is nice up here. If you’re on your way to Sandakan, there’s no point arriving early there that’s a shithole much like Lahad Datu. We did the canopy walkway, half of which is under maintenance. Apparently part of it got destroyed by lightning or something. I didn’t even know there was an elevated walkway, but apparently it’s quite an attraction and they should probably tell you that before coming. No big deal for us but some might be disappointed.
We got a golf cart out to it and drove along the road and saw nothing, bit of a waste of time, I think it was partly to waste some time because you can’t really spend more than 30 minutes on the canopy walkway. It’s pretty much as expected, some nice photo opportunities but nothing spectacular. On the way back we got dropped off at my favourite tree, which is this massive tree that’s hollow inside. We were back by around 9:30, had a dip in the plunge pool, packed and you have to check out at 11:30. Lunch at 12 then depart at 1:30. We then drove back to Lahad Datu then up to Sandakan for the next part of the tour.
By the time you reach Lahad Datu you’ll be well and truly over the bumpy road. You get dropped off at the Lahad Datu office, whisked into a van at which point the driver tells us it’s going to take 4 hours, not 2 /12 hours as specified in the itinerary, because there’s roadworks going on. I messages Amazing Borneo (the tour company) and they claimed that road works had just been done and there was nothing they could do about it. This is a total out and out lie as the road works they were doing were major and clearly had been going on for months. This is the second time that this company hid something from us. Even without the road works, the road is concrete, but pretty much as bumpy as the drive from Lahad Datu to Danum Valley.
As you can imagine I, I wasn’t too happy about spending 6 ½ hours driving on bumpy shitty roads. It turned out the driver had done a massive over exaggeration and we ended up getting there in about 2 hours and 45 minutes, but still, I wouldn’t recommend this drive even with the roadworks. Apart from being a shit road, there’s hundreds of trucks and it’s not that safe. Had I known the state of the road, I’d have never have chosen this option. Upon arriving at Four Points by Sheraton in Sandakan, the driver opened the boot, motioned for us to get the suitcases out, then called me back expecting a tip. I don’t think so mate!
He was a bit grumpy from the start, when we got in in Lahad Datu the van was like a Sauna, had to move to the front and he grumpily turned the air conditioning on. Didn’t ask if we wanted a stop or anything so definitely wasn’t getting any money from me. By the time we got to the hotel we were buggered. Sandakan is much bigger than Lahad Datu but only slightly more decent and clean. Traffic is way worse in Sandakan.
The next part of the tour is Sepilok and staying at the Bilit Rainforest Lodge. Day 4 you can get picked up from your hotel in Sandakan. We stayed at Four Points by Sheraton Sandakan, got picked up at 8am then you taken to the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Center which is situated in the Kabili Sepilok Forest Reserve.
You then get taken to the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center where you obviously see the Sun Bear, the smallest Bear in the world. This is a shared transfer and all the tours are shared. On the Danum Valley part of the tour we were grouped with a nice couple from Denmark with their older kids. One guy was from Greenland and he was a good sort. On this part we were grouped with another family from Denmark and they didn’t say hello, good morning or good bye the entire trip.
Anyway, from there it’s about a 2 hour drive into the village of BIlit, Sukau, Kinabatangan River. You get dropped off at a jetty and take a boat ride to BIlit Rainforest Lodge. Check-in, have a rest or go for an explore, then around 4p.m you go on a river cruise looking for endemic Proboscis Monkeys, birds and other wildlife. We saw baby monitor lizards, Proboscis Monkeys, Silver Back Monkey’s and some birds including hornbills, eagles, hawks. It’s a two hour trip and not that exciting but pretty good.
You then have a short rest, have dinner (which is terrible at Bilit Rainforest Lodge), then at 8:20 we did a night tour. Saw a few birds, I’m not a big fan of birds but these were colourful little things and okay. Then saw an owl and baby crocodile, and a small snake. It was okay but again, not that exciting. I guess it’s a bit of an experience but it was far from teaming with wildlife. Back at the hotel around 9:30p.m, early night and ready for the next day
Day 5 there’s an optional early morning tour up the river looking for more wildlife. It starts at 6:30 and they give you some toast before you go. On this we say more monkeys, birds, including Hornbills,, a crocodile (both one big one and a few babies), another small monitor lizard. The seats on the boat are hard, so bring a sweatshirt or small towel to sit on as you’re basically sitting down for 2 and a half hours and your ass gets sore. Once back to the hotel you can have a proper breakfast, eggs, more yuk food. You then have free time until 4p.m, at which time you do another river tour.
Here you search for Pygmy Elephants, which are part of the so called “Borneo Big Five” (the others being Orang Utan’s, Probosis Monkey’s, Crocodiles, and Hornbills). Again it’s not the most exciting tour in the world, and by this time you’ve already done 3 river tours so it’s much of the same thing. We did see some Elephants which are the smallest elephants in the world, nice, but there were about 15-20 other boats full of people so not the most amazing experience in the world. Also saw the usual hornbills, long tailed macaque and not much else. After this we’re well and truly done with river tours. You could get everything done in one day but they draw it out so you have something to look forward to. Another shit dinner back the Bilit Rainforest Lodge.
Day 6 you check out early then head to Gomantong Caves which we could have very well skipped. It’s one cave, smelly and full of cockroaches, bats and insects. It’s actually pretty disgusting. If you don’t like cockroaches you will fucking hate this! It’s basically one big cave, not bad, but not that impressive. You have to wear a helmet in otherwise you get bat shit on your head. Quite interesting but again, you can give this a miss. We did however, see some Orang Utan’s near the car park, which completed the Borneo “Big Five”, which according to our guide, only about 1% of visitors see, so for that alone it was worth it.
We then drove back 2 hours to Sandakan where we had lunch at an English Tea House. This is supposed to be one of Sandakan’s best restaurants. Compared to the shit we ate at Bilit Rainforest Lodge, it was heaven, but if you consider it to what most of you reading this will eat on a day to day basis, it was pretty ordinary. We had fish n chips, which was below average, and a terrible scone that tasted all doughy. They did manage to serve it with cream and jam, and the juices were good, but other than that I wouldn’t be in a hurry to book that and you won’t be missing out on anything if you skip it.
After that we got taken to the airport which is about 25 minutes of the city. As you can imagine this is a small airport, there’s a few shops in there and one large waiting area where was packed when we arrived and hard to get a seat. More on that in our tips and advice about Borneo. Overall, this part of the tour was okay but I’d give it a miss and just do Danum Valley, which is more natural, has way less people and is way less touristy. There’s literally boat loads of tourists being taken up and down the river and it’s a bit robotic and unnatural for my liking. You have to eat at certain times at Bilit Rainforest Lodge so it’s quite regimented and not our style at all.
Not sure I’d book with Amazing Borneo as they really should have told us that there was no need to actually go to Sandakan as well as neglecting to mention that the road from Lahad Datu is absolutely crap. I must mention the guide Paul on the Kinabatangan part of the trip was excellent, as was the boat driver who could see things no ordinary human being could. I guess he’s had practice but it’s still impressive how they can spot things.