Borneo, the world’s third largest island, is divided among Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. I would like to think, however, that the best of Borneo can be found in the two Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.

If you have three weeks of backpacking in Borneo, where should you go? Where should you start?

I guess you can start the tour from Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of the Malaysian state of Sabah. You can access Kota Kinabalu either from Malaysia’s KL International Airport or Singapore’s Changi Airport. Budget carrier AirAsia also flies to Kota Kinabalu from these two airports.

Here are 14 things you can do in Borneo but first a brief disclaimer. This is neither a definitive nor a comprehensive guide as it only touches on tourist attractions in Sabah. Please check with Sabah Tourism or local tour agents for a more information.

This blog has no business relations with tour agents mention in this entry.

Without further ado, here are the 14 things you can do in Borneo

Assuming that you start your tour in Kota Kinabalu, you can check these out:

1. Explore the city on your arrival, go to the museum, night market, Gaya Street Sunday bazaar or laze on the seafront.

2. Visit Monsopiad Cultural Village for a unique cultural experience. Located 20 minutes from Kota Kinabalu, the village is a traditional as well as a historical site maintained by the descendants of the feared and legendary Kadazan head-hunter warrior Monsopiad. His trophies of 42 skulls and a thigh bone are still kept at the village, in a hut called the House of Skulls.

3. Visit Tunku Abdul Rahman Park, about 15-20 minutes by speed boat ride. The park is a cluster of five islands — Pulau Gaya, Pulau Sapi, Pulau Manukan, Pulau Mamutik and Pulau Sulug. You can dive, snorkel and learn how to scuba dive there. You can also do seawalking in Pulau Sapi where you’d get to walk on the sea bed as though you are walking on land.

From Kota Kinabalu you can plan your trip to:

Mt Kinabalu

4. Climb Mt Kinabalu (requires 2 days minimum). Mt Kinabalu is Borneo and Malaysia’s highest mountain.

The 4,092.5-metre mountain is used to be the highest mountain in Southeast Asia until someone pointed out that the Hkakabo Razi, at 5,881m in northern Myanmar or Burma, is the tallest mountain in the region. Myanmar is of course a Southeast Asian country.

So we now say Mt Kinabalu is the highest mountain between the Himalayas and New Guinea. The mountain is the central piece of the Kinabalu National Park, a World Heritage Site, located about an hour’s drive from Kota Kinabalu.

5. Take a bath at Poring Hot Spring after the climb. The hot spring is located 40 minutes drive from the Kinabalu National Park.

You can also plan your trip (after climbing Mt Kinabalu or even before) to:

6. Klias Proboscis Monkey Cruise , a 2-in-1 excursion, where you are taken on a boat along the Klias River (two hours drive from Kota Kinabalu) to see proboscis monkey and then as night sets in, treat yourself with spectacular display of nature’s own neon lights — thousands of fireflies lighting up trees by the river. More info here.

Proboscis monkey... photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, via Wikipedia

By now, you would have spent about eight days of your trip. Now it’s time to take a flight to Sandakan (or six hours by land) to experience Borneo’s wildlife adventure. Sandakan can take you approximately five days to cover. Things to do in Sandakan:

7. Visit the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre. To many tourists, going here is among the main reasons — to some, the only reason — why they come to Borneo. Make sure you reach this centre by 9.45am in time for the orang utan feeding time at 10am. The orang utan are fed again at 3pm.

Why must you come during feeding time? Because that’s the time you’d get to see these men of the forest emerging from their jungle habitat.

There will be a video show after that and it is recommended that you go and watch it. It is enlightening, to me at least. More info here.

8. After seeing the orang utan, you can proceed to the Rainforest Rediscovery Centre not too far from Sepilok. It is dubbed as the most accessible rainforest in Sabah. More info here.

9. Visit Selingan Turtle Island and see marine life, turtles lying eggs and so on. You can also contribute to the conservation of this planet’s turtles by helping to release young turtles to the ocean.

10. Explore Sabah largest limestone and bird nests cave called Gomantung Cave.

11. Join Oxbow lake cruise for another wildlife excursion.

For more information about what you can do in Sandakan, the available tour packages and so on, refer here.

From Sandakan, you can access either Semporna or Lahad Datu, both about two hours by land:

12. Ah, time flies. It going into the third week already. If you are a diver, diving in Sipadan is a must.

You haven’t seen anything yet if you haven’t dive in Sipadan. Maybe that’s an exaggeration and coming from a non-diver, you need not take my word for it. But you should really take Jacques Cousteau’s word seriously.

13. If you are not a diver, and want to see Sabah’s own version of the Amazon rainforest, you should really come to Danum Valley Conservation Area in Lahad Datu. There’s a jungle lodge there.

It is an ancient jungle, minus T-Rex and co, of course. There is also an ancient burial ground which is not really a burial ground but rather a place where the dead in their timber coffin are stashed away in caves.

14. I guess, by now you have seen most of the major attractions Sabah has to offer. By now your three weeks is almost over. You can now return to Kota Kinabalu to catch your flight back.

However, if you still have a day to spare, you can make a quick dash to the northern part of Sabah to the village of Tinangol where you can see the traditional longhouse community.

That’s three weeks for you… and you still haven’t discovered the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Well, you can come back later for another three weeks of experiencing Borneo from Sarawak, the Land of the Hornbills. Lots of amazing things there… limestone landscape, people, world’s biggest cave and so on.

To the people of Borneo, being in Borneo is being somewhere. To many people around the world though, Borneo is a complete middle-of-nowhere — a place you can get lost into.

Which isn’t exactly a bad thing if travel to a remote location on the earth is what you have been looking for.

The Single Minded Women website recently posted an entry suggesting “middle-of-nowhere” places where you can go. It lists Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre in Sandakan, Sabah, as one of the places.

Proclaiming that nowhere is the new somewhere, writer Allison Neves also listed several other rewarding places to visit despite their remoteness, namely Mission Beach, Australia – The Sanctuary Yoga Retreat and Eco-Lodge; Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica – Lapa Rios Ecolodge; Amazon Basin, Peru – Cayman Lodge Amazonie; and Maputaland, South Africa – Rocktail Bay Lodge.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is organising a 13-day trip to Borneo from the United States in May.

The trip, planned for May 29 – June 13, covers Borneo’s premier nature and conservation sites in the state of Sabah, the northern part of the world’s third largest island.

The trip will start in Kota Kinabalu before going to Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary, Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, Gomanting Caves, Danum Valley, Mabul and Sipadan Islands and back to Kota Kinabalu before returning to the United States on June 13.

More information can be obtained from WWF travel page.

There is still plenty of nature in Borneo notwithstanding reports of habitat loss due to logging and oil palm plantation.

A vast portion of the world’s second largest Island (well… third, if you count Australia as an island) will remain protected and covered in pristine jungle if the initiative to conserve the area known as the Heart of Borneo succeeds.

Cruise into the Heart of Borneo

This is where you will be if you choose to take the brand new six-star luxury river cruise on the Rajang River — Malaysia’s longest river — starting July this year.

The cruise is called “Into the Heart of Borneo”, based on the title of a book by Redmon O’Hanlon.

O’Hanlon will be among 60 passengers on the cruise’s maiden voyage using a replica of an American paddle steamer, which will set sail from the town of Sibu on July 9.

It will sail up to the Baleh River, a tributory to the Rajang River, which recently shot to worldwide fame following the release of two pictures, purportedly those of the Borneo giant snake, the 100-feet Nabau.

The pictures show a serpentine figure swimming in the river. The photos later turned out to be a hoax. Good thing… now we can cruise in peace.

RV Orient Pandaw

The cruise, onboard the RV Orient Pandaw, is operated by Southeast Asia’s biggest cruise operator Irrawaddy Flotilla Company which has carved a name for itself in specialised river cruise excursion under its Pandaw cruise brand.

The New Straits Times newspaper quoted Sarawak Tourism Board chief executive officer Gracie Geikie as describing the cruise as the first of its kind in Malaysia.

The Rajang River (in red marking)

“There’ll be stops along the river to enable the passengers to go hiking and visit longhouses and towns,” she said.

Rajang River into the Heart of Borneo

There will also be a stopover at Kampung Rajang, near Tanjung Manis at the river mouth, for a visit to the songket factory.

Another stop is Sarikei to visit a pineapple farm, for which the town is famous. Passengers can also choose to shoot the Pelagus rapids, the New Straits Times said.

Up to Baleh and back

The cruise, however, will not cover the whole of 640km Rajang. According to the cruise operator, “The Rajang is navigable on a ship of Pandaw’s size for at least 250km until the Pelagus Rapids.”

After the Pelagus rapids, the cruise heads upstream Rajang’s main tributary, the Baleh River.

The area along river is populated by the Ibans who were headhunters until in the 1950s.

Travel writer Fiona Bruce spent some times in Sabah and concluded:

“Much as I loved our stay in Sabah this time round, it did lack much of the authenticity I found all those years ago. But I reckon if you want a little bit of adventure, or as much as you can safely have with young children, as well as a sense of being in a completely different culture but with the haven of a luxury hotel attached, it’s spot on.”

Her full article, titled “Fiona Bruce is wild about Sabah” appeared in The Times.

Writers at Australia’s The Age newspaper had an unusual assignment recently – one that I myself would love to do – that is, to strech out on some of the world’s most unusual beaches and write a thing or two about the beaches.

Gardner Bay beach at Isla Espanola, Galapagos Islands, seems so far away from where I am; so is Pendine Beach in Wales or Cenito in Naples and their distance make the unusualness even more more profound.

Closer to home, however, is Sipadan Island, a place I have visited on many occasions, which The Age considered as one of the world’s unusual beaches.

Photo: Reuters

Writer Andrew Heasley wrote in the newspaper’s very recent edition that:

As you wade into the warm Sulawesi Sea from the white sands of Malaysia’s Sipadan Island, off the east coast of Borneo, an abundance of tropical fish flit in front of your snorkelling mask.

Get into chest-deep water and they grow in size – rainbow-coloured trigger fish, angel fish and parrot fish.

But it’s beyond this point that Sipadan, touted as one of the top 10 diving spots in the world, is unique. Within about eight metres of the water’s edge, swimmers are confronted by an inky-blue line. This is the “drop-off”, where the sea floor drops almost vertically to a depth of 600 metres. Local dive operators say there’s another shelf beyond this, with a further two-kilometre drop. [Source]

He also wrote about what he described as one of the most spectacular sites in Sipadan, namely the “turtle graveyard” where a yawning cave entrance opens into a labyrint of caves, with “big shells are all that remain of turtles that once swam in, ran out of air and drowned before they could find their way out.”

Lonely Planet, the world leading travel publisher, has posted an alert on its website, warning travellers not to go to the eastern part of Sabah, the Malaysian state on Borneo Island.

The alert says:

Travel Warning: Don’t Go to Eastern Sabah

The islands and coastal areas of Eastern Sabah are considered very dangerous for foreigners, who are at high risk of being kidnapped by terrorist groups.

Severity: High-level alert.

I don’t know since when the alert was posted but I don’t think the situation at the moment warrants a high-level alert. Probably a travel advisory would suffice. Definitely not a high-level alert. Sabah’s east coast is not the Gulf of Aden.

The situation in the east coast of Sabah now is not as dangerous as it was in 2000.

Following two hostage-taking incidents in resort islands in the state’s east coast in May and September 2000, security surveillance has been stepped up in the area.

Three US Pacific Commanders had visited the area since then and all had acknowledged that the security surveillance put up by the Malaysian government was sufficient to thwart any terrorist threats.

I must admit that I’m a bit bias when I come up with this list of Seven Natural Wonders of Borneo.

Firstly, I’m a Sabahan and I haven’t travel extensively to Sarawak, so naturally I know more about Sabah’s natural attractions than Sarawak’s.

Secondly, I’m a Malaysian, so I know more about the natural wonders of the two Malaysian Borneo states — Sabah and Sarawak — than Kalimantan’s, the Indonesian side of Borneo. Also, I don’t have many information on the natural wonders in Brunei, the tiny Sultanate sandwiched between Sabah and Sarawak.

Starting the wonder ball rolling

With this entry, however, I hope to start the “wonders” ball rolling, encourage discussion and hopefully sometimes in the future, there will be organisations that will come up with a definitive list of the Seven Natural Wonders of Borneo.

You can also suggest several other natural wonders of Borneo and if there are too many of them, maybe we can have a poll to choose the seven wonders.

Without further ado, here they are, the Seven Natural Wonders of Borneo, in no particular order:

1. Kinabalu Park (Sabah)

Sabah’s Kinabalu Park, with the omnipresent 4,095.2-metre Mount Kinabalu as its central piece, is a natural choice and I can’t imagine anyone would want to dismiss the park from the list.

Mount Kinabalu panorama. Picture by Arthur Lee.

The park was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco 2000 for its “wide range of habitats, ranging from rich tropical lowland and hill rainforest to tropical mountain forest, sub-alpine forest and scrub on the higher elevations.”

Kinabalu Park, established in 1964, is one of Malaysia’s first national parks. It covers an area of 754 square kilometers (approximately 117 sq km larger than Singapore) and has been designated as a Centre of Plant Diversity for Southeast Asia.

Unesco says the park “is exceptionally rich in species with examples of flora from the Himalayas, China, Australia, Malaysia, as well as pan-tropical flora.”

Among the criteria for its incription into the World Heritage Site:

a. The altitudinal and climatic gradient from tropical forest to alpine conditions combine with precipitous topography, diverse geology and frequent climate oscillations to provide conditions ideal for the development of new species.

b. The Park contains high biodiversity with representatives from more than half the families of all flowering plants. The majority of Borneo’s mammals, birds, amphibians and invertebrates (many threatened and vulnerable) occur in the Park. [Source]

2. Gunung Mulu National Park (Sarawak)

If you can appreciate the grandeur of Mount Kinabalu from afar, the true wonders of Gunung Mulu National Park, with the Mulu Caves as its central piece, can only be appreciated up close and “up inside”, for want of a better phrase.

Announcing the Gunung Mulu National Park into the World Heritage Site in 2000, Unesco said:

“Important both for its high biodiversity and for its karst features, Gunung Mulu National Park, on the island of Borneo in the State of Sarawak, is the most studied tropical karst area in the world”.

[Api Chamber, Mulu. Source]

The 52,864-ha park contains 17 vegetation zones, exhibiting some 3,500 species of vascular plants. Its palm species are exceptionally rich, with 109 species in 20 genera noted.

The park is dominated by Gunung Mulu, a 2,377m-high pinnacle karst, which is said to be the most cavernous mountain in the world.

At least 295km of explored caves provide a spectacular sight and are home to millions of cave swiftlets and bats. The Sarawak Chamber, 600m by 415m and 80m high, is the largest known cave chamber in the world.

The park is famous for its caves and the expeditions that have been mounted to explore them and their surrounding rainforest, most notably the Royal Geographic Expedition of 1977 – 1978, which saw over 100 scientists in the field for 15 months [Source].

3. Sipadan Island (Sabah)

If the Mulu Caves’ grandeur can be appreciated “up inside”, Sipadan’s beauty can only be appreciated by going down below.

Sipadan Island should be inscribed into the World Heritage Site. Period. I’m not a diver but reading what divers from around the world have to say or write about Sipadan, convinced me that the resort island really is one of Planet Earth’s best diving spots.

So, if it is one of the very best few, shouldn’t it be recognised as a world heritage?

PADI, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, certainly thinks so. And it is delighting to know that the government is aware of it and looks set to make a bid for the inscription.

According to Wikipedia, Sipadan is the only oceanic island in Malaysia, rising 2,000 feet or 600m from the seabed. Oceanic islands are ones that do not sit on continental shelves. They are volcanic in origin.

Located in the Celebes Sea off Semporna in the east coast of Sabah, Sipadan was formed by living corals growing on top of an extinct volcanic cone that took thousands of years to develop.

Sipadan is located at the heart of the Indo-Pacific basin, the centre of one of the richest marine habitats in the world. More than 3,000 species of fish and hundreds of coral species have been classified in this ecosystem.

4. Danum Valley (Sabah)

Danum Valley, a 43,800 hectares of virgin forest is one of the world’s most complex ecosystems, is the largest protected lowland dipterocarp forest in Sabah.

With towering tropical trees, Danum Valley is where you can see nature in its original, pristine state, undisturb since time immemorial.

It is home to Sumatran rhino, Asian elephant, Orang utan, Western tarsier, Flying lemur, Leopard cat, Yellow barking deer, Mouse deer, Sambar deer, Bearded pig, Malay civet, Long-tailed macaque, Slow loris, Clouded leopard, Giant flying squirrel, Malayan sun bear, Smooth otter, Proboscis monkey [Source].

Apart from its flora and fauna heritage, Danum Valley is also home to ancient burial of the Orang Sungai where the dead are left inside caves in their timber coffins.

Among attractions in the area are night safari on open jeep, seven-tier pools in Sungai Purut, which can only be reach by trekking through the jungle for about four hours.

The area is managed by the Sabah Foundation for conservation, research, education and physical training purposes.

5. Maliau Basin (Sabah)

Maliau Basin (satellite image, left), is considered the Lost World of Sabah as its existence is only recorded relatively recently.

Legend has it that in 1947, a pilot flew from the west coast of Sabah to Tawau had a shock of his life when he almost crashed into a wall of steep cliffs emerging from the misty jungle.

As it turned out later, the wall was that of the Maliau Basin exterior perimeter which resembles and overturned basin, hence the name Maliau Basin.

The 588.4 sq km (58,840 hectares) Maliau Basin Conservation Area encompasses the whole of Maliau Basin itself (390 sq km), plus an additional 198.4 sq km of forested land to the east and north of the rim, including the fabled Lake Linumunsut, formed by a landslide blocking a small tributary of the Pinangah River.

The saucer-shaped Maliau Basin is distinguished by its almost circular perimeter, sharply delimited on all sides by cliffs or very steep slopes, making it insurmountable on foot from most directions.

According to the Sabah Foundation, which managed the conservation area, the highest point of the basin is on the north rim, at over 1,675 m in elevation, but has yet to be accurately surveyed.

It was only 10 years ago that the area was truly discovered when in 1988, a first major scientific expedition was organised by the Sabah Foundation and WWF Malaysia.

6. Niah Caves (Sarawak)

If the Mulu Caves are awe-inspiring for its size and biodiversity heritage, the Niah Caves, also in the Miri district, are an important prehistorical site where human remains dating to 40,000 years have been found [Source].

“This is the oldest recorded human settlement in Malaysia’s Borneo. Painted Cave, situated in a much smaller limestone block of its own, some 150 meters from the Great Cave block’s south eastern tip, has rock paintings dated as 1,200 years old.

The caves are also well known for the birds’ nest (Swiftlet) industry. It is a popular tourist destination in Sarawak”.

The park was first gazetted as a National Historic Monument in 1958, gazetted as National Park on 23 November 1974 and was published to the public on 1 January 1975.

According to the Sarawak Forestry Department:

The park’s main claim to fame is its role as one of the birthplaces of civilisation in the region. The oldest modern human remains discovered in Southeast Asia were found at Niah, making the park one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. [...]

Niah’s important was first realised in 1957. The curator of the Sarawak Museum, Tom harrison, led an archeological dig at the West Mouth of the Great Cave. The exavations revealed plenty of human settlements in the area; tools, cooking utensils and and ornaments, made of bone, stone or clay.

7. Bako National Park (Sarawak)

I had thought long and hard about which natural attractions should make up the seventh natural wonder of Borneo. While the other six are an obvious choice, choosing a seventh is not a straight forward exercise.

I had first listed the Tip of Borneo, also known as Tanjung Simpang Mengayau, but thought that the Bako National Park in Sarawak should triumph over the northern-most promontory of Borneo in Sabah.

While the Tip of Borneo is the central piece in the Marudu Bay, the Bako National Park, on the other hand, has a much richer landscape.

Gazetted as a protected area on 1 May 1957 and was published to public on 4 may 1957. Bako is Sarawak’s oldest national park, covering an area of 2,727 hectares at the tip of the Muara Tebas peninsula.

“It is one of the smallest national park in Sarawak, yet one of the most interesting as it contains almost every type of vegetation found in Borneo. [...]

“With its rainforest abundant wildlife, jungle streams, waterfalls, interesting plant life, secluded beaches and trekking trails, Bako offers visitor an excellent introduction to the rainforest of Borneo. [Source].

There you go, my list of the Seven Natural Wonders of Borneo.

Asia’s biggest budget carrier, AirAsia, has been given the green light to fly the Singapore – Borneo sector.

The new service will connect the island state with three cities in Borneo — Kota Kinabalu in Sabah; and Kuching and Miri in Sarawak.

Malaysian Transport Minister Ong Tee Keat was reported to have said that officials from his ministry would meet their Singapore counterparts later this month to discuss the matter.

The latest development would undoubtedly open up Borneo’s accessibility to the world.

Visitors can how have the options of reaching Borneo using budget carrier through:

a. Malaysia’s Low-Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) located some 20 minutes away from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport; or

b. Singapore’s Budget Terminal, located next to Changi Airport, one of Asia’s busiest aviation hub.

I’ve been following several blogs written by tourists and visitors, relating their experience in Borneo, particularly in Sabah, the state where I come from.

One such blogs is “100 Days of SoliDude” run by this Erik Page guy. I think he is an American engineer based in Thailand.

Two-week adventure in Borneo

He recently had a two-week adventure in Borneo, spending most of the time in Sabah.

While in the Malaysian state on Borneo island, and he explored many places, several of which I myself — a Borneo guy — have never been to. He had climbed Mt Kinabalu, dived in Sipadan, gone off the beaten tourist track in Sandakan, met the proboscis monkey, and gone stone age in Long Pasia jungle.

I like his style of writing, although he misspelled Kota Kinabalu as Kota Kinabula.

An experienced driver — with six years of diving experience no less — he initially appeared to be skeptical about Sipadan being one of the world’s premier diving destinations.

Let’s see what my six years of diving has to say about that, he wrote; I can’t recall the exact quote though.

Spellbinding Sipadan

Then he went to Sipadan and came back to report that he might stop diving forever after this. Quote:

“I ended up doing 14 dives overall there! Saw sharks, turtles, barracuda, sea snakes, morey eels, cuddlefish, and a billion other things. It really was an amazing place.

“I think I need to stop diving forever now because I’m pretty sure everything else will be a let down.” [Source]

Way to go Erik, hope you’ve had the adventure you were looking for in Borneo; and hope you don’t mind me quoting your blog here.

As for the diving, well, you can always come back to Sipadan.