Seeing all there is on the Kinabatangan River
Today we kicked off our five-day, four-night jungle tour, and this time we upgraded to premium rooms! We started the day early with our guide, “Captain Obvious” who only read signs and walked hella fast, taking us to the jungle canopy walk near Sandakan. Unfortunately, we didn’t spot much of anything. Our next stop was the orangutan rehabilitation center, where we arrived just in time for the 9:30 feeding. We were lucky enough to see an alpha male orangutan, complete with his impressive jowls, just lounging around as he waited for his food. He was an incredible sight, and it was amusing to watch him interact with the younger orangutans trying to snag some of his treats. Then we stayed for the 10 o’clock feeding, where we saw a mother orangutan with her 10-month-old baby. It was heartwarming to watch them play together, the mother so gentle and nurturing. The whole scene was so human-like. Although they’re in captivity, this is probably as close as we’re going to get to them. In the wild, they’re much harder to spot.
Our next visit was to the sun bear conservation area, a privately run center started by a biologist to rehabilitate sun bears that had been held captive or lost their homes to palm plantations. It was a bit sad to see, but these bears are better off here than where they came from. The bears were kept in separate enclosures because they can be quite territorial. Two of them were just pacing back and forth, which was tough to watch. We also heard some growling in the distance and saw another bear taking a nap as the day grew hotter. These bears are small, making it easy to see how they could be captured and exploited in circuses—poor little guys.
After a quick lunch, we transferred to another van and headed back to the Kinabatangan River. This is where our room upgrade really paid off—we got a lovely, air-conditioned room with a view of the river at the Tanini Resort. There were far fewer people staying here, only about 16 of us in total. We relaxed for a bit and then embarked on our afternoon river tour.
Even though we had just been on the river a few days ago, the tour was still a lot of fun, cruising around looking for birds and monkeys. The highlight this time was seeing monitor lizards along the shore—there were at least five of them. We watched as two of them stood on their hind legs and wrestled in the air, with a third one coming up and trying to bite one of the others, which quickly scampered away. It was overcast, so visibility was a bit low, but we still managed to spot plenty of proboscis monkeys and even caught a glimpse of an alpha male hiding in the trees.
That evening, we had the chance to do a night hike after dinner. The people we were sitting with weren’t exactly thrilled about it, but we were here to experience it all. We walked through the dark jungle, covering as much of our bodies as possible to fend off mosquitoes and anything else that might brush against us in the dark. Our guide kept mentioning how they’d seen a venomous viper snake the day before, so we were all on high alert. While the hike wasn’t too eventful, we did see lots of insects and some birds sleeping in the trees. The real challenge for me was that Andy always lags behind, not concerned about keeping up with the group. That left me somewhere between the group and Andy, who was busy photographing insects. It was fun, but really hot, and I was relieved when it ended. We were back in our room by 9:30, ready for another early morning river tour.
The next morning was beautiful—clear skies and wispy clouds. We loved being out on the river at 6 AM, watching the sunrise. We spotted several alligators, some very small ones and a medium-sized one. Our guide, Mohammed, got pretty close to them, a little too close for my comfort. We also saw more proboscis monkeys and a newborn macaque, so tiny it didn’t even have fur yet.
Later that morning, we took a jungle hike at 10 AM, though our guide warned us that we wouldn’t see much and there would be tons of mosquitoes. He wasn’t wrong. It’s been scorching here the past few days—today it hit 100°F. We were drenched in sweat, wearing long sleeves, pants, and mud boots, trying not to slip in the deep mud.
The highlight of the afternoon cruise was definitely the crocodiles and probiscus monkeys. We saw all kinds of crocodiles, from tiny babies to a massive 3-meter croc just chilling. For the grand finale, we came across more proboscis monkeys. At first, it wasn’t too exciting until we finally found the alpha male with the big nose we’d been searching for—and he wasn’t hiding. He let us get a good look at him before turning around to mate with one of the females. But that wasn’t all—after finishing with the first female, a second female eagerly jumped in front of him, ready for her turn. The alpha rested for maybe a minute before getting back to business with the second female. It was quite a show and an unexpected bonus on our jungle tour. We saw more Oriental Hornbills to top it all off.
We did one more night jungle hike, where we saw some crazy-looking spiders, another kingfisher sleeping in the trees, a leaf grasshopper, and some bizarre bugs we couldn’t even identify.
That night, it rained like crazy, and the sound was deafening as it pounded on the metal rooftops of our cabins. We had our last morning jungle tour before leaving the river. We had low expectations since we’d already seen the big five and more, but we did spot another huge crocodile on the bank. The other people in our group hadn’t seen any orangutans, so Mohammed was determined to find one. It was lightly raining for a while, and just as Mohammed was about to take us back to the lodge, he suddenly exclaimed, “Look, an orangutan!”. He maneuvered the boat closer to the shore, where we saw an alpha male with impressive features, munching away by the water. We were able to watch this amazing creature all by ourselves until another boat sped over, and the alpha disappeared into the jungle. It was quite a fitting end to our four days on the jungle river.
