Borneo With Kids: Orangutans at Sepilok and a Night on the River

Borneo is a separate flight from the Malaysian peninsula and a separate world. Rainforest, rivers, and the only place on earth outside Sumatra where orangutans live wild. Three nights in Sabah does it, and it is the wildlife trip that families remember above all the beaches.

Fly to Sandakan. Sepilok is twenty minutes away, an orangutan rehabilitation center in a forest reserve where rescued orangutans learn to live wild again. Feeding time is ten and three, on a platform in the trees, and the orangutans come in from the forest, swing down, eat, and ignore the humans on the boardwalk. Kids over three get it. The outdoor nursery, where the young ones play, is the part they will not leave.

The sun bear conservation center is next door. The smallest bear in the world, rescued from cages, climbing trees in a forest enclosure. Half an hour.

The river

The Kinabatangan river is two hours away, and a lodge on its bank is the second night and the third. Boat safaris at dawn and dusk along the river, and the animals come to the water. Proboscis monkeys with their noses, macaques, hornbills, crocodiles, and if the day is very good, a wild orangutan in a tree or a pygmy elephant on the bank.

The lodges are simple, wooden, with a boardwalk through the forest and a night walk with torches for frogs and sleeping birds. Kids over five. Mosquito spray, long sleeves in the evening, and a rain jacket.

Then back to Sandakan, or on to Kota Kinabalu for a beach and the mountain. Borneo is not cheap and it is not close, and it is the trip every child in the family will say was the best.

Planning Malaysia with kids? Start with the full Malaysia family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.