Epic Kinabatangan Wildlife River Cruise Tour from Sandakan | Book Now

Incredible nature- it exceeded our expectations by far!

It was heavy rain when we got on the boats, and we were a bit anxious about how it would go... ( please bring raincoats! ) but it did stop and we were treated to the most amazing wildlife. Over 30+ elephants, and we watched them for so long and were so close. Our boat driver and guide were incredible, got us so close and helped point out everything. Sooo many proboscis monkeys, hornbills, macaques, and we even spotted a croc and bat! The only drawback was the driver was supposed to bring us to the riverside lodge for dinner which we were so looking forward to but we arrived at a very basic roadside cafe, very far from the river. That was the only disappointment- the rest was excellent!..

Kinabatangan river

For this activity and many others in the sector, we recommend the services of Azrien Alimuddin , mail: [email protected]. She is a pleasant, efficient and honest person. He organized for us tours over 4 days, with very good advice, and a car always on time, for very decent prices. And all this despite the monsoon that tarnished our experience on the Kinabatangan River. An excellent record for him, as an independent, and we thank him for it! (independent of MAM Holidays)

Nonexistent Excursion

I would love to write a review of this excursion, however we didn’t get to go on it. Everything appeared fine until the morning of the trip when the freelance travel operator contacted me to say the the travel agent MAM Holidays Malaysia had reduced their previously agreed price by 17%. This made it economically unviable for him, which I had great sympathy for. There was no contact made by MAM Holidays Malaysia to inform us of the situation or any attempt to arrange for another guide. We waited for 30mins to no avail. We are still waiting for the situation to be resolved i.e. full refund from Viator.

Elephants, crocodile and proboscis monkeys

We saw 5 elephants crossing the river, so lucky. And another 15 more on land, walking by the river. Plus a crocodile by the river, which dashed in into the river after a while. There was a group of proboscis monkey, and an even larger group of macaques. The boatmen were very accommodating. Our driver Abdul drove us here. He's reliable and super friendly, reasonable prices. His WhatsApp is +601116695114

cancelled less than 24h before our tour

pretty disappointed. Our tour was cancelled at 12.30am, the morning of our trip. Waited half an hour for our pickup and couldn’t contact the number provided, or anybody of that matter. Refund takes 3-5 business days and it’s a Friday. Not happy..

Great cruise, terrible transport

The river cruise was amazing. However, the transport was an old taxi driving on rough roads, including at night, and the ‘guide’ didn’t really share much insight.

Amazing!

Amazing river tour got to see all of the Borneo big 5 ,had a great guide for the expedition and I would highly recommend to anyone who’s a fan of nature tours. 🇮🇪

Sandakan-Rundfahrt ohne Höhlenbesichtigung

Für die Leistung ein unangemessener Preis: Eigentlich schöner Ausflug zum Kinabatangan mit Tiersichtungen mit Guide vor Ort. Die Abfahrt wurde am Tag vorher von 11 Uhr auf 11:45 Uhr verschoben, dann haben wir noch Leute vom Flughafen und von diversen Lodges abgeholt um sie zu einer Lodge am Fluss zu bringen. Dort haben wir nochmal eine Stunde gewartet, bis alle ihre Zimmer bezogen hatten. Die in der Ausschreibung angekündigte Fahrt zur Gunung-Höhle fiel dann ohne Erklärung einfach weg Ich fand es einen ziemlichen dreisten Nepp.

Borneo wildlife

Mixed review on this one as we were highly anticipating the day and had booked it as my birthday treat. Single mum 3 teens. The caves were worth the visit - smelly but great to see - disappointed nobody advised us the collecting nests would start the next day as we would have changed the date to see this. Arrived for lunch in loads of time and hung around for 3 hours for Boat trip. Didnt realise people were heading to the jetty to queue for the boat so we were last on and could not sit together. All the tourists who had been on the boat already knew the best seats were on the outside so everyone took these first leaving single seats left spread out. The boat was crammed with 20 guests whilst on the water we saw other companies with smaller boats and less people and this would have been our preference. The trip was great the wildlife was fab and we enjoyed it just disappointed not to be sitting together with my kids on my birthday when we were first to arrive at the venue. If you go queue up at the jetty ready to jump on the boat or book with another company with smaller numbers..

Taxi Ride

Our hotel concierge and I tried for several days to confirm the trip and pick up time, but received no response. On the day a local taxi turned up, complete with taxi sign on top and with non English speaking driver. We had no idea of how long it would take to get to the caves or when we would eat and received no information on route as the driver could not speak English. At the caves, we walked around with no information given at all and then set off for the river cruise. The river cruise part however, was enjoyable with a good boat driver/guide. We certainly did not get an English speaking guide and would have been better off just hiring a local taxi, then we could at least have got aircon, an English speaking driver and saved quite a bit of money to boot! Quite disappointing really and a tour I would recommend you avoid.

More a taxi ride than tour

Fantastic experience but sadly our tour guide Argus was really just a taxi driver. He had no knowledge of the caves or river... In fact I knew more about it all than he did but that didn't stop us having an amazing day. He didn't take us to the Kinabatangan river camp for our 2hr explore of the area so felt a bit cheated there but he did arrange a nice lunch in a family home right on the jetty which was a lovely experience. He was also a friend of the boat driver so sat at the back chatting to him the whole time. It didn't stop us enjoying the cruise though. We got to see loads of Probuscus monkeys, a crocodile and a pigmy elephant not to mention the many birds. I think the tour needs to be 2hrs longer to fit it all in and we noticed the other tours offer this. All in all it was a great experience but would use another private tour guide if we did it again.

You're paying for a driver to accompany you

It was a trip to 3 places: Lunch, Guamantong Cave, and Kinabatangan River The driver basically doubled as our tour guide. He was very friendly and tried to make us as comfortable as he possibly can. He was also very laid back. However, he doesn't really explain anything and only had basic knowledge of the animals/places. He drove us around in an old taxi, which would have been fine except that the journey to the cave and river was long and the roads were developing/under construction. The long drive back to our accommodation was particularly uncomfortable. We had lunch in a local halal Chinese shop. It was noted that our tour guide wanted us to feel comfortable and there weren't a lot of restaurants along the way. For context, we are local Chinese from KL. The food tasted good but I didn't like that he didn't really bother ordering for us. The food is quite different from the food in KL. The waitress who took our order just told us what people normally ordered and we just ordered that. The food was individual (rice or noodle) dishes. They were also cheap. Guamantong Cave was pretty much just a bat cave with birds and cockroaches. Be ready for a lot of guano (bat excrement) and cockroaches. Our tour guide gave us face masks to help with the smell - but it really isn't that bad once you get used to it. Standing in front of a full dumpster is worse. Bring your best torchlight, the ones where the light can hit far away. Your phone lights won't do much except shine at guanos and cockroaches around you. Also, the walkway and railings were covered with guanos and cockroaces. If you are the type that feels icky cause of roaches, I suggest covering up a bit just to feel pseudo-"safe". Water drops down from the cave sometimes but because of the environment, you tend to question it. When we went, there were workers picking out birds' nests. It was quite something, watching them just chatting away and climbing up the cave in wooden ladders and ropes nonchalantly. Overall, while it was interesting, the visit was quite short (the cave wasn't very big). I felt like we could have just went there ourselves with a good car/four wheeler (cause of the roads). Because of the timing of the tour, we visited the cave early in the afternoon - in which, nothing was really happening. Apparently, if you visit the cave as the sun sets, you can see the bats leave the cave. Kinabatangan River is just a massive river surrounded by jungle. The jungles look like they're mangrove swamps but I can't tell for sure. The boat ride was nice and scenic. The boat wasn't small and we weren't splashed by water the entire way. It also wasn't raining when we went but we were prepared with raincoats. If you have binoculars, bring them. We saw lots of monkeys (including the proboscis monkey) and birds (including the horn bill). Monkeys were easy to spot and seem fairly common. Orang utans, however, prefer to be deep in the jungle. Spotting the birds are harder seem to depend on luck. Apparently, you can also sometimes spot crocodiles but we were not lucky enough to have that happen in our trip. Our tour guide and the skipper/"boat driver" were very nice people and took their time to try showing us as many wildlife as they could. In the end, we were back at our accommodation at about 9-10pm. Overall, I personally felt like the tour was alright but not worth the money.

Good tour but use another tour company.

We were a little surprised when a taxi turned up to take us on our day tour as there were 4 adults. Taxi is fine for 4 adults if you are only travelling short distances, but this trip involved about 5 hours travelling during the day.The roads were not the best with pot holes everywhere, and someone in the highways department decided to start work on turning the road into a duel carriage way all 10 miles of it at once. It was horrendous with ruts everywhere. we stopped on the way to the caves at a roadside cafe. Food tasted OK but the one toilet was awful, and you had to use a saucepan for baling water as the flush did not work. This toilet was accessed through the kitchen, as it was sited in the kitchen. Not pleasent. The caves were very good when we finally arrived, not as smelly as we thought they would be, but lots of bats and cockroaches. Cockroaches were over the walkway, the handrails. Best to take a torch to see wher you walk and only touch the handrail if you really must. back in the taxi we set off for the river cruise and it rained. It was torrential even with lights on you could not see the vehicles coming towards you added to which you could not see the ruts or potholes for floods. The river trip went ahead even in the open boat, it did not stop raining the whole of the two hour trip. We did however see proboscis monkeys (quite a lot of them) one even jumped out of the tree and into the water and swam across the river. Finally we seen a wild urangutang in the trees building a bed for the night and some hornbills flying around. We were literally soaked to the skin. If you do this trip take a good waterproof poncho that comes down over your knees. the uncomfortable taxi was even more uncomfortable when you are soaked through and the air con is on and you have no space. We would do this trip again but not with this tour qperator.The tour rating would have been higher had the taxi not been so badly uncomfortable.

Visiting Guamantong Cave

When we were on the way, we saw 2 monitors lizards crossing the road, we saw 2 big orangutans climbing on the trees in the Guamantong cave and with kingfisher flying over us. Inside the cave many birds were flying around. Very interesting and amazing period in the cave

Amazing experience!

Everything was brilliant! The driver is one of the funniest and friendliest person that we met in this trip so far. The caves are nice and we were lucky to spot a group of red leaf monkeys just outside the entrance. The lunch was very good and in an amazing location, right along the river. The cruise was spectacular, thunderstorm included. No elephants but we easily spotted proboscis monkeys, macaques, hornbill birds.. Wonderful!

Great tour not great tour company

Don't use this tour company. Unroadworthy vehicles driver had a car accident due to his erratic driving. We also paid for a private tour but had another couple with us. The caves and river cruise was amazing a must do but use a different tour company.

Service Very Good, Caves disappointing

I would not recommend the caves as there was nobody there, and is not much to do. Caves are full of all sorts of insects which you need to stand on to get around. River was good, saw many monkets, crocs, etc.

One day tour from Sandakan was worth it..

We went on a one day tour to the river for a twilight cruise and had a rewarding day...while we missed out on seeing the much prized Pygmy Elephant and crocodiles we saw evident of them. But we did get up close and personal with Long Tail Macaques and Proboscis Monkeys...this is nature in the wild and one has not guarantees that animals will be seen but the trip was well worth it...as part of our tour we had lunch at one of the lodges which was a buffet and very good...after that we had a couple of hours to chill before afternoon tea then setting out for 2 hours on the river..

L'Amazone de Bornéo

Une ambiance bout du monde. Des animaux sauvages et endémiques (singes, croco, oiseaux, reptiles, insectes, éléphants si vous avez de la chance, ...). Les balades en bateau à 6h du matin pour le réveil des animaux sont inoubliables (même sous la pluie). Plus on s'enfonce sur la rivière, plus c'est sauvage.