When: July 2023                      Weather: Hot Humid, Tropical, Rainy.  30C

Nikon P900, P950, Leica Q3

I’d been to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah many times before but had always wanted to do a longer nature tour in Sepilok/Kinabatangan River and it finally happened.  We arranged a 7 night stay in Sabah, aka The Land below the Wind….3 nights in Sepilok at My Nature Resort (MYNR), then 2 nights at the Kinabatangan Wetland Resort(KWR) followed by 2 nights back in Kota Kinabalu town to recharge and to try to see the Rafflesia blooms.   You can do this on your own although organising the transfers and guides involves more work.  We engaged a full time guide who accompanied us throughout the first 5 nights and arranged all transfers, tours and of course nature guiding.   This is obviously considerably more expensive than doing it yourself as you are also paying for the guide’s accommodation and food throughout the stay.  You do of course benefit from 6am bird outings and late night nature walks….

We flew Air Asia from Singapore to Kota Kinabalu (KK), capital of Sabah state in East Malaysia and connected on to another Air Asia flight from KK to Sandakan, the local town where the Sepilok nature activities start and where you board the boat for Kinabatangan.  Whilst there are other carriers, Air Asia has the most flights in and our of KK and Sandakan so we went with them….we regretted it slightly as a month or two prior to departure, we started getting almost one email a week saying this flight and been cancelled or that flight had been retimed….the rescheduling really disrupted many other events downstream….if we had a choice again, we would not choose an airline which chops and changes its schedules so frequently with little heed of customers’ plans.  As I write this in Sandakan airport waiting for our flight back to KK, we were just informed that our flight is delayed by 40 minutes!

Our first 3 nights were to be at My Nature Resort just 30min from Sandakan airport and right in the Sepilok Forest Reserve, next door to the world renowned Rainforest Discover Centre, where the birding is superb.  The first night we arrived when it was already dark and in a night ramble…

The next day started raining and we had to bird from our balcony till the rain eased later on…

Sabah, oh Sabah…the Land below the Wind….at once romantic but also a hot sweaty tropical environment!

MYNR has only twelve rooms and we had 12A and 12B.  12B is slightly the better for birders as you are right at the end of the resort with no one else beyond. There is a very nice balcony behind with lots of exposed trees and we had many sightings there…..

Although very wet, it was a great birding start! The rain finally let up late morning and we headed off to the Rainforest Discovery Centre(RDC) right outside our resort….