Travel 015 : Sandakan, Sabah : 18 Jun 2012 : Kinabantan River

Today we will be checking out and heading towards the Kinabantan river.  Our plan is to self-drive all the way to the Kinabantan village, meet the bus (guide) and follow him to reach the resort in Bilit that we booked for one night stay.  It is about 80 km drive to the Kinabantan village.  We started at about 10am, visited the Sandakan curry house, had breakfast and packed some food in case we cannot get anything of our like as we are heading into the remote villages.  With food assured for the rest of the day, we drove all the way to the Kinabantan village by passing through Sepilok and stoping for a gas fill.  Reached at the designated meeting point at about 12.30pm and waited for our guide bus that comes at 1pm.  While driving behind the bus toward the Bilit village, we had to take a detour from the main road (as heavy road works took place) and had to drive through unpaved path for about 5km to finally reach the Bilit village.  Our resort is across the river and we cannot drive our car directly there.  So, we parked our car at this side with a house in the village.  A 20MYR will do for an overnight parking.  From here we took one-minute boat ride to cross the river to our resort.

The resort itself gives a bit of a jungle feel and more so when we see a small snake on the roof of our room near the entrance.  But unlike the other places we stayed, this resort is more targeting the wallet of tourists.  So much so that anything you want to use costs money.  At their "reception" where they had a briefing, one can see everywhere price tag handing (internet access cost, PC time cost, telephone call costs etc).  There is no mobile phone reception and I doubt if they purposefully put jammers.  Within an hour, we were off for our first wildlife watching on a boat.  This is only the best part of the stay at this "resort". 

On this day evening, we could able to spot elephants, lot of monkeys and some horn-bills.  There supposed to be a jungle night walk after this.  But, I had a very difficult time getting information like whether is it safe for my young children and the time was short.  So, we skipped the jungle walk.  Surprisingly, the dinner (and next day breakfast) had some vegetarian options. with our dinner, we retired back to our rooms for the day.