Grand Borneo Wildlife Odyssey: Kinabalu, Sepilok, Kinabatangan & Danum Valley | 9 Nights and 10 Days Malaysia Package

Arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and transfer to your hotel. Depending on arrival time, visit Batu Caves with its 272 painted steps and resident macaques, or explore Merdeka Square and the Jamek Mosque area. Dinner in Brickfields, KL's Little India, where South Indian thalis and banana leaf rice are easy to find. Early night, as tomorrow's flight to Borneo departs in the morning.

Morning flight of about two hours forty minutes to Kota Kinabalu. Transfer to your hotel and rest. In the afternoon drive around two hours to the Klias or Weston wetlands for a river cruise through nipah and mangrove forest. Proboscis monkeys, unique to Borneo, gather in riverside trees before dusk along with silvered langurs and macaques. After a riverside dinner, the boat returns in darkness to watch fireflies clustering on the mangrove trees. Late return to Kota Kinabalu.

Full-day trip to Kinabalu Park, about two hours from the city, sitting at around 1,500 metres with cool mountain air. Walk the botanical garden and the lower montane trails with a park guide, looking for Bornean treepie, mountain blackeye and pitcher plants. Continue to Poring Hot Springs for the Poring canopy walkway strung high above the forest, and check whether a rafflesia, the world's largest single flower, is in bloom at a nearby private site. Stop at Nabalu market for tribal handicrafts on the return.

Short morning flight to Sandakan on Sabah's east coast. Transfer to Sepilok and attend the 3 pm feeding at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, which has been rehabilitating orphaned orangutans since 1964. Move next door to the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre to see rescued sun bears from raised platforms. Late afternoon at the Rainforest Discovery Centre, where the canopy walkway and towers are good for Bornean bristleheads, trogons and flying squirrels at dusk. Overnight in Sepilok.

Drive two and a half hours to Sukau on the lower Kinabatangan, Sabah's longest river, with an optional stop at the Gomantong Caves where swiftlet nests are harvested and bats stream out at dusk. Check in to a riverside lodge and take lunch. The late-afternoon cruise turns into the Menanggul tributary, one of the most reliable places to see proboscis monkeys and crocodiles. After dinner, join a guided night walk for civets, frogs and roosting kingfishers.

Dawn cruise when animals are most active, watching for Bornean pygmy elephants, orangutan nests in riverside trees, oriental pied and rhinoceros hornbills, storm's storks and monitor lizards. Return for breakfast and rest through the heat. Optional afternoon walk to an oxbow lake trail behind the lodge. A second cruise goes out before sunset, when hornbills cross the river to roost. Dinner at the lodge followed by a night boat ride, weather permitting, to look for sleeping birds and crocodile eyeshine.

Morning cruise, breakfast, then a long transfer via Lahad Datu into the Danum Valley Conservation Area, roughly five to six hours in total including the final unsealed logging road. Danum protects one of the largest remaining stretches of undisturbed lowland dipterocarp forest in Southeast Asia. Check in, take lunch and join an orientation walk near the lodge. After dinner, a night drive with spotlights gives chances at sambar deer, mousedeer, civets, flying squirrels and, rarely, a clouded leopard or slow loris.

Early start for the canopy walkway suspended high in the emergent layer, the best vantage for hornbills, gibbons calling at dawn and Bornean orangutans moving through the crowns. After breakfast, a guided trek to the Coffin Cliff burial site and a jungle trail through buttressed dipterocarps, with your naturalist reading tracks of bearded pig, sambar and elephant. Cool off at the Segama River swimming spot. Evening bird list session and dinner, followed by an optional second night drive.

A last dawn walk on the nature trails, when gibbon calls carry across the valley and red leaf monkeys feed in the canopy. Breakfast and check out, then transfer to Lahad Datu for the flight to Kota Kinabalu via the scheduled sector. Check in to your city hotel and spend the evening at the Kota Kinabalu waterfront, with sunset over the South China Sea and dinner at a seafood or Indian restaurant near Gaya Street.

Free morning for the Sunday Gaya Street market if the day matches, or the Sabah State Museum with its heritage village and ethnobotanic garden. Pick up Sabah tea, tenom coffee and Bornean handicrafts before checking out. Transfer to Kota Kinabalu International Airport for your flight home via Kuala Lumpur. Travellers extending can add Selingan Turtle Island near Sandakan or diving at Mabul and Sipadan from Semporna.