Malaysian Borneo is made up of two states, and they are further apart than the map makes you think. In the west is Sarawak, with Kuching as its capital on a slow brown river. In the northeast is Sabah, with Kota Kinabalu, the highest mountain on Borneo and an east coast where orangutans, proboscis monkeys and turtles are waiting for you. Between the two cities is an hour and a half’s flight.
Planning your first Borneo trip, you mostly notice what they have in common: rainforest, orangutans and a flight from Kuala Lumpur. Yet you travel them in completely different ways. In Sarawak you do almost everything from one city, with the city bus and a little boat. In Sabah you move from stop to stop, and every stop is an adventure of its own: a mountain, a river, an island.
Below: what each state gives you, what it costs, how the flight and the passport check work, and how many days you need for which combination. What exactly to do in each place is in the highlights per stop, and we link through to them as we go.
Sarawak: everything from Kuching
Kuching is the soft landing on Borneo. You sleep in the old centre among Chinese shophouses and cat statues, you have a bowl of Sarawak laksa for breakfast, and half an hour later you are at the feeding platform in Semenggoh. Semi-wild orangutans live free in the forest there. Around 9am and around 3pm there is fruit waiting, and whoever is hungry comes to eat. Entry is about €2.
Bako National Park is your second day. You take bus 1 to Kampung Bako and then another twenty to thirty minutes by boat, and then you are walking among the proboscis monkeys around park HQ and the bearded pigs on the beach. Register your visit online with Sarawak Forestry beforehand. That is just about everything you need to arrange in advance: for the rest of Kuching, a city bus, a Grab and some ringgit in your pocket will do.
After that Sarawak gets bigger than the city. At the Sarawak Cultural Village near Santubong you walk into a traditional longhouse and see the dances and crafts of the Dayak peoples, and if you have two more nights, you fly to Gunung Mulu National Park in just over an hour and a half. There is no road. Enormous caves are waiting there, and at sunset millions of bats spiral up into the sky.
Everything is lined up in things to do in Kuching.
Our verdict: pick Sarawak if you want to ease into Borneo, with a city as your base and the wildlife a bus ride away
Sabah: the mountain, the river and the reef
Sabah is bigger in every way. In Kota Kinabalu the sun sinks behind the islands every evening, and after a short boat ride from Jesselton Point you are snorkelling off the beach at Sapi or Manukan. Two hours’ drive away stands Mount Kinabalu, 4,095 metres high, which you climb in two days with a night in the Panalaban mountain huts. Want to go up? Book that before anything else: the beds on the mountain fill up months ahead.
The east coast is the wildlife heart of Borneo. In Sepilok you watch orangutans come to the feeding platform at ten and at three, with the sun bears across the path. Two hours further on you cruise the Kinabatangan at sunset, while the proboscis monkeys look for somewhere to sleep and, with luck, a herd of pygmy elephants stands on the bank. And right down in the southeast lies Semporna, the port for Sipadan, where only about 250 divers a day are allowed in the water.
For some of the islands off Sabah’s east coast, Mabul, Kapalai and Sipadan among them, several governments, including the UK, advise against all but essential travel. Semporna town itself is not covered by that advice. Read your own government’s current advice and the terms of your travel insurance before you book diving there, so you know exactly where you stand.
There is more on each stop in the highlights for Kota Kinabalu, Sepilok, the Kinabatangan and Semporna.
Our verdict: pick Sabah if big wildlife, the top of Borneo or the most famous dive water in Malaysia is on your list
You see orangutans and proboscis monkeys on both sides
This is the question that most often tips the balance, and the good news is that you do not have to answer it. Both states have a feeding platform, and they feel different.
Semenggoh is the forest itself: the orangutans live free there, and a platform half an hour from your hostel makes it the easiest encounter on Borneo. Sepilok is a rehabilitation centre that has been teaching orangutans to survive in the forest since 1964, with a nursery where you watch the youngest ones practise climbing through a window. And on the Kinabatangan you see them completely wild, from the boat, if you are lucky.
At none of these places is an orangutan guaranteed. When there is plenty of fruit in the forest they stay away more often, because the forest is feeding them. So go twice: Semenggoh and Sepilok both have a second feeding in the afternoon, and in Sepilok your ticket is valid all day. Stay quiet on the platform, no flash, touch nothing and feed nothing. And if you have a cold, give the feeding a miss: orangutans can catch it from you.
Proboscis monkeys work the same way. In Bako they hang around park HQ, and if you want to see them at the end of the afternoon, you stay a night. On the Kinabatangan you see them on the sunset cruise almost every time, in whole troops along the bank.
What it costs
Sarawak is the cheaper of the two. In Kuching you get by on about €22 a day, with a bed for €6 and a meal for €1.50, and Semenggoh and Bako cost very little. Only the boat to Bako adds up, about €40 return for a boat of five, so share it with other backpackers.
In Sabah the daily budget climbs the further east you go. Kota Kinabalu is around €25 a day, Sepilok and Semporna around €30. On the Kinabatangan you pay for a package with bed, meals and cruises, from about €110 for two days and one night in a dorm, which works out at about €60 a day.
Then there are Sabah’s two big expenses. For Mount Kinabalu the fixed park costs alone come to about €200, and a full package starts at around €550. On Sipadan the permit alone costs about €70, and a full dive day often €250 or more. What the rest of Malaysia costs is in what backpacking Malaysia costs.
The flight and your passport
You fly to Borneo, because there is no boat. From Kuala Lumpur you are in Kuching in about two hours and in Kota Kinabalu in around two and a half, and you can also fly to Kuching direct from Johor Bahru. With the budget airlines those flights are cheap as long as you book in time.
What surprises a lot of travellers: Sabah and Sarawak run their own immigration. Even after a domestic flight from the peninsula you queue at a desk and get a stamp of your own. So keep your passport in your hand luggage, on every flight within Borneo too, and look after all your stamps. If you cannot show when you came in when you leave, you can be treated as an overstayer. You do not need a separate visa: Malaysia gives you 90 days visa free. Everything about the arrival card and the rules is on our visa page.
Heading into Borneo’s interior? Have a look at malaria too. Whether you need tablets depends on the region and the months, and that is in our overview of vaccinations.
When to go
The dry months do not quite line up. In Kuching June to September is the driest, with a calm sea out to Bako; from December to February the city is in the monsoon and the boat to the park can be cancelled. Kota Kinabalu is driest from February to April. On Sabah’s east coast, from Sepilok to Semporna, March to October is the most pleasant; from November to February the Kinabatangan can burst its banks.
Two things for your calendar. Sabah Parks closes Sipadan every November to let the reef recover. And on the summit of Mount Kinabalu it can freeze around sunrise, whatever month you climb.
Want both states in one trip? June to September are the months when everything lines up at once. How that plays out in the rest of the country is in the best time to visit Malaysia.
How many days do you need?
Five days. Pick one side. Three to four days in Kuching gives you the city, Semenggoh and Bako, with a day for Santubong or the Cultural Village. Or fly to Sandakan and do Sepilok and two nights on the Kinabatangan: Sabah’s wildlife in short.
A week. This is the classic week on Sabah’s east coast. Fly to Sandakan, sleep a night or two in Sepilok, two nights on the Kinabatangan, and then on to Semporna for the islands and a dive day. You leave from Tawau, so there is no backtracking.
Ten days. Then start in Kota Kinabalu and add the mountain. The bus to Sandakan runs via Ranau past the entrance to Kinabalu Park, so after the climb you get on there and do not have to go back to the city. Ask at the park roughly what time it comes past.
Two weeks or more. Do both. Three to four days in Kuching, the hour and a half flight to Kota Kinabalu, and then Sabah from west to east. With two extra nights you can still squeeze in Mulu.
How to combine them
The route with the least backtracking runs from west to east. Fly from Kuala Lumpur to Kuching, then on to Kota Kinabalu, and travel overland to the east coast: the six to eight hour bus to Sepilok, or an hour’s flight to Sandakan. The lodges on the Kinabatangan pick you up in Sepilok or Sandakan and drop you afterwards at the Sukau turn-off, where the morning bus to Semporna comes past. Do arrange with the bus company in advance that it stops.
Semporna is the end of the line. From Tawau, an hour and a half’s drive away, you fly to Kota Kinabalu or straight back to Kuala Lumpur. If you have been diving, wait at least a day before you get on the plane, and just plan that rest day in. Want to dive Sipadan? Sort your permit before your flights: it sets your dates, and there is more on that in diving Sipadan from Semporna.
How Borneo fits into the rest of your trip is in our three-week Malaysia route, and all the connections are in getting around Malaysia.
Only a week for Borneo: Sabah or Sarawak?
That depends on what you want to take home. After the big wildlife and the water? Pick Sabah: Sepilok, two nights on the Kinabatangan and a few days in Semporna fill a week right up to the last day, and you fly back out of Tawau.
Want Borneo at a gentler pace, with a city you know inside out after two days, food on every corner and the orangutans half an hour’s drive away? Pick Sarawak. Kuching with Semenggoh and Bako is done in four days, and with the days you have left you fly to Mulu for the caves and the bats.
And if you have two weeks, do both. Then it is no longer a choice, it is a route.
