Mt. Kinabalu National Park
Borneo Blog Part 4
Day 10
July 19th 2023
We woke up, packed our bags, and headed to the airport. Today, we were flying to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. We were delayed two hours at the airport but eventually got onto our flight. As we got closer to our destination, I spotted Mt Kinabalu, and seeing this lonely mountain was impressive.
The mountain is the tallest in Southeast Asia at 4,095m meters tall and stands out. We landed, rented a car, and drove to the national park base where we would stay the night because we were going night hiking in the park. We arrived an hour before sunset and headed to the park to grab food at the restaurant before we met our guide. The entrance to the park is 1500 meters above sea level, so the temperature was quite cool, and I threw on my jacket. We saw some cool lizards, small snake species, and geckos, but the animals we were after were the Horned Frogs and Malcom’s pit viper.
We walked along the paved road to the starting point for the summit of Mt Kinabalu, which can be done in two days. The permit is expensive, so we opted to look for reptiles with our three nights around the national park.
While walking around a bend, I was looking at the ground and noticed a snake. This wasn’t one I had seen before, but its slenderness was unmistakable. This was a Striped coral snake.
It is one of the more toxic species found in Borneo, but bites are rare due to the snake’s behavior of mainly foraging on the ground. I used a little stick to pick up its body and move it to a place where we could see it better. These coral snakes have vibrant orange and black striped bellies that show us defensively. It also tucks its head into its body and makes its tail seem like its head. This is a great way to keep your important bits safe from potential predators, as they are more likely to go for the tail.
We reached the area’s top around 22:00 and headed back down the hill, keeping our torches focused on the bush. Kat suddenly yelled out that she “got one”, and quickly ran into the forest. I went in after her, and she said, “horned frog”. I looked at the forest ground where she was pointing, and sure enough, there was the gorgeous Kobayashi horned frog, an endemic frog to Sabah. They are stunning and have beautiful camouflage.
After taking some photos, we continued our hike. I was looking up a hill and saw two orange dots. I knew it was another Kobayashi Horned frog, so I yelled that I “got one” and ran up the hill for it. Lo and behold, this one was much larger than the first one we found.
We took photos of this big girl and went on our way. I spotted another, but at this point, it was almost midnight, so I grabbed a cellphone photo, and we worked our way back to our car. We didn’t find our top snake, but we got two other target species and the top frog we wanted for the trip. We got back to the lodge and headed to bed.
Day 11
July 20th 2023
I woke up early because the night was cold since we were at a higher elevation than I've experienced since living in the Maldives. Today, we were heading to the other side of the mountain to an area called Poring, which has a lot of cool species as it’s in a lowland forest. It’s a 90-minute drive from the main national park entrance. While getting closer to Poring, there was an amazing flower we could see, and I heard from a gentleman at breakfast that they were blooming. The flowers are called Rafflesias or Corpse flowers. They are one of the largest flowers on the planet, measuring around a meter wide. We saw an advertisement for them on the side of the road and pulled over. There were two in Blossom, and we paid the entrance fee and went down the stairs to see them.
The buds take nine months to germinate. The flower is parasitic and needs to germinate from another plant. They love to come from a certain vine species that is plentiful in this area by a little creek. They had seven buds, with two gorgeous flowers in full bloom. One was two days old, and the other was five. Although everyone talks about how the corpse flower smells like rotting meat, it wasn’t repulsive.
We dropped our things at the place we were going to crash for the night and quickly got into the park to hike and explore. We checked out the canopy-walk and saw two other Corpse flowers in the park. We got great shots because these were much closer to the boardwalk.
We hiked to a waterfall and moved on to a cave with a lot of bats. I was hoping for some cave racers but had no luck. We headed back to the falls and took some photos.
There wasn’t much bird life around, so we went back to the hotel and after getting some food, went on a jungle hike and turned up the cutest little Malaysian horned frog. That was the only herp and highlight of the night. The rain started to come down, so we went to bed.
Day 11
July 21st 2023
We headed for breakfast and got Me Goreng, now one of my favorite food dishes and a more common dish for breakfast than lunch and dinner, even though it’s fried noodles. Fried noodles with an egg on top are just delicious. We walked through the orchid garden and saw some of the carnivorous plants they had on display.
We made the 90-minute drive back to the entrance of Mt Kinabalu National Park, where we went into the park early to see their botanical garden and the amazing endemic plants of Borneo. They had one section where we couldn’t access the orchids because of their rarity, but we could put the telephoto lens through the fencing and take photos.
The weather was getting rainy, so we went to the main area and hung out till dinner. Our friends, Nick and Craig, were there with their group, so we hung out and chatted a bit before getting our head torches out and meeting up with our guide for our last night walk.
We immediately started the night by finding a Kinabalu horned frog, which is endemic to this mountain. That means we officially had found all species of horned frogs in Sabah!
Our guide had a passion for plants and showed us the smallest species of orchid on the island. It was amazing to see this incredibly tiny and beautiful flower. Kat got a stunning photo of my finger next to it for size comparison.
The temperature was much cooler tonight at about 16C, so I was glad I wore my jacket. We were now high enough in elevation that the clouds were passing through, making it harder to spot wildlife, but I still found some horned forest lizards.
Another cool species I spotted was a trilobite beetle. I had never seen one like this, but the orange sides were beautiful.
Then I spotted our first viper. The Sabah pit viper is the other species found in this area, and they are bright green with blood-red eyes. This one was young but had a big belly full, most likely of frog. We took our photos and then made our way to the top.
Our guide spotted another viper way high up the side of a cliff and climbed up to get it. This one was much larger than the last one. I was having issues with my camera flash, so I only got one nice shot of the snake’s head showing off that bright eye.
It was around midnight, so we headed back down the mountain. I spotted another Kobayashi horned frog but just took a cellphone shot since we were so tired. We got back to the car and gave our guide a nice tip for helping us get so many incredible species. We did about 30,000 steps that day, so we were knackered and headed back to the lodge for some sleep.
Day 12
July 22nd 2023
Today we headed back to Kota Kinabalu to catch our flight to Kuala Lumpur marking the end of our amazing trip, made even more special by seeing so many bucket list species. This was a much better Bornean experience than my first trip, and Borneo is now ranked amongst the top places I've been for wildlife.
Thank you for reading my blog. It means the world to me that people pay attention to this crazy, wild adventure I call my life. Borneo is an incredible place that I recommend everyone gets to visit in their lifetime. The island needs tourism, as increasing tourism will promote more conservation efforts to stop deforestation from the main source of income for the island, which is palm oil. Borneo offers a variety of experiences for seasoned travelers, from caving, hiking, jungle
