Travels around Malaysia - Part 5: Kinabatangan River
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This is the fifth in a series of blogs that describes our holiday on the Malaysian Peninsular and the Malaysian portion of Borneo.
Heading into the Red Zone
Before we moved on from Lankayan Island, we had to decide if it was safe to continue our trip. Approximately one hundred armed men from the Sulu archipelago, who had previously invaded and occupied an east coast village in Sabah, exchanged gunfire with Malaysian forces tragically resulting in many fatalities. Malaysian authorities moved extra military and police into the area and created a "Red Zone". We were already in the zone and the final parts of our journey would take us further into it. The UK Foreign Office (FCO) advice was to consider leaving the area and indeed some UK based travel agents had immediately pulled their customers out, along with a number of other nationalities who cancelled their trip. The FCO guidance also said to follow advice of local police, who in turn were saying their measures made it safe for tourists to continue. This led to some soul searching as to our next move, plus much information gathering by Selective Asia and local sources. After lengthy discussion we decided the risk was acceptable and continued on deeper into the Red Zone.


The highlight without doubt, was finding a herd of about twenty, Walt Disney cute, Pygmy Elephants. They were happily tearing up and munching the vegetation when we arrived, ears flapping and not really that bothered that we'd made it to within a few feet to watch them. Then one of the other boats just got a bit too close and a chorus of angry trumpeting told us to keep our distance. It was magnificent to see them up close and was enough in itself to make this part of the trip worthwhile, without all the other things we had seen.
We were reminded that our swimming macaque from earlier was in real danger when we were exploring one of the river’s tributaries. Alongside our small boat a massive crocodile (judged to be four metres) thrashed into the water and surfaced just behind the boat. Our driver (closest to the croc now) jumped as if he’d been electrocuted, wound the throttle round and our craft shot off like we were taking part in a power boat race.

Next stop Danum Valley.
For holidays to Asia, Silver Travel Advisor recommends Selective Asia.
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 1: Kuala Lumpur
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 2: Kuching
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 3: Batang Ai
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 4: Sepilok & Lankayan Island
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 6: Danum Valley
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 7: Sabah Tourism Awards 2013
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 8: North Borneo Railway
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 9: Kota Kinabalu
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 10: Putrajaya and Kuala Gandah
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 11: Malacca
- Read Travels around Malaysia - Part 12: Langkawi
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Phew, your truly a braver man than me Steve. What a wonderful experience you had, I'm definitely envious.....Waiting in anticipation for the next chapter.
David