Kinabatangan River Cruise from Sandakan

Mixed review on this one as we were highly anticipating the day and had booked it as my birthday treat. Single mum 3 teens. The caves were worth the visit - smelly but great to see - disappointed nobody advised us the collecting nests would start the next day as we would have changed the date to see this. Arrived for lunch in loads of time and hung around for 3 hours for Boat trip. Didnt realise people were heading to the jetty to queue for the boat so we were last on and could not sit together. All the tourists who had been on the boat already knew the best seats were on the outside so everyone took these first leaving single seats left spread out. The boat was crammed with 20 guests whilst on the water we saw other companies with smaller boats and less people and this would have been our preference. The trip was great the wildlife was fab and we enjoyed it just disappointed not to be sitting together with my kids on my birthday when we were first to arrive at the venue. If you go queue up at the jetty ready to jump on the boat or book with another company with smaller numbers.

Our hotel concierge and I tried for several days to confirm the trip and pick up time, but received no response. On the day a local taxi turned up, complete with taxi sign on top and with non English speaking driver. We had no idea of how long it would take to get to the caves or when we would eat and received no information on route as the driver could not speak English. At the caves, we walked around with no information given at all and then set off for the river cruise. The river cruise part however, was enjoyable with a good boat driver/guide. We certainly did not get an English speaking guide and would have been better off just hiring a local taxi, then we could at least have got aircon, an English speaking driver and saved quite a bit of money to boot! Quite disappointing really and a tour I would recommend you avoid.

Fantastic experience but sadly our tour guide Argus was really just a taxi driver. He had no knowledge of the caves or river... In fact I knew more about it all than he did but that didn't stop us having an amazing day. He didn't take us to the Kinabatangan river camp for our 2hr explore of the area so felt a bit cheated there but he did arrange a nice lunch in a family home right on the jetty which was a lovely experience. He was also a friend of the boat driver so sat at the back chatting to him the whole time. It didn't stop us enjoying the cruise though. We got to see loads of Probuscus monkeys, a crocodile and a pigmy elephant not to mention the many birds. I think the tour needs to be 2hrs longer to fit it all in and we noticed the other tours offer this. All in all it was a great experience but would use another private tour guide if we did it again.