Sweet Home Singapore: Borneo Trip

My parents left Wednesday morning of the kids spring break week. We took off Wednesday evening for the island of Borneo, Malaysia to take advantage of the kids time off from school. We had a great trip. This was surprisingly our first time to Malaysia (shocking because mainland Malaysia is about a 20 minute drive from our condo, just across the causeway)!

Borneo is one of the biggest islands in the world, shared by Malaysia (to the north), Indonesia (to the south) and a bit of Brunei (in the middle). It was about a 2-1/2 hour flight East of us. We went to Borneo mainly to see the orangutans and enjoy a lazy beachy weekend, which we have become quite fond of :)

Orangutans are only found on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra in Indonesia, which happens to be near to us as well. The Sumatran O's are really endangered, as are the Borneoan ones, but not as much. They are endangered due to habitat destruction (burning for palm oil fields (which coincidently causes our Singapore haze), bushmeat and the illegal pet trade. It is so sad. These animals are amazing, as they share 97% of human DNA.

We chose to stay at the Shangri-La Kota Kinabalu, 1 because we love the Shangri-La hotels and 2 because they have an orangutan sanctuary on the resort grounds. The resort is nestled in a remote part of the country, with jungle all around. The sanctuary protects and rehabilitates these animals. We were able to view them in their natural habitat and it was awesome to see them up close! You can do many eco-type trips into the jungle to see orangutans, but we thought since traveling with small kids, this would be the easiest and it was.

The rest of our trip was spent roaming the beach, hanging in the pool and celebrating Mia's birthday. It was HOT, super hot. I think I say that about every trip we've taken in SE Asia. Shocking to me that after living in Singapore that all of these other places still feel hot! The beach was beautiful and expansive, with the best white sugar sand that I've seen in Asia, but there were no trees directly on the beach, so it was too hot out there to even enjoy it. Plus, there are a lot of creatures in Borneo, on land and in the sea, because it's so remote, wild and covered in dense jungle. Lots of jellyfish (the box kind, which are deadly), snakes, etc in the water. So we kind of stayed clear :)

The resort was great, with a nice Malaysian feel. But, being in a muslim country, the booze was still expensive and the "beef" bacon was not as good as the pork kind :) Funny because Singapore once was a part of Malaysia, the culture is very familiar to us - the people, the food, etc.

The kids loved the Kids Club and all of the fun activities they offered. We even dropped them off at a Tribal Party one night, so we could go have dinner by ourselves. So nice! The Shangri-la is super nice, but also very kid friendly, so it worked well! Tons of kids there, lots of Europeans on holiday and other expats from Asia. Not many Asians vacationing as in other places we've been, as they seem to prefer luxury to the great outdoors :) In all, another great trip, to another new country!