Borneo
Borneo is the third largest island in the world with an area of 287,000 square miles.
It is the center island in the Malay Archipelago and near Indonesia. Geographically, it is part of Southeast Asia. It is under the rule of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Borneo is a great place for the adventurous tourist who wants to see amazing wildlife and lovely scenery.
Off the beaten path
Many tours of Borneo will take travelers off the beaten path to tribal villages and to places for trekking like the Mount Kinabalu National Park. Operators speak the language and can help with lodging for travelers. Mount Kinabalu is also an excellent place to go mountain climbing and there are mountain climbing tours of the area.
Mount Kinabalu is well known for its tremendous biodiversity with species that exist only in the park and not anywhere else in the world.
Some of these include incredible orchids, of which there are eight hundred species, as well as over six hundred ferns. Fifty of those ferns are found nowhere else in the world. Insectivorous plants live in this National Park.
Animal diversity
Borneo is home to more than three hundred species of birds and over a hundred mammalian species, including one of the four great apes—the Orangutan. While there are less than a hundred orangutans in the Mt. Kinabalu National Park alone, visitors can take in the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary where the tourist can see the orangutans in their natural habitat and learn about their rehabilitation.
Lucky tourists can see baby orangutans being raised in captivity and prepared to one day join the natural outdoors. The goal of the Sanctuary is to keep safe those orangutans that can’t be returned to the wild and to attempt to get as many as possible ready for life in the wild.