Your days here will be the main event: the river cruises, the primates along the banks, the birdlife, the reason most people book this trip in the first place. But after dinner, there’s a smaller, quieter world worth stepping into as well — different animals, different pace, a great way to round out a day that’s already been full.
Here’s what actually goes on out there once the lights are off, and how the two after-dark options differ.
Exploring the Kinabatangan at night
1. The night walk
Guided, on foot, on the trails behind the lodge, usually starting after dinner and lasting about an hour. Included in every one of our packages, more than once on the longer stays.
Move slowly and you will be rewarded with a myriad of interesting insects & amphibians, nocturnal primates at times.
2. The night cruise
An optional add-on, an hour on the water after dinner, with a spotlight sweeping the banks. Best for crocodiles, sleeping birds, owls and anything that has come down to drink.
What you are actually likely to see
Nothing here is guaranteed, but this is what the walks and cruises turn up week to week.
Sleeping birds
The most reliable sightings of all, and the ones that surprise people most. Kingfishers roost on low branches at night, close enough to see the individual feathers, and they do not move. Same for bulbuls and various small birds. You will get better views of a stork-billed kingfisher at 9pm than at any hour of the day.
Civets
Common palm civets and malay civets are regular. Look for eyeshine in the mid-storey and along the ground. They are cat-sized, long-bodied, and the reason your guide keeps sweeping the torch up into the branches.
Slow loris
The Bornean slow loris is one of the great finds here — round-eyed, deliberate, moving hand over hand along a branch like it has all night, which it does. Uncommon but not rare on our trails.
Western tarsier
Tiny, enormous-eyed, and capable of leaps that look like a physics error. Harder to find than the loris but they are here, and the eyeshine is unmistakable once you have seen it.
Frogs, and a lot of them
File-eared tree frogs, white-lipped frogs, the odd horned frog on the leaf litter. Frogs are the reason night walks are good in wet weather rather than bad — a night after rain is the best night to go out.
Invertebrates
Stick insects the length of your hand. Huntsman spiders. Lantern bugs. Scorpions that fluoresce under UV. Guests who arrive indifferent to insects tend to leave with photographs of them.
From the boat
Estuarine crocodiles — the eyeshine along the bank is orange and low, and once you have picked out your first one you will find them everywhere. Buffy fish owls hunting from overhanging branches. Sleeping macaques and proboscis monkeys silhouetted in their roost trees. Occasionally a herd of elephants that has come down to the water after dark.
How to actually see things
Night wildlife rewards technique more than luck. A few things that make a real difference:
- Bring your own torch, but keep it off most of the time. Let the guide sweep and follow his beam.
- Learn the eye colours. Orange-red low to the ground on the water is usually crocodile. Bright white-blue in the mid-storey is often civet. Small, close-set and intensely bright is likely a spider, and there are a great many of those.
- Stay quiet. Most animals hear you long before you see them, and a group that goes quietly may get twice as many sightings as one that does not.
- Red light where possible. Less disturbing to nocturnal eyes, and it preserves your own night vision.
- Go slowly and look at eye level. Beginners scan the canopy. Most of what you will actually find is between knee and head height.
What to wear
Long sleeves and long trousers, closed footwear or the rubber boots we lend, and repellent applied before you set out rather than halfway round. Neutral colours. No perfume or strongly scented sunscreen.
It will be humid and you will be walking slowly, so you will be warm without moving much. That is normal.
Should you add the night cruise?
Add the night cruise if crocodiles and owls appeal more than frogs and loris, if walking on uneven ground in the dark is difficult for you, or if you simply want more time on the water. It is an add-on at RM100 per person and can be arranged at the lodge.
Add the extended river cruise instead if your priority is covering more river rather than seeing nocturnal species specifically.
You can see what each stay includes on our package pages, and the full list of what we run on the activities pages.
