Never a Dull Moment: Tabin Wildlife Reserve

The Sabah Civil Service Pensioners Association under the chairmanship of  Datuk Wilfred Lingham has earlier decided to conduct a “brain storming” session at the Tabin Wildlife Resort, Lahad Datu.

 

A Church friend who is in the Committee extended an invitation to us to join them for a 3D2N tour of this Wildlife Reserve, We accepted the invitation without hesitation because we knew that this is an opportunity that is not easy to come by.

 

The whole road trip from home to the Reserve and back covered a distance of 885 Km. The road is all tarred except the final 27 Km leading to the Wildlife Reserve. This final stretch is unsealed gravel road and was not well maintained. Travelling along this stretch would have been so much more challenging and uncomfortable if without a 4-wheeled drive!

 

We stayed at the Tabin Wildlife Resort, a hideaway in a secondary jungle built some 10 years ago by the then owner, Datuk Wilfred Lingham. This Resort has 10 units of timber chalets, a dining hall, souvenir shop,  information gallery and a conference room. All the chalets are erected by the bank of Lipad River with some on fairly steep hill slope. All the chalets are linked up with timber walkways that allow visitors to have scenic view of the surrounding area. Each chalet is complete with private balcony, air-conditioner, ceiling fan and hot water shower.

 

I would say that the itinerary arranged by the Resort was sufficient to keep us busy throughout the stay. We had night safari, morning jungle walk and night jungle trekking. Of the 16 pensioners in our group, only a handful of four or at most five were keen and adventurous to do the jungle trekking while most were contented with staying in the air-conditioned chalets.

 

I had wanted very much to see some of the large mammals Tabin is famous for, the Pigmy elephant and the Sumatran Rhino. Unfortunately, we did not manage to see any of these. Somehow, I could sense that the staff were not too keen to take us to trek the “Elephant Trial”. I believe the staff have yet to fully recover from the shock of accident on 7 December 2011 when a young Australian woman was gored to death in the Elephant Trial leading to the Lipad Mud Volcano (Read Here). Our guide Mohammad told us that he was one of the staff sent to retrieve the body of the woman. That must have been traumatic for him. Since the accident, rules have also been changed and visitors are no longer allowed to trek the jungle without a guide.

 

Still, our night safari, morning walk and night trekking allowed us to see quite a variety of animals.  The macaque monkeys, gibbon monkeys, Malayan civet, owl, eagle, small jungle crab, pit viper, fire ants are some of the mammals, birds and insects we saw. Some we saw for a split moment while a few for sufficiently long duration.

If you ask me: will you visit this place again? I would say that it’s most unlikely unless I am assured of seeing the pygmy elephants or the Rhino or Orang Utan or the Proboscis monkeys. But then, this is only a wishful thinking because their sightings cannot be pre-planned.

Group photo with the Committee of the Sabah Civil Service Pensioners Association.

Chalet we stayed

Phobia of suspension bridge.

Morning Jungle Walk

The Macaque

Pit viper and stick insect spotted in the night jungle trekking.

Lipad Waterfall

With our Guide, Mohammad.

Lipad Mud Volcano.

A very recent video on eruption of the mud volcano uploaded in Facebook on 19 September 2022. (Reproduced from Facebook).

We were told by the Guide that if you are ever chased by an agitated elephant, always run uphill and if you find one such big tree, hide behind one of these huge roots.

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Video of the eruption of the mud volcano added on 19 September 2022.