Sailing NV · video

What this video covers

Jo, Timo, and their children leave their boat in Kota Kinabalu and fly 45 minutes to Sandakan to explore the Kinabatangan River in Malaysian Borneo, a wildlife corridor in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary.▶ 1:08 The family's deep-keeled Open 66 cannot navigate the river, so they travel by small plane and resort boat to the Kinabatangan Wetlands Resort, accessible only by water and nearly empty during low season.▶ 1:01 River cruises at dawn and dusk yield close encounters with wild Borneo pygmy elephants, proboscis monkeys sleeping on riverside branches to detect predators, eight hornbill species, saltwater crocodiles spotted at water level, and a large dominant male orangutan feeding on nipah palm at the river's edge — a sighting their guide calls the closest safe wild orangutan encounter anywhere.▶ 19:40 The guide notes roughly 11,000 orangutans remain globally, with 25 individuals known in this stretch alone.▶ 17:36 Meanwhile, back aboard, Timo replaces the boat's failing house batteries, noting cracked cells and a dangerous bulge that made immediate replacement critical.▶ 3:23 The transcript covers the ecological history of the Kinabatangan — heavy logging in the 1960s–70s, subsequent palm oil expansion, and the 1997 designation of the wildlife sanctuary as a protected corridor linking forest fragments for orangutans, pygmy elephants, and proboscis monkeys.▶ 22:08

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