{"id":594,"date":"2011-02-03T17:44:21","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T09:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mysabah.com\/wordpress\/?p=594"},"modified":"2015-04-24T16:03:17","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T08:03:17","slug":"deluxe-river-cruise-in-klias-garama-rivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mysabah.com\/wordpress\/deluxe-river-cruise-in-klias-garama-rivers\/","title":{"rendered":"Deluxe River Cruise in Klias-Garama Rivers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near to Beaufort town and 1.5 hours drive from Kota Kinabalu city, Klias Wetland is the biggest peat swamp forest of Sabah. As Klias is the habitat of wildlife such as proboscis (long-nosed) monkey, silver-leaf monkey and firefly, it attracts thousands of tourists every year. I have tried river cruise in Klias wetland<\/a> a few times. Basically what the tour operators do is – they put the tourists sitting on a small speed boat, cruise along Klias or Garama River, to spot for monkey on the trees of the river bank. At night, they will bring tourists to see fireflies.<\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a><\/p>\n

However, OIB Tours (Only in Borneo)<\/a> now offers a totally different new experience. Personally I call it an excellent example of Blue Ocean Strategy (which create new niche and make ordinary competition irrelevant). They turn a 80-feet wooden fishing boat into a tourist house-boat named “Kunang-Kunang” (means Firefly), the first deluxe river cruise tour in Sabah.<\/p>\n

\"Entrance<\/a>
\n>> Click Here to see more photos of Deluxe River Cruise<\/a><\/p>\n

Though I was invited, I had no idea what they meant by deluxe river cruise. At first, we need to travel 2 hours by land to their riverside base camp in Garama. FYI, Klias and Garama are adjacent to each other and both are the rivers in Klias Wetland (Peninsular). <\/p>\n

\"Boardwalk<\/a><\/p>\n

We get out of our bus and walk about 10 minutes on a boardwalk to reach Garama Base Camp. The starting doesn’t look luxury. I am perfectly ok with the walk, but I dislike oil palm.<\/p>\n

\"Tea<\/a>
\nWe took a short tea break at the base camp of OIB.<\/p>\n

\"River<\/a>
\nThen we got onboard on small speed boats and started our river cruise at 4:30pm.<\/p>\n

\"Look<\/a>
\nAbove: our guide, DJ, looked for monkey. <\/p>\n

\"River<\/a>
\nAbove: a group of tourists saw the proboscis monkey. Compare to Kilas River, the Garama River is smaller and have many narrow maze-like network, but you can get closer to the monkey.<\/p>\n

\"Proboscis<\/a>
\nAbove: we spot a few herds of proboscis monkey at the riverside. <\/p>\n

For me, this is quite an ordinary river cruise like most other travel agents offer. You may watch the video of “ordinary” river cruise below. Later you can compare this with the deluxe river cruise:
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