Where the sweets are a mouthful of sugar cane and the spa treatments are heavenly: Why Borneo is the perfect jungle for young adventurers and an oasis for adults

• Kids can learn about jungle warfare and survival techniques in rainforest 
• River safaris provide an up-close look at pygmy elephants and macaques
• Movie nights and beach barbecues make it a good choice with children
• And adults can enjoy the spectacular elevated views from the Gaya resort

By Sarah Oliver For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 18:47 EST, 11 July 2015 | Updated: 18:47 EST, 11 July 2015

Do you think, whispered my red-headed son from behind his hand, that they reckon we’re descended from orang-utan gods?

As Rufus, eight, and his little brother Felix were engulfed by a crowd of Kota Kinabalu hipsters taking selfies with these other ginger members of the great ape family, I was sorely tempted to say yes.

For even in the 21st Century, the name Borneo still conjures spine-tingling images of gods and monsters, headhunters and white rajahs, and dark-hearted jungle pierced by venom-tipped palm darts.

The resort is a harbour across the bay from Kota Kinabalu where 120 villas rise from the jungle

That’s precisely why we’d gone: to encourage our boys to flirt with adventure; to show them shrunken heads and how to fire a blowpipe, and to tiptoe past green pit vipers coiled sleepily in trees.

Twenty-five years ago my husband, an Army officer, did his jungle warfare training in this sweltering part of the world, dropped off with little more than a cheery wave from an RAF loadmaster to sustain him for a month.

Borneo is still a challenge – you’ve got to be forgiving of greedy leeches and spiders the size of saucers – but for this trip we had a new weapon in our armoury. His name was Mike, and his family run the Miki Survival Camp on the foothills of Mount Kinabalu.

The camp is a two-hour trek from his mountain village, and does a genius job of offering jungly home comforts while giving every impression of life led at its most elemental.

My boys followed Mike into an exotic children’s world where antiseptic is tiger balm bark, sweets are a mouthful of sugar cane, and spinning tops are made of acorns from the Borneo oak.

He yomped them up hill-rice paddies, picking pineapples and durian along the way, and bribed them deep into primary rainforest with jungle chocolate (roast red banana) and drinks of citrussy water from inside freshly cut bamboo.

Sarah Oliver and her family enjoyed the jungle - despite tiptoeing past green pit vipers coiled sleepily in trees

At his camp they slept in a two-man bell tent next to ours and washed in the chill silver of a mountain stream. Food grown on a vegetable patch cultivated in the clearing was cooked by Mike’s sister Norisah, who had trekked in ahead of us. The meals she served were bolstered by foraging and the occasional edible frog, which the boys gutted and then roasted on a skewer like a Halloween marshmallow.

By day, Mike entranced us with lessons in jungle survival (if you eat a poisonous frog, the antidote is a drink made from its boiled bones) and jungle warfare (top hunters remove their four front teeth to make them a better blowpipe shot).

After sundown he took us for walks lit by luminous fungus, fireflies and a dazzle of stars above the jungle canopy. Not that it was peaceful, for the jungle is never more noisy and vital than at night – especially when it echoed to the gleeful sound of Rufus discovering that his little brother had taken the first leech for the team.

They found themselves in an old-fashioned Boy’s Own adventure and they thrilled to it, even practising the trapping techniques Mike taught them for catching civets, boar, birds and snakes on each other (they also earned a moment of local Facebook glory when Mike uploaded the resulting pictures).

Ultimately they trekked out of his jungle exhausted, ecstatic and better educated, toot-tooting their way home on jungle whistles they’d whittled, and battling with bamboo pop guns and catapults loaded with tapioca.

Sepilok Orang-Utan Rehabilitation Centre is a compelling option for those with children 

At four, Felix was the youngest person ever to make the trip, which had been suggested as a perfect entry-level adventure for a family by Bob Jones, the British face of Borneo-based travel company TYK Adventure Tours.

After our stay at the Survival Camp, we drove through drifts of clouds across the inland mountain range of the Kinabalu National Park, our destination the Sepilok Orang-Utan Rehabilitation Centre.

While it’s still possible to see orang-utans in the wild in Borneo, Sepilok is a compelling option for those with children, and there we witnessed not one but two nursing mothers suckling newborns, a flukish and heartwarming stroke of luck.

Then TYK guided us to the mighty Kinabatangan River where we kicked off our shoes in the comfort of our next base, the Myne Resort, a lodge hotel set on a lazy river bend, with wild boar truffling at the rear, and hornbills, serpent eagles and Pacific swallows swooping past the front.

River safaris carry you to within feet of pygmy elephants, gibbons, proboscis monkeys and macaques, which play and feed at the river’s edge at dusk, while clouds of happy bats flit by.

Sarah Oliver took her sons to Borneo to encourage them to flirt with adventure and how to fire a blowpipe

By the time we left Myne, a shiny black cobra zipping across our path, we had been on the road for more than a week, and it was time to retreat to the five-star luxury of Gaya Island Resort for a more traditional family holiday – albeit one where Borneo’s fierce natural spirit burns brightly.

The resort is a twinkling harbour across the bay from Kota Kinabalu – 120 villas rise from jungle and mangrove swamp in front of an immaculate beach. Seen from afar, they reminded me of the verdant floating worlds in the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar, a tangential idea the constant presence of wildlife – monitor lizards, wild boar and macaques – did nothing to dispel.

Days slipped by in an easy routine of snorkelling (Gaya Island is in the Tunku Abdul Rahman marine conservation area), kayaking and speedboat trips to nearby Tavajun Bay, where a restaurant on the resort’s private beach served exceptional Thai food.

Although Gaya is a noted honeymoon destination, its family-friendly restaurant Feast Village, interconnecting double villas, movie nights under the stars and barbecues on the beach make it a good choice with children. Staff indulge their small guests, while marine biologist Scott will take them to see his turtle hatchlings, and naturalist Justin had the boys trekking back into the jungle in a flash.

Although Gaya is a noted honeymoon destination, its family-friendly restaurant Feast Village, interconnecting double villas, movie nights under the stars and barbecues on the beach make it a good choice with children

The Gaya spa pampers guests with a Borneo Vanilla Orchid and Honey Cocoon massage

For adults, the spa is one of the best in Asia – its two-and- a-half-hour Borneo Vanilla Orchid and Honey Cocoon massage smelled like dessert and felt like heaven. But, unusually for a busy mum, it was a morning in a professional kitchen rather than an afternoon in the spa that proved the highlight of my stay. Chef Wanna taught the four of us to make Borneo ceviche (spicy raw fish) and chicken coconut curry, after which we retired to a cabana to eat them.

With the jungle throbbing around us, an elevated view of the bay across to Kota Kinabalu and the summit of the mountain in the distance, it was the perfect moment to reflect on a holiday that had begun with the bare necessities for survival and ended in rustic luxury.

Would I go back? Yes, in a heartbeat, because whether you’re sipping mellow Sabah tea by a remote camp fire or a glass of wine by Gaya’s infinity pool, it really is still a jungle out there.

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