Lok Kawi Wildlife Park — Attraction in Borneo

Beware! it's a trap: Ghost town open air Zoo.

If you like seeing caged wild animals inside an open air Zoo, then this might be the right place for you. Also great place to get terrorized by gigantic mosquitoes. So bring mosquitoe repellents or wear clothes to cover yourself. Also bring snacks and water for yourself as there are no stores around and you might wait a whole hour to get transportation back to KK.

Let me just say that I was advised by locals, on 2 separate occasions, to visit Lok Kawi. I regret listening to their advice. They specifically said to book a Grab from Kota Kinabalu. Which I did. 16 MYR/Ringgits. And as non-Malaysian I had to pay 20 MYR entrance fee (Malaysian citizens pay 10 MYR). Only that should have been a red flag. The Zoo is quite small. You follow an easy flat trail and can view endemic species such as Ourangoutans, proboscis Monkeys (larged nosed funny looking monkeys), Borneo elephants and their adorable calves l, Malay Tiger, Borneo sun bears, birds etc. in cages and enclosed places. Not only does the animals look sad, depressed and miserable, but also we as visitors become sad, depressed and miserable after our visit which only takes 45 minutes. There's no cafe or restaurant where you can buy water or snacks, unless if you walk 100 meters down the road while getting chased by hungry wild stray dogs and from there trying to get a Grab back to the city. I literally waited 1 hour for a Grab car to finally pick me up. It costed me 31 MYR/Ringgits which is almost x2 the price I paid to get there. Here are the costs: 16 MYR Grab Kota Kinabalu - Lok Kawi Zoo 20 MYR entrance fee 31 MYR Grab Lok Kawi Zoo - Kota Kinabalu

So no. If you read this, do not go there. Not worth your...

We visited this zoo and were quite surprised – most of the animals don’t look very well, especially the tiger. He looked like he might be drugged or just very old. Honestly, we came here mainly to see the proboscis monkeys, and yes – they are here and they are amazing! I’m not sure if they just didn’t like us or if they’re not very friendly with people, but they didn’t come close. Still, we managed to take a few nice photos.

As for the rest of the animals, there aren’t that many, so don’t expect to spend a full day here. You couldn’t anyway – the park is open from around 9:30 am to 1:00 pm, then it closes for lunch and reopens at 2:00 pm. We went in the afternoon. Getting a taxi back was a bit stressful – no one accepted our booking for more than 20 minutes, and since it’s over half an hour by car from Kota Kinabalu, we were worried we’d have to walk! So definitely have a backup plan for transport.

The zoo itself is quite small and can be walked through slowly in about an hour. We spent another 30 minutes just sitting and watching the proboscis monkeys. Other animals you can see here include elephants, tigers, bears, different kinds of birds (parrots, toucans – I think – and owls), orangutans (though they were barely visible and not active at all), otters, ostriches, cows, and a few others.

Entrance is 20 MYR per person for non-Malaysians. A taxi from Kota Kinabalu costs about 20–35 MYR one way.

Overall, is it worth it? Yes – but only for the proboscis monkeys. They are the main highlight. Otherwise, there isn’t much to see, and sadly, many of the animals seem to be in poor condition, possibly because they’re old or not well cared for. On site, there’s a small snack shop with drinks and a...

Was nice a year ago. Seems to go bankrupt, maintenance very poor, empty cages. Sabah needs to make up their mind, they want tourists or not? Like most places in Asia, one-time-investment and then let it fall apart isn't going to work. Also, if you're used to European zoos, where animals have hundreds of acres to walk around free, forget it here. Small areas for them to walk, mostly small cages.

The management here seriously needs to make a visit to Europe how to setup a zoo properly.

And the name: Lok Kawi Wildlife Park, well ehm no. It's a ZOO with the standard to keep animals of the 50's in Europe.

It's not even a modern zoo where Animals have large spaces.

And as for wildlife park, they are usually very big, like 100x100km.

This is very small, definitely not a wildlife park but just simply put a zoo.

The difference: in a zoo theoretically the animals are locked in and the humans walk around freely. The area for each animal in the 50's was very small, today most zoos in Europe have large open spaces for animals to walk freely, but still, trapped while the human is free to move around.

A wildlife park, safari park, zoo-park, anything with park is generally that the animals walk freely, thus as the name suggests a HUGE AREA for the animals where the human is a guest!

This is NOT the case here at Lok Kawi. So the name is more or less a magnet for tourists, to expect something very beautiful, large landscapes of wildlife walking free and you the human are a guest.

Don't expect it! You'll be disappointed if you expect what the...