wlbox

I am considering traveling to Borneo with Friendly Planet. The trip is the last half of October 2009 for two weeks. Can anyone tell me if this is a good time of the year to travel. I know it will be hot and humid but I prefer no smoke or heavy rains.

Has anyone else done this trip?

DAX

Dec through Feb are the rainy months, so October is good. You may actually welcome some cleansing tropical rain experience during those hot days. I was just in the general area last week and I would have enjoyed some walking/running in the rain.

Kathie

Take a look at www.weatherbase.com and check both Kota Kinabalu and Kuching. In KK, the rainiest months are June through November with both May and Dec being transitional months with 9 inches of rain on average. In Kuching, Sept - March are the rainiest months.

We were there in November, and while there was rain, there was only one day when it was a problem (the road was flooded and it took us an hour longer to get from Mt. Kinabalu to KK). We did have thunderstorms with intense rain several afternoons. You need to ask yourself how much rain bothers you.

Think about whether you want to go with a tour group. There was someone who reported on a such a tour last year, and regretted that she went with a tour.

You might be interested in reading my trip report - just click on my name, and in my profile you'll see a list of my trip reports.

We loved Borneo!

DAX

Kathie, the information on weatherbase is interesting but I'm not sure how accurate. I just compared it to another weather site that I randomly picked: http://www.worldweather.org/020/c00080.htm. It shows that the larger total precipitation starts from December and dramatically increasing in Jan.

I have spent quite a bit of time in South East Asia before and as far as I can remember the awesome thunderstorms typically came around in December but occasionally as early as late October/November but nothing as spectacular as in Jan. I actually enjoy the rain as long as I am not in a flooded area of course.

Kathie

I can't get your link to work, DAX. I tried just the site address but no luck there either.

I've also spent lots of time in SE Asia. This area of the world is impacted by several different monsoon systems. When we were in Kota Kinabalu, as I said above, we had monsoon-type rains, and everyone talked about it being rainy season.

While I'm sure that errors creep into all weather data bases, I've found the weatherbase site to be pretty accurate in my travels in SE Asia (various parts of Indonesia, Singapore, both Malaysian Borneo and peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, VN).