Lupa Masa

Lupa Masa began in 2010, when Tom Hewitt rented a patch of the Kampung Poring forest that people locally knew as Mangawong, after the river running past it. The name it goes by now came from his own remark that every time he came here he forgot all his problems — lupa masa, Malay for forget time. The camp sits thirty minutes on foot from Poring Hot Springs and metres from the Kinabalu Park boundary at around 550m, in lowland forest right where it begins grading into lower montane — a completely different band from the cloud forest 19km away at park headquarters. Guided night walks of two to three hours are what most visitors come for, and the herping is what has earned the camp a reputation well beyond Sabah: red-headed krait and dragon snake are the headline finds, alongside pit vipers, cat snakes, bronzebacks and a long list of frogs. Days go to the clear Kinabalu river ten metres from camp, the waterfall seven minutes downstream, and birding along the trails — and Rafflesia occasionally blooms on site, though catching one open is luck rather than planning. Accommodation is deliberately basic: six bamboo and reclaimed-wood shelters open to the forest under mosquito nets, around 25 guests at capacity, no WiFi, intermittent power, and nights that drop to 15°C.

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Top highlights

1. Red-headed Krait
2. Dragon Snake
3. Bornean Palm Pit Viper
4. Sumatran Pit Viper
5. Blunt-headed Slug-eating Snake
6. Wallace's Flying Frog
7. Bornean Horned Frog
8. Giant Angle-headed Lizard
9. Cat Gecko
10. Western Tarsier
11. Bornean Striped Palm Civet