One of The STC’s furthest destinations with a mere 16hr (ish) flight to the third largest island in the world, make our educational trips to Borneo anything but ordinary.
More Indiana Jones adventure than your standard educational trip, Borneo gives every student and teacher alike the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in the wildlife, culture, history, and local way of life. Bringing the classroom to life in vivid technicolor, your educational trip focusing on geography or biology starts right here with The STC leading the way!
Borneo background
Once part of the south-eastern Asian mainland, Borneo is now the largest island in Asia. Split between three countries: Malaysia, Brunei (in the north) and Indonesia (in the south), the island also spans both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
With a biodiversity almost unmatched anywhere in the world, Borneo’s 140m-year old rainforest is also one of the oldest in the world. This dense, natural habitat is the lifeblood to a wide range of Borneo’s flora and fauna, as well as many endangered animals, including the Bornean Orangutan. Around the extensive coastline, peat swamp forests also provide a home to many bird species.
Situated in the north is Kinabalu Park. A protected UNESCO World Heritage site, the area is famous for Mount Kinabalu—Malaysia’s highest mountain—reaching 4,095m above sea level. Renowned for its botanical and biological diversity, the mountain and surrounding country is considered one of the world’s most important ecological sites thanks to its abundance of plants, birds, and wildlife.
Most of Borneo’s almost 20m ethnically diverse population live in and around coastal areas and cities including Samarinda, Banjarmasin, Pontianak, and Kuching. But Borneo is also home to many inhabitants throughout its most remote areas. Way beyond the coast, the main river systems, Kapuas, Mahakam, Barito, and Rajang, are populated with many small towns and villages as they each wind hundreds of miles inland.
So what makes far-flung STC educational trips to Borneo so special? Apart from being a destination unlikely to have been visited before by your students, Borneo itself offers a unique educational experience for schools. Containing text book examples of what’s studied in biology and geography, Borneo is the perfect educational ecotourism destination that can cover any specific academic theme.
Experience and expertise all the way
The STC regularly creates individual educational trips for schools that tap into you and your students own requirements - and budgets. And while we do all the hard work for you at this end when it comes to planning, scheduling and arranging, our trusted partners in Borneo will be your guides and expedition leaders with all the knowledge and know-how you’ll need.
Wherever you travel with The STC, our expedition leaders are born and raised in your destination, and Borneo is no different. So not only are they completely at one with the local environment, they’re exceptionally experienced in handling all the day to day details of our adventures. These local leaders are an outstanding asset to STC expeditions and we value their expertise and experience, and trust them implicitly to keep your expedition on track, and all our clients safe and well.
Personal development guaranteed
As an educational trip, we can arrange for you to have a specific study-related theme that runs throughout your expedition. So while that may be geography, biology, science or anything else, we can take your requirements and build a daily itinerary that takes your students study needs into consideration, giving them the opportunity to learn in unique surroundings.
And we wouldn’t be doing our job properly if they didn’t get a real flavour of where they were headed. No trip is ever the same for any expedition. Each one is peppered with unexpected and extraordinary events and activities that throw them in at the deep end—literally in some cases—to give them practical, subject-related learning experiences and skills that they just won’t get anywhere else.
Curriculum-based subject matter is just the tip of the iceberg however. We like to dig a bit deeper for your students to make sure they really are getting everything out of their trip and look beyond the textbooks. Building a student’s self-confidence and resolve to give them the chance to develop their personality is always considered. That’s why we ensure personal development, adventure, involvement and interaction - not just with their fellow students, but with the locals as well - is a major part of every itinerary.
Our school expeditions
The STC already has some amazing educational tours to Borneo in the bag for you to choose from. So let’s start with our multi-activity Kinabatangan trip. A recommended 20-day expedition that works its way across the island, from the heat and humidity of the low-lying rainforest, to the heady heights and cool air of Mount Kinabalu and everything in between.
Throughout the trip you’ll be cycling and trekking through friendly farming communities, as you visit villagers and learn about their trade, cultures and way of life. You’ll take in a jungle trek through some tough terrain as you head towards the climb of Mount Kinabalu. And, after a stay along the Kinabatangan River, you can look forward to the extreme exhilaration of 9km of white water rafting.
We also have an adventure we like to call ‘Monkeying around the island’. A 12-day trip that will really take you into the depths of the borneo jungle you’ve read about. Giving you a physical challenge and a cultural insight like you’ve never had, this trip sets the tone with a 15km white water rafting journey to really test your skills and strengths.
Traversing the depths of jungle on foot, on wheels and by zipwire, you’ll get to spend time with researchers and scientists at a wildlife research centre, and get to meet the orangutans of Sepilok. Learning jungle survival techniques and sleeping under the stars in hammocks makes for an Borneo adventure like no other.
Let’s get started
The STC like to pack all our school expeditions to Borneo with real adventures and life-enhancing experiences. Mixing them together with practical learning and valuable life lessons, we help get every student closer to their subject, and help them shape their careers and their lives.
To find out more about our educational trips to Borneo, get in touch and call the team today on 01392 660056 or email: enquiries@thestc.co.uk.
We’re ready and waiting to plan a once in a lifetime adventure you’ll never forget!