Keningau
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Keningau

Keningau

Interior Sabah town where Kadazan-Dusun, Murut, Chinese, and Malay communities meet at the Sunday tamu.

Keningau is a small town in the interior of Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, set on a wide plateau in the Crocker Range and reached by a spectacularly windy road over the mountains from Kota Kinabalu. It is the administrative centre of the Interior Division and home to an ethnically mixed population of Kadazan-Dusun, Murut, Chinese and Malay — the Sunday tamu (open-air market) is the best place in the state to see all four communities trading fresh jungle produce, dried river fish, smoked meats and handicrafts under the same roof.

There is not much to detain a traveller in Keningau itself, but it is a useful base for trips deeper into the Murut heartland — the longhouses around Sapulut and Nabawan, the Rafflesia Forest Reserve in the Crocker Range foothills, and the cross-Borneo road to Tenom and the North Borneo Railway. The old Japanese wartime pillboxes on the edge of town are a tangible reminder of the brutal occupation of the interior during the Second World War.

Guide

Getting There

Keningau is about 75 km south of Kota Kinabalu by road, but the drive takes 2–3 hours because the route crosses the Crocker Range via a winding mountain road — scenic but slow. Minibuses run from the Inanam bus terminal in Kota Kinabalu throughout the day; the fare is around RM 15–20. There is no train service.

From Keningau, you can continue south by road to Tenom (about 45 minutes), which is the terminus of the North Borneo Railway — a historic narrow-gauge colonial-era line that now runs tourist services through the Padas Gorge. The road between Keningau and Tenom follows the gorge and is one of the most dramatic routes in Sabah.

Guide

Things to Do

Keningau is primarily a market town and a base for exploring the Murut interior of Sabah. The weekly tamu is the main event, while the surrounding landscape — the Crocker Range, the Rafflesia Forest Reserve, and the road south to Tenom — offers the kind of Borneo adventure that more-visited towns cannot.