The forty-minute speedboat ride from Sandakan's jetty takes you past mangrove estuaries and fishing stakes, the mainland's green ridges shrinking astern until Lankayan's single strip of sand appears—a sliver no wider than a cricket pitch, fringed by coconut palms and casuarina trees. You wade ashore into water so warm and still it feels like stepping into silk, the sand beneath your toes bleached to the pale gold of shortbread. The island supports just one small dive resort, meaning the beach remains blissfully uncrowded: a few scattered sun loungers, a floating pontoon where parrotfish nibble at the pilings, and little else.
“One of the few Bornean beaches where you can snorkel with turtles from shore and witness nesting cycles on the same stretch of sand.”
Lankayan Island Beach — photo by BasL
Beneath the surface, the house reef begins just meters from shore, a living rampart of table corals and sea fans where you'll encounter green and hawksbill turtles on nearly every snorkel. The drop-off plunges to thirty meters, its walls studded with gorgonians and patrolled by whitetip sharks, manta rays, and the occasional whale shark between March and May. Visibility often exceeds twenty meters, and the absence of boat traffic means the reef hums with life undisturbed.
On land, monitor lizards rustle through the undergrowth at dusk, and frigate birds wheel overhead. At night, if you time your visit between July and October, you may witness the ancient ritual of turtle nesting—females hauling themselves onto the sand to dig chambers and deposit clutches of eggs, their tracks erased by morning tide.
