Sungai Padas

 
Overview

The Padas River is a river in Interior Division, southwestern Sabah of Malaysia. It has a total length of 120 km from its headwaters in the mountains of northwest Sabah to its outlet at the South China Sea, southwest of Beaufort town.

Description

Born as a timber town, Beaufort has reinvented itself with the proliferation of palm-oil plantations. A suitable pit stop for tourists travelling between Sabah and Sarawak, this sleepy town is the gateway to white-water rapids on the Sungai Padas and the monkey-filled Klias and Garama areas. It's also the departure point for the wonderfully scenic, if ramshackle, railway to Sabah's coffee capital of Tenom. The Sungai Padas divides Beaufort into two sections: the aptly named Old Town with its weathered structures, and New Town, a collection of modern shophouses on flood-phobic stilts. During WWII Beaufort was the site of a major skirmish between the Japanese and Australians.