eTawau > Places of Interest > Bukit Gemok > George Mais Trail

The George Mais Trail

The walk up Bukit Gemok, from the park centre to the canopy walk near the top

Bukit Gemok Park  ·  Canopy walk  ·  George Mais Trail  ·  Small animals  ·  Flora  ·  Protected forest

The George Mais Trail is the main path up Bukit Gemok, the forested hill 12 km from Tawau. It starts near the park centre and climbs through the protected forest, past seven numbered rest huts, to the Titian Silara canopy walk, which hangs from tree to tree near the top. The signboard at the start gives the distance to the canopy walk as 1,170 metres. For most people that is about an hour's walk uphill, less on the way down.

A weathered oval wooden sign with carved white letters: To Gemok Hill Trail and Canopy Walk, 1,170 meter, with an arrow pointing right.
The first sign: 1,170 metres to the canopy walk.
A red-brown wooden sign hanging among green leaves with carved black letters: Ke George Mais Trail.
"Ke George Mais Trail" — to the George Mais Trail.

The walk

A tall wooden map board headed Pusat Sejadi Hutan Simpan Bukit Gemok. A dotted white line winds from a wheel symbol at the bottom up past seven numbered hut symbols, the first marked in red, to a red ring among green leaves at the top.
The trail map at the start: the path winds past huts 1 to 7 to the ring of the canopy walk at the top.

The first stretch is concrete steps and paving, easy going. Then the concrete runs out and the path becomes earth, rock and tree roots, and the climb gets steeper. None of it needs climbing skill, but it is a real uphill walk: take it slowly if you are not used to hills, and watch your footing on the roots and rocks.

The rest huts are numbered along the way. Station No. 1 is named Kapur Paji, after one of the kapur trees of Borneo's lowland forest. They are good places to stop, drink, and look at the forest around you.

A dark brown wooden sign hanging on chains, with carved yellow letters: Station No. 1, Pondok Perhentian Kapur Paji.
Station No. 1, "Pondok Perhentian Kapur Paji" — the Kapur Paji rest hut.
Large moss-covered boulders piled on the forest floor among tall thin tree trunks and green undergrowth.
Mossy boulders beside the path, higher up the hill.
Close view of a concrete step with the print of a shoe sole, its tread pattern clear, pressed into the surface.
Somebody walked on the concrete before it had set. The shoe prints are still there on the lower steps.

At the top the reward is the canopy walk, 231 metres of hanging walkway among the tree crowns, and from up there a view over Tawau town and the coast. The canopy walk page has the details and photographs.

Before you go.

What lives along the trail

Keep an eye on the leaves either side of the path. Two records from the same hot morning in July 2015, the first of them right beside the trail:

13 July 2015 · 9.25 am · beside the trail

A fly with its eyes on stalks

A small black fly with red eyes on long sideways stalks and dark-banded wings, standing on a dead brown leaf
A stalk-eyed fly, family Diopsidae, on a dead leaf beside the path: red eyes at the ends of long stalks, a spiny black thorax and banded wings. It stayed a few seconds, then flew off.

13 July 2015 · 9.59 am · on a broad leaf

A stick insect with its tail in the air

A thickset, heavily spined stick insect about 75 mm long, holding its abdomen curled over its back, photographed on Bukit Gemok half an hour later.

All the small animals of Bukit Gemok — stick insects, ants, a lobster moth caterpillar, millipedes and more, each with its date and place.

Stay on the path, and leave what you find. The forest on Bukit Gemok is protected, and it is an island now, surrounded by plantations; what lives there cannot easily be replaced.

Other hiking trails in Tawau

Related pages

About this page. Trail photographs by Wong Fook Yee with a Canon PowerShot A410 on 1 September 2006, between 9.41 and 9.55 in the morning. The distance to the canopy walk is from the signboard at the start of the trail. Opening hours and telephone numbers are as last listed on this site; check them before you go. Distances from Tawau on this site are measured from the 0 km Tawau landmark using Google Maps. All photographs © Wong Fook Yee. Rewritten 29 September 2026.