Kuching & Bako National Park

After leaving the Kinabatangan River, Steph and I spent our final night in bleak Sandakan. We flew out the next morning for Kuching, Sarawak. To get to Kuching we actually had to fly out of Borneo to KL and then transfer flights in order to go back to Borneo. Sarawak is a Malaysian province, but for reasons difficult to grasp is still treated as an international destination by Malaysian authorities, which required us to go through immigration again. The alternative was a two day bus trip.

We arrived in Kuching in the late afternoon and got a cab to our hotel.

The next day we walked around the town and saw the sights. Kuching has been described as resembling Melbourne in some parts. I couldn't really see the similarities, but there was a nice esplanade and some cool cafés. The word 'kuching' in Bahasa Malaysia translates to 'cat'. The city's namesake is acknowledged all over Kuching (see photo below).

The following morning we set out for Bako National Park. We spent four days and three nights there. The park is the oldest of its kind in Sarawak, established in the 1950's. It's located on the tip of the Muara Tebas peninsula. The trip there from Kuching takes around ninety minutes - one hour by bus, then half an hour by boat (on the day we went the ocean was very rough).

On our first night in the park we took up the opportunity to go on a night walk through the forest. Among the things we saw were: a subspecies of the Sunda Flying Lemur, Galeopterus variegatus borneanus (which incidentally is not an actual lemur, nor does it fly), bio luminescent fungi, and many species of froggies, buggies, and spiders.  Steph was lucky enough to spot a tarantula, however when she went to point it out to me it had disappeared - leaving her unnerved as to its whereabouts. We also saw several sleeping birds perched on branches along the trail - a phenomenon we had witnessed before at the Kinabatangan river. You can stand very close to these birds, make noise and take photos and they remain completely still.

The next day I went for a trek on the Tajor trail. There are around twenty separate walking trails inside the park, each varying in length and adversity. The Tajor leads through a small waterfall and ends at a beach. It was high tide when I arrived at the end of the trail and I couldn't see any beach. I had more luck the next day when Steph and I went to the Kecil beach, even got to catch some waves.

On Dec 23 Steph and I went back to Kuching. We left the next day for Sumatra.

Our bus driver to and fro Kuching. He slept for an hour in the car park before taking us back to Kuching.

Spot the spider. Steph somehow saw this on the night walk.

A kingfisher sound asleep, oblivious to the tourists below.

It was nice listening to the calls of frogs at night.

View from the top of Bako.

Nepenthes rafflesiana.

I saw this army of ants streaming endlessly through the forest on the Tajor trail.

All of the trails were colour-coded. This tree had been snapped.

Silver-leaf monkey, or silvery langur (Trachypithecus cristatus)

Nepenthes ampullaria.

A male proboscis monkey, lounging near the beach.

The same male proboscis monkey chewing on something resembling celery.

Rainforest in Bako.