Malaysia, Borneo (Kuching): Up Close and Personal

One hour on the train was all it took to get from Singapore to Malaysia – country #2. We expected the worst as the rain was pouring down outside, and when we exited the train station at Johor Bahru, Dan was soaked head to toe by a passing taxi. We had a night’s stopover in Johor Bahru before flying to Kuching, located on the island of Borneo (where they really should be filming the TV Series “Lost”).

Kuching, the “City of Cats”, is located within the state of Sarawak on the wild jungle island of Borneo, in the Malaysian part of the island. The two Malaysian states, Sarawak and Sabah, make up less than half of the island, while the majority of the island’s land mass is the Indonesian state of Kalimantan. There is also the small, yet very rich, country of Brunei located on the island, between Sarawak and Sabah.

Imagine Kyle and Dan, sitting in a bath tub in the South China Sea with 4 other people and the boat driver, scaling large waves with no life jackets…

We were picked up at the airport by the owners of the Borneo Seahare Hostel (Wesley and Theresa). They were very friendly and helpful and gave us tips on what to see and do in Sarawak. The hostel was called Borneo Seahare, and we had the entire place to ourselves - anuary is low season for travellers (due to the monsoon) and Wesley did not have any other guests during our stay. After bunk beds in a very cramped and busy Singapore hostel, having an entire place to ourselves was very nice!

Despite it being the monsoon season, we have had a lot of sunny and dry weather, mostly hot and humid but some cooler periods as well. We have had several days to familiarise ourselves with Kuching, and in doing so we have seen everything the city has to offer, including the open air food market, historical museums, riverside walks, Chinatown, the Indian district, Arab district, the Main Bazaar and many restaurants.

Now to the “wild” part of the journal. We really should have named this entry "slippery when wet", especially after visiting the Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, where we wanted desperately to catch a glimpse of some rare and amazing orang-utans during the centre’s feeding times. We both opted to wear hiking sandals as the centre’s trails are quite short and easy, and as there was a heavy storm early in the morning, everything was very wet when we arrived, even though the rain had stopped. We were both slipping and sliding all along the paths and sidewalks as the bottoms of our sandals aren’t meant for wet, algae-covered paths!

In one particular instance, whilst walking through a botanical garden path, Kyle slipped very suddenly down a steep path and re-gained his balance. When he turned to see how much Dan was laughing at him, he noticed immediately next to his face was a spider web with a spider in it! Did we mention the slippery sandals and the steep path we were on? You should now be able to picture the next scene, whereby Kyle screamed in fright, Dan told him to be quiet as it was embarrassing, and then Kyle slipped and fell flat on his back and slid down the steep path. For those of you who read the Singapore journal entry, you will understand our fear of spiders, and for those of you who didn’t read the Singapore entry, well, you better read it after this one.

We made it to the feeding, Kyle was slightly bruised and scratched and Dan was slightly amused, and waited silently in the very hot and humid jungle for 45 minutes with a large group of others who also made the early journey, but to no avail. The orang-utans decided not to come and get the few morsels of free fruit from the centre’s feeders as this time of year is the fruit season, which really means that the orang-utans can’t be bothered to climb down from the VERY fruit-filled trees to get a few pieces of fruit from some humans. In all seriousness, though, we were not too upset because the ultimate goal of the rehabilitation centre is to teach the orang-utans to survive on their own in the wild and this just proves the centre is doing its job (plus, if you read further down we saw A LOT of monkeys and wildlife in Bako National Park).

What did upset us, at the rehabilitation centre, is the trail we chose to hike around in the hopes of seeing some gibbons, or even orang-utans, further in the wild. What we did see, and run into on several occasions, were several large spider webs and many, many, many spiders, bugs, insects, flies, mosquitoes, ants, and other creepy-crawlies. The Masing Trail is one to avoid. Kyle got a bit of his revenge for Dan laughing at him when he slipped into the spider web in the botanical garden, by making Dan walk in front on the trail. Even waving a stick in front of him did not stop Dan walking into webs. The 45-minute trail ended abruptly at a plant nursery which was gated, locked and barb-wired. We were not having any of the trail again, i.e. we didn’t want to walk all the way back we came, so we managed to open the locked gate, walk through the deserted nursery and climb over the large fence at the entrance, before legging it to the road where we hitched a ride back to the nearest town in order to get a bus back to Kuching.

After writing about a miserable jungle trek, we both thought it appropriate to write about our very enjoyable experience at Bako National Park. We took a bus early one morning to the Bako Ferry Terminal to get a “ferry” down the Sarawak River and out onto the South China Sea to arrive at the national park. A ferry? No, we got a boat, an extremely small row-boat sized boat which only is supposed to hold 5 people (we had 6). Normally, we wouldn’t mind such small transport on the water as it is nice to have a boat ride on calm, smooth waters, and the 20-minute boat ride started out smoothly enough. However, once the Sarawak River opened out into the South China Sea, we started seeing small waves in the distance off to the right, and while we luckily were headed straight ahead, the small waves seemed to grow rather large as we travelled further into the sea. Then the driver of the boat decided to move to the right, and before we knew it, our little bath tub of a boat was surfing on some 6-7 foot waves. This was a slightly bumpy and disconcerting experience – disconcerting because it started raining pretty hard and also because we were not told to put on our life jackets. Imagine Kyle and Dan, sitting in a bath tub in the South China Sea with 4 other people and the boat driver, scaling large waves with no life jackets… scary, but we made it to the beach at Bako National Park in the end and were very thankful indeed for stable surfaces.

Once on stable ground, we had a brilliant time at Bako. We decided upon arrival to stay the evening and make the most of our first proper jungle experience by trekking as much as possible during the day. We did just that, and spent 6 hours trekking through various paths in the jungle. On our first trail, the Paku trail, we saw a few of Borneo’s own proboscis monkeys in the trees alongside the path. Apparently, proboscis monkeys can only live in the wild and will starve themselves to death if kept in captivity, so you won't see them in any zoos. Unfortunately, none of our photos were close and clear enough to display, so we’ll take a stab at describing these rare creatures to you.

Imagine an orange-coloured monkey, about the size of a large dog or a 3-foot tall man, with a long-tail and a penis hanging where his nose should be. If you can’t picture this, then open a new Internet browser and search on Google for pictures of proboscis monkeys and you will see what we mean. The penis is actually the monkey’s nose, so for those of you who don’t know much about these monkeys, please don’t think they are strangely disfigured.

When the proboscis monkeys moved on and out of sight, we trekked to the end of the Paku trail to the beach. It had started pouring rain during the trek, and you will see in our photos the lovely ponchos we bought to wear in case it rained. These made things extremely hot, despite the rain, and so we took shelter in a hut on the beach and talked with a group of English women who have been travelling in Malaysia.

Once the rain stopped, we headed back to the park entrance and were lucky enough to spot the proboscis monkeys in the trees again. We then started another trek towards Pandan Kecil, which took us an hour and a half further into the jungle and out onto a beautiful, deserted beach. This trek was very difficult because the sun had come out, it was very hot and there were many ups and downs and streams we had to walk through to get to and from the beach. Along this trail we did not see any wildlife but we did see some of the pitcher plants which are native to Borneo, and we saw loads of snails, molluscs and crabs around the beach.

When we arrived back at the start of the trail, we were very fortunate to have been able to view a large group of Silver-leaf monkeys which were feeding on the leaves of the mangrove trees along the beach. They were very cute and so interesting to watch. The babies are orange-coloured and as they develop will turn silver (grey). As the tide had gone out, and the trees and bushes were accessible to the monkeys, it was their feeding time and they were not that socially interactive with each other. But to see them feeding very close-up was a great experience for us. We went back to the park headquarters afterwards feeling very satisfied (but exhausted from a full day of trekking) and had a nice long conversation with a guy from Newcastle who has been travelling for 7 months and has over a year to go.

After having dinner, we headed to the lodge where we were staying, but unfortunately we did not have our torch (that is a flashlight to the Americans reading this) to guide us to the room. It was pitch-black, there were many creepy animal and insect noises, but using the watch Kyle’s mum gave him for Christmas we were able to generate a small fraction of light to find the doorknob and keyhole to open the door. However, when needing to find the light switch in the bathroom, Indiglo on a Timex watch does not provide enough light, and so Dan and Kyle had to feel along the walls of the bathroom in the dark to find the light switch. This was not a pleasant experience as the switch was not near the door but far inside the dark room.

Finally with the light switched on, taking showers was a Friday the 13th experience for both of us, as it was a classic, creepy “Jason” moment, with a small window inside each of the showers looking outside to the pitch black jungle, and of course the several creepy noises I mentioned before still had not gone away!

Back in the room, Dan noticed a small crab-looking spider on the ceiling of the lodge, above his bed. Of course, Kyle said that Dan shouldn’t worry as the ceilings were quite high and it was unlikely that the spider was going to do anything. So, Dan agreed and started to lie down to go to sleep. As soon as he lay down, the spider rapidly descended towards Dan’s face and so Dan started freaking out. The spider didn’t last long as Dan’s shoe was up in the air in less than a second.

In the morning, we set out very early in order to catch another glimpse of the proboscis monkeys before leaving Bako. We were met on the way to breakfast by a couple of huge bearded pigs, which were very cute in an ugly sort of way. We were able to follow them around while they were eating, and at one point we thought Kyle was going to be part of their breakfast (see photos)!

After leaving the pigs, we encountered a large group of macaque monkeys who had taken over the pier and walkway to the entrance to the jungle treks. They were lazing about and cleaning each other, and were not bothered in the least that we had walked right up to them and started taking photos. However, when Kyle let a couple of the babies come up to him and start playing with his feet and legs, the parents started getting a little bit wary. Then a couple of the adult monkeys started challenging Dan, and when one of them jumped up to Dan’s chest, instead of avoiding eye contact (which you are supposed to do and we didn’t know at the time), Dan decided to use the tactic that he uses on geese in Regents Park – he stuck his foot out and swatted his hand and shouted at the monkeys. Not a good idea… teeth were baring (not Dan’s or Kyle’s) and several monkeys were converging on Dan. Kyle was standing there thinking about how to get Dan out of the situation, and Dan was freaking out and hoping he wouldn’t crap in his pants. Somehow, Dan managed to get by the monkeys with only a very young monkey trying to prove its worth and chasing Dan a few feet down the walkway. All in all, a slightly scary but very enjoyable experience!

We headed back to Kuching after a brilliant time in Bako and our journey back was much smoother than the journey to the park – no waves at all and we had our lifejackets on this time. One unsettling thing, though, was that we found out that the South China Sea is full of sharks and the Sarawak River has more crocodiles than anywhere in the world. Yikes!

Other interesting points to note about our time in Kuching include eating chicken feet (which we won’t do again, as once is enough) and walking into the posh hotel Merdeka Palace to use their outdoor swimming pool. It was a very nice pool and great to have a cool swim in the hot weather, but we were not very wise and did not take sun block, and have paid for that with awful sunburns. We had a good laugh about this with Wesley and Theresa, who kindly took us out for drinks on our last night. I suppose we can moan about it in our next journal, when we write about our next destination, the Niah Caves.