Kuching (April 22-24)

The first five days in Borneo were absolutely amazing. I arrived in Kuching on Sunday afternoon and it was pouring heavily, not a very good first impression! At the guest house I joined Krystyna from Vancouver. We met in Thailand three months ago and were both planning to travel in Borneo at the same time. It’s pretty cool that we are coinciding and that we can travel together!

Kuching is the biggest city in Borneo. Of course, being a big city it doesn’t look like the Borneo you imagine after watching wildlife documentaries but it’s really a place you could hang out for longer. It’s not spectacular but it has a nice riverfront, the obligatory Chinatown and some green areas. We haven’t seen loads of tourists yet (at least not many backpackers) but there must definitely be some foreigners here because otherwise they wouldn’t have an international airport and a Hilton. The people in Kuching are amazingly friendly. Everywhere they are waving, smiling and greeting us, especially the school kids. We have seen so many schools here that one might think that the city mainly consists of schools. In any case it’s a very good sign. I forgot to mention the food which is amazing, maybe even better than in West-Malaysia (although this is already hard to achieve).

On Monday we went to the Semenggoh Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre. It’s kind of a zoo outside the city but without cages and fences. The apes can move freely inside the jungle but the area is too small for them to survive without being fed. We have witnessed one of the feedings in the morning and it was really impressive to see these majestic animals in their natural environment and not in a zoo. In the afternoon and evening we walked around the city. At the waterfront we saw a spectacular sunset, which for me was the most beautiful I had ever seen before.

The following day we went to the Kubah National Park (it consists of a vast jungle area), which is 40 minutes outside the city. To our surprise we were the only tourists that day (in a National Park!) and the whole park headquarters area seemed quite abandoned. I had the impression that the park rangers were really happy to see someone. At the end we had all the trails for ourselves and walked around for around 5 hours. It was up and down all the time, so you get pretty exhausted in the jungle climate. The highlights there were a 10-m waterfall and a fantastic viewpoint from which you can see the coastal area and the South China Sea in the background, really gorgeous! Unfortunately we didn’t see large animals but that couldn’t be expected anyway. The park rangers told us that they had to close one of the trails because there would be a wild Orang Utan family with babies and that they’d be really aggressive when they have babies. We didn’t believe that story and thought that the trail was closed for another reason. In any case there were other interesting things to see in the jungle.