Blogs from Bako National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia - page 3

We gave the bus driver two ringets (Malaysian currency). He said the price had changed to three ringets. This is the way traveling in Malaysia works; read one thing, plan according to what you read, come to find out what you read is outdated or untrue. The difference between two and three ringets is about 30 cents so it wasn't a big deal but when stuff like that happens over and over and over on a bigger scale (like buses no longer operate at all or on a different schedule than they did yesterday) it gets to be a bit (or a lot) trying and frustrating. We paid three ringets and boarded the city bus for a half hour ride to Bako National Park which naturally ended up being an hour-long bus ride. The next step ... read more

As a 1,5 day trip from Kuching, I visited Bako National Park, Sarawaks oldest National Park. To get there, I took a 1-hour bus to Bako, and then chartered a boat to the park, which took about 25 minutes. The boat docked at a beach, where the Park headquarters were located. The accomodation of the park was also here. During this time of year, the difference between high and low tide is huge. I arrived at low tide and I had to cross about 100m of beach before getting to the treeline. Hours later, the water would come all the way up to the trees! It was about 14h when I arrived. The weather was nice, so I decided to walk one of the many well-marked trails in the park as soon as possible. Its monsoon ... read more

Sunday we took the local bus from Kuching to the boat dock for Baku National Park. Unlike Taman Negara, for which the boat ride is an optional tourist add-on while locals arrive by land, there is no road to Baku. In fact you can only reach the dock at high tide, otherwise you have to wade through the surf and across the beach carrying all your stuff. Lucky for us the tide was in. At the dock, the boat owners take turns. These are little four-passenger dingies with outboard motors. Our assigned boat had no canopy for shade; we could see that most did. We realized this as he cranked up the outboard -- we scrambled out of the boat and back on to the dock just in time. Returning to the waiting area, we said ... read more

How do I sum up Bako National Park? It stinking hot and there's no water. On the last night there was no power either. It hasn't rained at Bako in quite a long time and their dam is almost empty. Sometimes the toilets flushed, mostly they didn't. Sometimes there was a trickle of water from the taps, mostly there wasn't. The streams in the forest were reduced to small puddles filled with dead leaves and little shoals of rasboras. I had a bit of a poke around to see if I could find any catfish or bettas but there appeared to just be rasboras in the pools. However on one of my nocturnal ramblings I did see a catfish of some sort in one. The meals at Bako are served buffet-style at 7.30, 11.30 and 6.30. ... read more

"Craig, if we travel in Borneo, do you think we'll see Proboscis monkeys?" I asked repeatedly in the lead up to our trip. I really hadn't thought of much else about Borneo. The trip, as has become usual, was not really planned. All I knew while flying to Kuching was, I hope I see Proboscis Monkeys. On the second day we hopped on a city bus with our friend Natalie to the Bako Jetty. Here we purchased our tickets to ride a speedboat through the crocodile infested waters to Bako National Park. Yes, man-eating crocodiles. The previous day, while visiting the definitely "unique" and pleasingly "free of charge" Sarawak museum, we eyed with awe a crocodile hair ball. Approximately the size of a cannon ball, this one had been removed from a dissected croc with a ... read more