Blogs from Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia - page 9

Today we woke up in Borneo for the first time. Borneo is an island that is made up of Malaysia in the North and Indonesia in the South. We were in the Malaysian part, in the province of Sarawak. It was difficult to decide where to go in Borneo when we were planning this trip, but the other Malaysian province, Sabah, is more mountainous and since we were just in Nepal, we thought that we should just do that on our next trip to Borneo. So we settled on flying from Singapore to Kuching, which is only an hour and a half flight. Having just arrived last night we made quick work of organizing activities for today. We decided that we would visit the orangutan rehabilitation facility near Kuching in the morning and do a river ... read more

Well hello! So we've made it to Borneo, we lasted the full 5 weeks in the Philippines although there were times when we thought we might not. So so happy to be in Malaysia where the lies about the Philippines seem to ring true...great food, friendly people, great weather, lots to do. Having said that one of our last nights in the Philippines was a lovely one. We returned to Surigao city, found a cheaper hotel from last time in a better location. A new shopping mall had opened that day much to the delight of all the townsfolk. We trundled down to try and catch ourselves a bargain but managed only a buffet dinner and a bottle of rum/sprite. As we begun our pikey drinking watching the local band we caught the eyes of a ... read more

We were all looking forward to visiting Sarawak and we were certainly not disappointed. In only just under two weeks we recorded a number of 'firsts' including sightings of (semi-wild) orang-utans, proboscis monkeys, the huge Rafflesia and a host of other creatures from stick insects to millipedes with fluorescent tails! We trekked through some fantastic rainforest and coastal scrub forest, and explored an enormous cave system, all within the relatively small south-west corner of Sarawak. How we would have loved to have spent a few months exploring the rest of the State ! Our first impressions of Kuching city were that, for a capital city, it was pleasantly compact and unhurried, lacking the usual crowds, traffic and skyscrapers and shopping malls. The city meets quite abruptly with forest at its fringes and in fact at least ... read more

After the Niah caves, it was a 5h journey southwestwards across a good chunk of the state, towards Sibu, the confluence of the Batang Rejang (Malaysia's longest river) and other major distributaries, and also the second largest city of the state. It was from here that I intended to head upriver to one of the riverside towns lying deeper within Malaysian Borneo, from where perhaps I could pay a visit to a traditional longhouse. I'd read in Wikitravel that Sibu was a bit of a sketchy town, home to shady characters connected to the timber barons of the area. I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Having already been to both Miri and Labuan, places with notable nightlife, and finding both places in fact much less seedy than their reputations suggested, I thought this aspect of ... read more

After the brief sojourn to the Kelabit Highlands, I took the short flight back to Miri, and continued with another 2h bus ride to Batu Niah, the nearest town to the Niah National Park, yet another one of Malaysia' Unesco World Heritage Sites, and home to its famous multi-millenia-year old limestone caves. Of course Batu Niah isn't exactly right at the National Park's doorstep, and so it was a hot and humid 3km hike first to the park entrance, followed by another 3km to the caves proper. Apart from being notable and really quite impressive geological relics, these caves have also been home to millions (yes, millions) of swiftlets and bats for decades, if not centuries. Apparently there is some sort of implicit arrangement between the two species, where the bats inhabit the caves during the ... read more