Three more days in the jungle

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Three days in Bako National Park

Just returned from another excellent trip into the Borneo jungle. This time we were in Bako National Park, right in the south of Sarawak. We stayed in the basic hostel accommodation provided by the park, it was great to get back to a hot shower this afternoon!
Bako is a stunning place, with a number of picturesque beaches, good hiking trails, forest with limestone cliffs. It's popular as a day trip location so the early and later parts of the day a wonderfully quiet. We saw lots of proboscis monkeys, some up quite close, as well as silver leaf monkeys, a flying lemur, numerous birds and a few snakes, plus more butterflies and stick insects. The day walks are all well marked, some of them with some steep climbs, all very hot but enjoyable. Whilst there we also did the guided night walks. They were a bit too popular but the guides were great and we saw plenty on both of them, including a huge scorpion, the flying lemur, some sleeping kingfishers and an owl.
The journey there was easy, a public bus from the centre of Kuching, about 30 mins, then straight onto a boat for about 20 mins. (Rm 3.5 and Rm9 respectively). The journey back wasn't quite so smooth as the carefully planned boat out of the park got us to the jetty at 2:15, as hoped, but the 2:30 bus had already left! So we had a bit of long and hot wait for the 3:30 bus. On the way there the bus driver was reading the morning paper whilst driving and on the way back he (different he) was eating first a corn on the cob and then a crab whilst driving.

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