The English man, the Orange man and the Dutch man!

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With great anticipation we landed in Kuching on the west side of Borneo, thinking about all the wildlife we were hoping to see. For those that know little about Borneo its a huge island off the coast of Singapore which is part Malaysian and part Indonesian, Kuching being on the Malaysian side. It is the only place where you can find the endangered and amazing orantutans and probiscus monkeys in the wild. Kuching translates to "Cat" in Malay and it seem its a bit of an obsession there as there are cat statues absolutely everywhere.

We arrived around lunchtime and headed straight to the hotel 360Xpress, which we booked sometime ago. Trip Advisor gave it rave reviews, so we were already optimistic, and it didn't disappoint. We opened our room to find a plush looking bedroom with a big plasma screen TV mounted on the wall and an enormous bathroom, with huge walk in shower.

Once we'd unloaded, we headed off for some munch and soon came across a KFC! Not exactly local Borneo cuisine but, we hadn't had original recipe chicken from the Colonel for 3 months so we thought what the hey!

After that we had a little look around the river front and checked out the Main Bizarre area for some bargains. Once our feet grew weary, we headed back to the 360 for some quiet time before going in search of a good curry. Kuching is a hugely multicultural society, with a mix of Chinese, Thai, Malay and Indian influences. We found a beautiful Indian curry house, just down the road. It was called Lyn's, which doesn't sound particularly Indian, but once inside we were hit with an authentic curry house vibe, colourful tablecloths, spicy aroma's and friendly Indian waiters coming to greet us. The curry tasted pretty good too and we felt a little bit like we were back on the Pershore Road in Brum, enjoying dinner at Masala Merchant!

The following day we crossed the river on a rowing boat, manned by a little old local, to take in some of Kuching's city attractions. We had a look at Fort Margherita which is now a police museum and Astana (which means “palace” and is now the home of the Governor of Sarawak). Before the day was out, we still had time to look around the beautiful orchid garden, which contained over 5000 species of the high maintenance flower. After lots of walking and countless insect bites, we headed back to the hotel for a quiet evening.

The next day was one of our big adventures – The Bako National Park – we decided to get the local bus there, as always, we were pressed for time in the morning, so we didn't get chance to get to an ATM. Jay had calculated we had just enough to make it to Bako and back, and have some refreshments there.

On arrival at the dock where we had to board a boat, we discovered there was a 10 Ringit fee to enter the park, on top of the boat journey, which meant we were short on cash. We had two options, 1. to beg someone for spare change or two 2. get the bus back to Kuching to find an ATM and come all the way back again. Luckily, two friendly German ladies we had bumped into several times already during our short stay in Malaysia, were with us on the bus, and even more fortunately we still had 350,000 Vietnamese Dong in the wallet too. So we went for the begging option and Annette and Gurdi were only too happy to help out. We swapped 150,000 Dong for 25 Ringits and we were on our way!

The four of us climbed aboard a narrow boat, walking passed a big sign which said 'Danger: Beware of Crocodiles' which made us both nervous and excited in equal doses! As we cruised through the murky water, keeping our eyes peeled for crocs, it felt like we were entering the mouth of Jurassic Park's Lost World. Surrounded by towering cliffs, giant trees and waters which merged a brown river with a deep blue sea. As we looked to our left we both had an instant buzz as we saw a massive monitor lizard scurrying along the shore, trying to catch its breakfast.

When we arrived at Bako, we were ushered up onto a wooden pier which stood around 6 foot from the beach, which was covered with little crabs, weeds and shaded pools of water, clearly this was a hang out for the crocodiles and not an ideal place to wonder around for too long! Although the wild boars hanging around didn't seem too bothered!

We got to the registration point – a place where you must tell them which trial you're going on and what time you start it, so if you haven't returned by a certain time, they know to send out a search party!! We wondered how many hours we'd need to be missing for before that happened. We opted for the Telok Paku trial as it was slightly challenging, took about an hour each way and was one of the best for seeing proboscis monkeys, which Malaysian people call Dutchmen, on account of their long noses. We've never met a Dutch guy with an especially long nose before but then we've not met many people from Holland before and we guess there must be some basis behind it. We set off and got straight into some hardcore trekking, climbing over big rocks, tree trunks and a few rickety man made staircases. Pretty soon Jay spotted a brownish coloured lizard nestling amongst the leaves on the forest floor. The 12 inch long reptile must have thought he was camouflaged as he happily stayed still for a few photos. Only a few minutes later, we were attracted to a big spider web hanging from a big set of rocks. We went in for a closer look and spotted what very much resembled a black widow. We hoped these early finds would be a sign of things to come, but as we came to the end of the trail, we only managed to find a few smaller lizards, less interesting spiders, huge ants, some tree crabs, and some rather large insects, no monkeys... yet.

At the end of the trail was a nice beach, well much nicer than the one we arrived on, and apparently there were no crocs there so we could swim if we wanted to, we decided to play it safe though and give that a miss. As we went to turn back, we noticed a meandering snake track through the sand, heading up the beach. We followed it up to the trees but our tracking skills were novice at best, so we gave up there.

On the way back we were extra quiet to avoid disturbing any Dutchman or other wildlife, but we still didn't find what we were looking for, despite going off course a couple of times. We finished the trail feeling slightly disappointed, but then as we walked across the deserted wooden boardwalk, we spotted a proboscis monkey in the trees. We stopped dead and pointed at it. As we tried to get closer it bounced away but soon we saw movement all around us and several appeared from different trees. We tracked a mum with it's little baby for ages, quietly perched on the pier. Jay even went down on to the sand and on to croc territory to try get a closer picture. Keeping both eyes wide open for giant reptiles he crept closer to the mother and baby and managed to get a few shots of them retreating to trees further away from the boardwalk.

We both sat transfixed watching another group swinging from the trees and bantering with each other and also saw the mum give her baby a bit of tough love as they fought for space on a branch. After watching them for 45 minutes, we decided to head back to base but as we did, completely out of the blue we spotted a dominant male, sitting in a tree top with its arms and legs sprawled out like an old man sitting in his arm chair. This time he was really close and he was much bigger than the others we'd seen. He sat quite happily a few metres in front of us as we took pictures and was eventually disturbed by what we think was a rival male checking out his harem!

By the time we left the monkeys it was time to head back to Kuching. Where we stopped off at a bar for a drink and a few games of pool and met a friendly father and son from Grimsby, before heading back to our hotel.

On day four, we took a day trip to Semengok Rehabilitation Centre to get our first peaks of the orang-utans. We caught a mini-bus from our hotel and were there within 40 minutes. Just before 9am we headed to the main feeding area, which had a big stand for visitors to watch from. The staff brought several buckets of sugar cane, coconuts, bananas and various other fruits onto a platform about 10 metres away from where we were standing. No orang-utans appeared straight away and we all got a bit annoyed with the noisy kids that were watching with us, but soon enough the rustling in the trees turned to vivid views of the graceful orange men and women swinging through the trees above out heads. Altogether we saw 5 adults and one youngster who was just old and brave enough to swing himself to the platform, under the watchful eye of his mum and when he got tired she soon came to carry him and help him eat his breakfast. They are the most incredible animals. So much like humans, but so cute and happy looking, it was a joy to watch.

Once feeding time was over we wondered off alone onto one of the seemingly disused trails. After searching for a whistling bird that kept calling us, balancing over an old wooden bridge which looked like it could collapse at anytime, and climbing over a roped fence armed with thousands of huge angry looking red ants we made it to the exit and caught a minibus back to Kuching, where we sampled some local delicacies at a small cafe and had a little look around Little India.

On the night we headed out into Kuching and went to the bar we'd been to a few days before, which was playing some old skool classics. After a fair few beers and vodka, we went in search of somewhere a bit livelier and came across another bar which was rammed and playing some commercial tunes so we headed inside. As soon as we walked in we realised it was a Malaysian gay club, but stayed for a drink and had a right laugh with the friendly gayboys as they pole danced the night away.

On our final day we went Christmas shopping at a huge mall and treated ourselves to a box of Krispy Kreme style donuts before catching our plane to Kota Kinabalu.

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