The Heart of Borneo: The Hunter and the Educator (June 27-30, 2010)

Kapit to Belaga, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo (June 27, 2010)

The boat left Kapit at 9:30 a.m. and made it safely up the Pelagus rapids by about 10:30 a.m. I had no problem imagining one of those movies set in pioneer times when people traversed the rapids on wooden rafts and invariably everything and everyone ended up tossed into the river.

June 27: The next day, we caught another express boat up the Batang Rejang to the really small town of Belaga.

Notice the longhouse in the background.

As I stood by the main hatch observing the rapids, a man of reasonable English fluency introduced himself as Phillip, a school teacher and part-time life insurance salesman. He lamented the muddy state of the river. As a boy, he said, the river ran clear, but now it ran so muddy from logging (much it illegal) that even the fish were dying, their gills clogged by the silt and mud. The communities that fish the river were suffering severely. Phillip wasn’t thrilled with the Bakun Dam either. The dam was just recently completed and resulted in the resettlement of 11,000 people. But Phillip was proud of the Malaysian educational system, which taught certain subjects, like math and science, in English.

Phillip told us to contact Daniel when we reached Belaga. After numerous stops at various longhouse settlements to unload and load people and cargo, we arrived at Belaga at about 3 p.m. Belaga was miniscule town, stretching perhaps three blocks along the river and two blocks back. It had no wi-fi signal anywhere (I walked the entire town with my laptop open, looking).

A dusty steet in the small town of Belaga. It was difficult to find a meat there.

We checked out all four hotels in town and settled on Hotel Sing Soon Hing, where a very basic air-conditioned room with two beds and a bathroom cost MYR 27 (about $8) per night. At 3 p.m., food was downright difficult to find. Lunch was no longer being served anywhere in town and it was too early for dinner.

Dinner eventually included chicken skewers with a chili peanut sauce for the amazingly low price of one ringgit per three skewers (about 10 cents a skewer). We then arranged our next day’s activities with Daniel (conveniently located at Daniel’s Corner) and a night at a Kayan longhouse. The town had no nightlife to speak of.

Chicken skewers in spicy peanut sauce. They were so cheap, like 10 skewers for US $1, and they were delicious too.

Belaga Area and Barawan Longhouse, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo (June 28-29, 2010)

The next day, Daniel sent us out for our first activity: hunting. Sharon and I and a tiny, chain-smoking boatman and his two dogs set off in a skinny, unstable-feeling canoe to pick up the hunter at his cabin. I had no idea what to expect and was hoping we’d all have guns and head into the jungle shooting. Instead, the hunter emerged from his cabin with four dogs and a single combination spear/blowgun – basically a spear with a hollow barrel for blowing poison darts. So the ten of us, mostly affection-seeking dogs covered in mud from the river, set off in the canoe for another spot along the river where we then headed into the jungle to “hunt.”

The hunter didn’t speak English and didn’t wait for us in the dense jungle. He also refused to speak even to Sharon who spoke his language, Iban. I had wished for a genuine experience and I got one: the hunter went off hunting as he always did, and the fact that he had tourists in tow didn’t faze him in the least. He disappeared with his dogs into the jungle and was not seen again until we all met back at the boat, he empty-handed, more than an hour later.

June 28: The next day, Daniel sent us out for our first activity: hunting. Sharon and I and a tiny, chain-smoking boatman and his two dogs set off in a tiny, unstably feeling canoe to pick up the hunter at his cabin.

I had no idea what to expect and was hoping we’d all have guns and head into the jungle shooting. Instead, the hunter emerged from his cabin with four dogs and had a single combination spear/blowgun; a poison dart can be blown down its hallow barrel.

A saving grace came in the form of a nearby waterfall where I bathed and washed my clothes. Note the gash in my pants.

By then I was a sweaty muddy mess from the hike, plus I’d taken a sliding fall on one of the muddy frictionless slopes into a gully. The sliding fall left me with a foot-long gash in my shorts and mud in places that had never seen mud before. Fortunately we found a waterfall nearby where I was able to wash up.

Beside not speaking and not sticking with us, the hunter was pretty mean to his dogs, for example, grabbing them by their loose skin and throwing them yelping and screaming from the boat. (If you are feeling at all disgusted, I can tell you that I’ve seen pigs on the way to slaughter treated worse, and they are just as intelligent as dogs. I gave up pork shortly thereafter.) Bottom line: neither Sharon nor I liked the hunter much.

That afternoon we took another boat to another longhouse settlement, the Kayan and Sekapan longhouses at Long Dungan. A good portion of the 180 students who lived or boarded in the village seemed to greet us. “What is your name?” “Where are you from?” and “Do you play football [soccer]?” were some of the more popular questions tossed my way. The government runs the boarding school at Long Dungan so children from even more remote villages can access education; they return home weekends. After their questions, the kids went off to dinner courtesy of the government: fish, stew of some sort, soup and rice.

Long Dungan

A good portion of the 180 students who lived or boarded in the village seemed to greet us.

The government runs a boarding school in Long Dungan so that children from even more remote villages can access education and return home weekends. The government pays for everything: school, three meals a day, housing, transportation. Education is a priority in Malaysia, and it shows.

Once again, aside from friendly waves, the adults seemed to take little notice of us. The older ones sat around chewing their betel nuts and leaves mixed with red tobacco, their teeth and lips a bloody red, and smoked hand-rolled cigarettes. The women over 50 had large loops in their elongated earlobes and tattoos all down their forearms and on their feet. When we asked why the younger women didn’t have these, we were told it simply went out of style, like the bouffant hairdo I suppose. One lady told us she got her tattoos when she was 18 years old and they hurt like a son of bitch, to paraphrase, apparently a prerequisite to marriage at that time.

Our hosts served us biscuits and tea and then planted themselves firmly in front of the television. No tours, no activities, little explanation – we were simply plunked down in the middle of longhouse life, and it was up to us to explore, meet people, pretty much do as we pleased. That evening they also served us dinner. Again we brought the food and they cooked it. Afterward, they watched the World Cup on their generator-powered satellite television. They also offered me betel nut and red tobacco rolled in betel leaf smeared with limestone. You chew it and spit it out. It turns your mouth red. I accepted without doing the proper due diligence, and soon discovered I had absorbed a stimulant that left my heart racing, my mouth numb, and my head spinning. Some of these old folks do betel all day; for me, once was enough.

Long Dungan is a beautiful village of longhouses and green fields.

The longhouse where we spent the night.

The generator went off at about 10 and was replaced by a thunderstorm. It was still raining the next morning when we visited the local school named for the nearby airport, SRK Airport. The airport has been built by Japanese occupiers during World War II and afterward had been used by locals until just a few years ago. I found it a strange place after which to name a school.

June 29: The next morning, the locals emerged from their homes.

One of the old-timers, with tattooed hands, arms and feet. This woman would not have been allowed to marry until she was tattooed.

Mr. Daniel, the former school superintendant, led us around the school. We visited two classes where the students were made to stand up and introduce themselves to us in English. Sharon and I then led the classes in impromptu English lessons, culminating in a request that we sing a song in English. The best way out of this situation was to involve the class, and so Sharon and I divided up the class into competing, overlapping verses of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

Mr. Daniel would not survive long in the U.S. educational system; at least I hoped he wouldn’t. I occasionally felt sorry for the students he would pick on to stand up and speak to us in English, after which he would give them a cookie. At one point, he picked on a rather rotund girl and asked in English – apparently to test her knowledge of adjectives relating to girth – “Are you fat or are you skinny?” I turned to him and said in my sidebar voice, “I don’t like that question.” He rephrased it. “Are you a fat girl or are you a skinny girl.” “I don’t like that question either,” I said. “Ok, ok, ok,” he retreated.

The children at the school were lovely and we had a great time engaging them in English. Despite Mr. Daniel, it appeared the children were cared for in a way many of the poorest in my own country are not. They are entirely rural poor children, but the government pays for their transportation from the countryside to the school plus five days of room and board at the school. Malaysia’s policy and purse seem to be coordinated to ensure that poor rural children are not stuck working the fields when they should be in school. The parents receive money to send their children to school. If the parents fail in that obligation, according to Mr. Daniel, the parents get prosecuted.

Mr. Daniel, the former school superintendant, led us around the school. We visited two classrooms, where the students were made to stand up and introduce themselves in English. Sharon and I then led the classes in impromptu English lessons.

Geez, the banks of the river are muddy!

Belaga to Niah Cave, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo (June 29-30, 2010)

We returned to Belaga by longboat, had lunch, and then caught the express boat to the Bakun Dam, where Mr. Daniel had arranged a ride with his friend David to the Bakun Resort. The ride was smooth, and I was impressed how these express boats clamor up the rapids, devouring everything in their path, at quite a decent clip too – perhaps 50 km/hr estimated by map and watch.

We reached Bakun Dam in the late afternoon. The still-not-operational dam evoked a fair bit of controversy, as some 11,000 local tribespeople were removed from their riverside wooden longhouses to concrete structures quite a distance from their ancestral homeland. The older people could not longer live off the land by hunting, fishing and cultivating as they had for generations, but neither could they just go out and get jobs. Apparently the younger people were heading to larger towns for work and pleasure. Whether these communities can survive is in serious doubt.

The “3-star resort” Daniel had told us existed at Bakun Dam was a bad joke. It was basically a camp for dam workers, lucky to earn zero stars. The lobby had the low ceilings and molding rugs of a very old work trailer in the middle of the jungle, which is what the “resort” was. The rest of the “resort” seemed of a similar ilk. So we continued north with Daniel’s friend another 45 minutes along a beaten-up highway (that had seen too many heavy construction vehicles and logging trucks) to the Highway Café, which also had a guesthouse.

Our room in a rattan and bamboo shack had a simple bed, a toilet, and a hose and bucket for a shower. There was no fan and the electricity ceased when they shut down the generator. After quite a tasty dinner (which included grilled catfish scooped from the nearby catfish pond), Sharon and I sacked down and tried to sleep. At about 2 a.m., the rain arrived and pattered down so hard on the “roof” that it became impossible to sleep. Moreover, it fell so hard that it beat its way through the roof and began to drip onto the bed. The bed was wet, I was wet, sleep was not in the cards.

In the morning, we tried to hitchhike north to the main Bintulu-Miri highway. Few vehicles came down this stretch of lonely road. Those that did seemed to be logging and other trucks with too much momentum to stop. Finally, for a price, David drove us to the highway and dropped us off at the T-intersection where there were some shacks selling food. All the shacks sold exactly the same items, fish balls and chicken on skewers. I ordered some chicken. It was so dirt cheap, I questioned (as I often do) how anyone profited from the transaction.

Then the skewers came, three of them, each with four pieces of chicken. To my disappointed surprise, all the pieces of chicken were chicken butts. I had ordered twelve chicken butts without closely examining the skewers. Upon further examination, it seemed the only part of the chicken you could buy at this lonely highway intersection was the butt. I grimaced and dug right into my butt lunch. We then caught a bus east to Niah National Park.

That afternoon, we continued upriver to Bakun Dam, and then turned north about 45 minutes along a beaten-up highway (that had seen too many heavy construction vehicles and logging trucks) to the Highway Café guesthouse, where we spent the night (in the middle of nowhere, really). Notice how the Malaysian flag looks like the U.S. flag. It even has 13 red and white stripes representing Malaysia's 13 states.

Our room in a rattan or bamboo (I never can tell the difference) shack had a simple bed, a toilet, and a hose and bucket for a shower. There was no fan and the electricity ceased when they shut down the generator. At about 2 a.m., the rain arrived and fell so hard that it became impossible to sleep. Moreover, it fell so hard that the roof began to leak and drip onto the bed. The bed was wet, I was wet, the rain was loud. Sleep was not in the cards.

The Heart of Borneo: Full of Heady Goodness (June 25-26, 2010)

KUCHING TO KAPIT, SARAWAK, MALAYSIA BORNEO (June 25, 2010)

Sharon and I checked out of Singgahsana Lodge and headed to the ferry terminal a few kilometers out of town to catch the 8:30 a.m. express boat to Sibu, about 100 kilometers northeast of Kuching. The boat was one of those small hydrofoils used to cross bays or connect islands.

The first half of the four-and-a half-hour cruise was across an open stretch of the South China Sea and felt rather rough for a small hydrofoil. More than once I thought the captain was going to roll the boat. The boat would roll from side to side always favoring the starboard side. If it rolled 20 degrees to port, it would then roll 30 degrees to starboard. I was more relaxed once we entered the wide canal at the mouth of the Rejang River for the second half of the ride, which proved much smoother.

The portion of the voyage across the open South China Sea was, um, a little rough at times.

We arrived in Sibu at 1:30, grabbed a quick lunch, and then caught the 2:30 “Good Success” express boat to Kapit, another four hours southeast and inland up Borneo’s largest waterway, the Rejang River. This time the boat was a long narrow cigar-shaped thing reminiscent of Buck Roger’s spaceship. We passed several lumber mills on our way upriver. Many of the logs find their way into the turbid Rejang, adding an element of fun to the ride. The captain continuously adjusted course to avoid the floating logs, and sometimes he just couldn’t avoid them. On those occasions, the boat just took a pounding.

Sibu didn't look like much, so after lunch, we caught a different express boat to Kapit, a town further east along the Batang Rejang. Hopefully this boat would live up to its name.

We made quick stops at a number of small settlements where I caught my first glimpses of Borneo’s unique longhouses. Longhouses are the traditional tribal homes of the indigenous peoples of Borneo. Some longhouses appeared quite old, while others looked like your typical modern suburban home, but really, really, really long with dozens of separate entrances. I had read that one highlight of visiting Borneo was staying in a longhouse, so Sharon and I resolved to try this the next day.

First glimpses of native "long houses" used by various tribes in Borneo

We arrived in Kapit and were amused and amazed to watch the men removing large pieces of furniture from the boat and carrying them, one man per furniture, on their heads up the ramp into town. A block from the boat terminal, we found a clean room with two beds at the New Rejang Inn for MYR 60 (about $18) and settled into watching TV. I was getting quite into an Al Pacino movie when suddenly the channel changed and I was watching the World Cup. I told Sharon about this, and she seemed surprised that I hadn’t yet encountered “centralized TV viewing” in Malaysia. Apparently the smaller hotels are set up so that all the TVs throughout the hotel are linked to the TV in the lobby. Everyone in the hotel is stuck watching whatever the guy at the front desk watched. I could imagine this becoming problematic if the guy working the lobby had an interest, say, in porn.

Arrival in Kapit after spending most of the day on boats. Impressive was watching people unload large pieces of furniture from the boats and carry them up those stairs on their heads.

We walked around town looking for food about 8 p.m. Nearly everything was shut. What do people do in Kapit on a Friday night? Apparently nothing. A church choir was belting out some manifestation of religious rock and roll in the distance. Otherwise, the town was absolutely dead. At last we landed in one of the few cafes still open – Hock Bing Seafood Café – and ordered four plates plus rice and beer to share for a grand total of MYR 30 (about $9). Sharon observed that these towns with nothing to do and little to purchase were great places to preserve funds.

BUNDONG LONGHOUSE NEAR KAPIT, SARAWAK, MALAYSIAN BORNEO (June 26, 2010)

The next day, we set out to visit a longhouse. Although no one had invited us to visit one (which is the recommended way of visiting them), Sharon had heard that the Iban tribe’s Bundong longhouse was friendly and inviting. Sharon worked out that we could hire a minivan from the town square to take us there for MYR 35. When Sharon reported this to me, I asked if she tried to negotiate the price down. (She was eager to pick up pointers from a relatively seasoned traveler.) As I shopped for food to bring to the longhouse (a customary courtesy), she went back to get a better price on the minivan. She reported back, “30 ringgits.” I grinned.

We reached the Iban’s Bundong longhouse in about 30 minutes, during which time the road turned from paved to gravel to dirt while the landscape changed from small town to countryside homes and farms to jungle and then, appearing after a long stretch of just jungle, the Bundong longhouse. Our driver dropped us off in a clearing near some parked cars and minivans across the river from the longhouse itself. Thusly abandoned and unsure what to do next, we approached the first person we saw and Sharon spoke to him in Iban. He in turn introduced us to the Chief’s wife. The Chief was out for the day.

The Chief’s wife walked us across the hanging wooden bridge to the other side of the river where the 130-year-old Iban longhouse stretched along a hill sloping up from the river. She took us to their home, number 10 on a stretch of 65 homes that made up the longhouse, and left us with an attractive woman in her twenties, her daughter-in-law Agnes. Agnes spoke no English, a fact made apparent by her lime green t-shirt, which read in symbols and English, “♀ ♥ middle finger.” Oblivious to her attire, she served us drinks and looked every bit as innocent as her t-shirt was not.

June 26. The next day, we visited the 130-year-old Bundong Longhouse (Iban tribe) outside Kapit. The longhouse stretched for 65 homes on two sides of a central corridor of old wooden planks. One could imagine a single fire destroying the entire village in a single go.

The Chief’s living room was decorated with a mix of old and new. Above his tiny television and massive 1970s-style stereo speakers hung old knives in sheaths. A rattan mat topped with pillows for sitting covered most of the floor, but incongruously large leather chairs also lined one wall. The walls were adorned with various antlers and the skin from a pangolin, a creature resembling an ant-eater, plus an assortment of certificates and family photos. Children and other family members roamed in and out.

Tthe Chief was not home. So we waited a few hours in his living room.

After some time waiting for the Chief to return, we decided to explore the outside of the longhouse. The longhouse was made entirely of old wooden planks held together in an architectural style I can only describe as “slapdash.” These wooden planks also made up the long central corridor that separated the two halves of the longhouse. Each half contained a long, parallel covered common area, behind which were the separate entrances to individual homes. Stairs led down to the river, where we headed next.

On either side of the central outdoor corridor is a covered interior common space where groups of people sit on mats clustered in conversation. Slightly to the left in this photo, there's a sack of something hanging from the ceiling. I would later find out what this something was, and so will you....

As I mentioned, one fire can take out the entire tribe. Number 10, the Chief's home, and lots of fire extinguishers.

Exploring the central corridor. Note the satellite dishes in the background. Watching TV is a worldwide obsession.

The children playing at the river were like children anywhere. At one point, they were burying each other with sand. Each male so buried had a huge oblong rock placed upright in the sand above his midsection, clearly representing a giant phallus. Everyone giggled and then the buried child would pop up from the sand and jump into the river. The males also had a slingshot war across the two sides of the river. When one boy got hit with a rock and started crying, the girls tended him.

At length, an American and Australian showed up and joined us at the river. “Harley (like the motorcycle) and April (like the month)” had been the only foreigners we ran into in Kapit. With four of us now gathered around the river, I was feeling the pressure to jump in. The only quick-drying article of clothing not left in Kapit was my shirt, which I buttoned around my waste as a swimsuit. I looked absolutely ridiculous with my sleeves flapping around my waist like some demented ballerina’s dress. The children laughed as I pirouetted into the water.

Back on the porch in front of the Chief’s home, we passed out candies to the children and shots of red wine to the adults and ourselves. April and Harley had brought these treats and Sharon and I had brought some candies too. We felt a little guilty on two fronts, however, as the candy wrappers all went to the floor and through the cracks between the ancient planks and to the ground below, and the candies were not quite in tune with the Chief’s anti-sugar poster hanging with the other public notices just outside his door. The wine, on the other hand, was not at all problematic.

That evening Harley (like the bike) and April (like the month) showed up at the Bundong Longhouse, and they brought wine. The party was about to begin. (Note that the guy in the blue shirt was the village pervert, nearly gropping Sharon and April. The shirtless guy claimed to be 100 years old.)

Drinking wine with an Iban centegenarian.

The Chief returned at last, but he seemed quite indifferent to our presence. We sat up and drank with him and some other men and women, including a heavily tattooed centenarian of very slight build. Then the Chief’s neighbor invited us (and collected donations) to his porch area where he unwrapped a canvas bundle hanging from the rafters. There he revealed several skulls hanging as they had in the Sarawak Museum longhouse exhibit. He informed us that the skulls were over 100 years old and belonged to former enemies of the tribe back when they were headhunters. My jaw dropped. I’d found headhunters!

The Iban of old are very tattooed, and the process of applying the tattoos was very manual (and painful). The younger generation (those under about 45 years old) are not so tatooed. Apparently, tattoos simply "went out of style."

At some point in the evening after a few shots of wine, the Chief's neighbor decided to reveal what was in that sack hanging from the ceiling.

They were skulls, hanging just as they had in the Sarawak Museum longhouse room. The skulls were over 100 years old and were the skulls of enemies of the tribe back when they were headhunters. This was the highlight of the visit for me, connecting the present day with the wild Borneo of a century ago, seeing 100-year-old skulls in a 130-year-old longhouse belonging to former headhunters.

Too cool!

The Chief’s wife cooked the food we brought, in some cases combining it quite literally. For example, we had brought a pineapple as a gift, but we had also brought a large fish, a bag of dried mushrooms, and fern tips. For whatever reason, the mushroom ended up cooked with the pineapples, probably because they were in the same bag, and to my surprise the combination worked. We ate seated on the floor and using only our fingers, which is the traditional manner of eating among the tribes of Borneo. At the end of the meal, you simply sweep up.

Sharon was especially popular with the children.

Children the world over love to pose for the camera and then see themselves.

The chief's wife cooked the food we brought and served us dinner. We ate on the floor using only our fingers, as is the tradition among the Iban.

The Chief had a meeting after dinner – some fancy Chief business – and we had a minivan to catch back to Kapit. Although we were invited to spend the night at the longhouse for a mere MYR 75 each (about $22), we had a comfy hotel room awaiting us in Kapit for less than half that amount as well as a boat to catch the following morning. We returned to Kapit where we shared a few beers and rounds of karaoke with April and Harley before retiring.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS BELOW:

June 25: Wasting no time, Sharon and I leave Kuching for Sibu and thus start our eastward voyage across Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo).

At last we reached one of the tributaries of the mighty, but muddy, Batang Rejang (river).

The kids burying each other in the sand by the river.

Each male so buried had a huge oblong rock placed upright in the sand above his midsection, clearing representing a giant penis. Everyone giggled and then the buried child would pop up out of the sand and jump into the river.

A hunter returns from hunting.

Going for a swim in the river.

Part of the longhouse is visible in the background.

Saying goodbye....

A Pleasant Surprise: Kuching (June 21-24, 2010)

KUCHING, SARAWAK, MALAYSIAN BORNEO

Mainland (peninsular) Malaysia had been a mixed bag of great food, modern amenities, a lovely English-fluent populace, and touristy over-developed sights. Now I was headed to eastern Malaysia, also known as Malaysian Borneo to distinguish it from Brunei and Indonesia which also occupy chunks of the island of Borneo. Malaysian Borneo occupies roughly the north third of the island and is divided into two states: Sarawak to the west and Sabah to the east. I was flying into Kuching in the far west, and the capital city of Sarawak.

I spent four nights in Kuching and easily could have stayed longer. In many ways, it was Malaysia’s answer to Laos’ Luang Prabang, Vietnam’s Hoi An, Thailand’s Chiang Mai, or Cambodia’ Siem Reap – a small pleasant city with loads of history and culture and a relaxed, inviting vibe. Need I mention the great food?

I started my exploration of Borneo at the free Sarawak Museum in Kuching. The museum, really a collection of museums, was established in 1891 and recently expanded to a new facility across the street. The Ethnology Museum was the most unique and relevant for my interests, housing exhibits on the various indigenous tribes of Borneo including the usual, such as weapons, musical instruments, and masks (some scary, some goofy) as well as the unusual, like longhouse interiors, headhunter skulls, tattoos, and the infamous penis piercing device, the caption for which reads: “KAYAN KATIP UTEK: instrument for compressing the gland penis whilst it is being perforated by a brass nail being driven into it with a stone.” Now what part of that caption actually sound fun? None of it! I also enjoyed the old black and white movies of tribe members playing games and dancing. One of their favorite games was Congkak, a version of which we know as Mancala.

Kuching: Sarawak Museum - some of the native masks from Borneo

Sarawak Museum: skulls from heads collected by headhunters

A game known as "Congkak" on a board made of mancala wood. We know the game as Mancala,

The caption reads "KAYAN KATIP UTEK: instrument for compressing the gland penis whilst is is being perforated by a brass nail being driven into it with a stone." The photo shows a bow-and-arrow like instrument driving a long nail into the head of a penis. Not good!

I then strolled Kuching’s pleasant streets and through its small Chinatown and Little India. One of the more interesting culinary discoveries was the famous Kuching (or Borneo) layer cake, which typically contains more than a dozen thin layers. Another was the Top Stop Food Court located on the roof of a six-floor parking garage. Although it took some effort to locate this place, my reward was two kilograms of crab and prawns along with ferns tips cooked in garlic.

Kuching has beautiful colonial buildings and Chinese/Malay shophouses.

* * *

The next day I joined forces with Tina, a traveler from Shanghai, and headed to Bako National Park about 45 minutes from Kuching by bus. I wasn’t expecting much from a park so close to the city, but again I was pleasantly surprised. After entering the park, we took a 30-minute boat ride across to the promontory where the main parkland is located. There we hiked the Paku trail to a remote beach and the Delima trail to a lookout, both trails through dense, muggy jungle.

Bako National Park

So what’s so great about Bako National Park? By far, the monkeys. We spotted three species of monkey in a single day of hiking. There were my least favorite, the macaques, who try to steal your food and drinks (we watched one drink soda from a soda can). Much cuter and more interesting to observe as they filed through the treetops (but more difficult to find) were the proboscis monkeys, whose pot-bellied stomachs and Nixonesque noses gave them the appearance of creatures from a Dr. Seuss book. Finally, there were the silver leaf monkeys, easily the cutest, gentlest monkeys I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Vegetarians in fact and spirit, they would sit in the grass and eat and just look cute.

Silver leaf monkey, one of the cutest, gentlest monkey species I've ever encountered This guy (or girl) just sat in the grass pulling leaves by hand and eating them. They have large stomachs to help them digest the cellulose ingested due to their largely vegetarian diet.

Bako National Park - mangrove

Telok Paku Beach, Bako National Park, Borneo

Proboscic monkeys. We saw them pass in the trees above us, following each other in a column along branches, swinging on vines and jumping across gaps.

Lunch at the park canteen was great too and relatively inexpensive. There were no prices. Rather I observed people filling their plates and bringing them to the cashier, who seemed to eyeball the food and make up a price on the spot. I piled two fish dishes, two chicken dishes, three noodle dishes, and three vegetable dishes onto my plate and the lady charged me MYR 7.50 (about $2.25) – a steal.

Back in Kuching, a young traveler named Jack joined us for dinner at one of the local food courts, where we ate tomato sauce kueh tiaw (tomato garlic prawn), cuttlefish with vegetables, laksa, and porridge, plus drinks and dessert, for about $2.30 per person. I was loving Kuching!

Back in Kuching, it was feast time at one the local food courts, including laksa (pictured left). The entire spread, including drinks, cost RM 22 (less than US $7 divided among three people, about $2.30 each.) I think that price even included dessert.

Across the Sarawak River, the 19th-century astana (palace), official residence of the governor of Sarawak

Kuching waterfront, very nice indeed!

The following morning we took a minivan to the Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre to see orang-utans in the wild, sort of. The Centre sits on a 653-hectare reserve where 11 confiscated orang-utans and their 15 offspring reside. The confiscated ones are initially too habituated to humans to survive in the wild without assistance, so the Centre provides two feedings daily, to which only a few – sometimes none – of the orang-utans show up. The staff actually prefers that no orang-utans show up – a healthy sign that the orang-utans are feeding themselves in the wild. And indeed some days, none show up (much to the chagrin of tourists like me). But they showed up for us.

It began with the distant sound of tree limbs cracking and branchfuls of leaves rustling, as if something huge were approaching. “Jurassic Park” came to mind. Then the tops of the trees began to sway and the swaying drew nearer. Finally, an orang-utan appeared, and then by the same thrilling sequence another appeared, and another – four in all the day we visited. We all watched in silence, having been warned via gruesome photographic evidence of what happens when humans interact with these mighty primates. I had one moment of panic when the largest of the orang-utans grabbed a vine and swung toward me. I jumped back.

June 23: A highlight of my stay in Kuching was a visit to the Semenggoh Orang-Utan Sanctuary, where orphaned and confiscated orangutans can roam free in the wild, yet receive two daily feedings while they reaclimatize to the wild.

That afternoon we returned to the Sarawak Museum; I had yet to see the new wing. Especially interesting was the exhibit on the Niah Cave Project, which whetted my appetite to visit the actual cave. The exhibit details the excavations in the 1950s and 60s by Tom and Barbara Harrisson which led to the discovery of the “Deep Skull,” an anatomically modern human skull dated to approximately 42,000 years ago – the oldest in Southeast Asia.

Other exhibits shed light on the local beliefs and practices of Sarawak’s 27 ethnic groups (including their unique burial traditions) and on the history of Sarawak and Borneo generally (including British occupation, Japanese rule during World War II, and independence). An odd example of a local practice on display was the Lun Bawang tribe’s practice of forbiding urination, farting, or asking too many questions while firing clay pots, as they believed such actions would cause the pots to crack. I get the urinating and farting part, sorta, but asking too many questions?

Later, Tina and I caught one of the tiny boats across the Sarawak River to visit Kuching’s less populated side. Straight off, about 300 meters to the right of our landing, we came upon Kek Lapis, a bakery of Kuching’s famous layer cakes. They bake 60 different layer cakes at Kek Lapis, most contain more than a dozen layers or are otherwise intricately constructed. Best of all, 45 of those 60 cakes were available on a coffee table for sampling, so I got to work.

Wide-eyed and salivating, I dove into samples of chocolate cake, cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, chocolate fudge cake, raison sticky cake, strawberry prune cake, chocolate almond cake, three rasa cake (I don’t know what is was either), evergreen cake (huh?), blueberry cheesecake, durian cake, mutiara cheese ice cream cake, Cadbury cake, and cakes with names like sutera dubai, rempah, surprise, India, and proton saga. I wanted to try all 45 flavors available for tasting, but after about 20 tastes, I felt like someone had dropped a balloon down my esophagus and overinflated it.

Back in Kuching, we found the layered cake factory. These cakes are like no others in the world, with highly decorated layers, somtimes a dozen or more fine layers.

Best part: lots of free samples. That's an entire table of samples, some 45 flavors of cake out of the 60 types they bake. I was full after about 10 samples. Check out the guy with the NYPD cap. Classic!

We moved on, wandering the back streets of the north side of the river until we were lost among the sounds of roosters and Muslim prayer calls. Only when we smelled a familiar smell did we manage to unlose ourselves. Cake!

he next day, Tina left and my friend Sharon arrived just in time for dinner at Junk, one of my favorite Kuching restaurants. The following morning we set off from Kuching and into the heart of Borneo.

ADDITONAL PHOTOS BELOW:

Sarawak state legislature

Wild boar at Bako?

The proboscic monkey, also cute and gentle, but prefering to remain high in the trees.

A cheeky macaque drinking soda from a can.

Only a fraction of the orangutans, sometime none of them, show up for the feedings. This is where the tourist interest lies... waiting to see who will swing out of the jungle for the feeding.

It's an amazing exprience to hear the tree limbs cracking, to see distant trees swaying like some great monster is approaching, and then to witness these creatures emerge from the jungle... and then disappear the same way.

Some more (FREE) samples of cake!

They let me visit the kitchen where they bake the cakes.

Tina and I then went for a walk and came upon a school where Muslims were singing. These women were more than happy to smile for the camera.

Final drink with Tina before her departure - rooftop bar at Singgahsana Lodge, one of the best guesthouses I've stayed at in Southeast Asia.

June 24: Junk - one of my favorite restaurants in Kuching.

Sharon arrives in Kuching, dinner at Junk.

June 21: Arriving in Kuching (Malaysian Borneo)