As we headed westward through Sarawak toward Kuching, we hoped to find more places to hang out by the ocean and some opportunities to trek into the mountainous interior for hikes in the jungle, wildlife, and encounters with the indigenous people of Sarawak, who maintain a relatively traditional way of life.
Buses, ferries, cities, towns, beautiful lush jungle, and enormous palm oil farms all flew by. The closest thing we found to a nice beach town was a “farmstay” that we bused and hitchhiked to. There was a nice beach nearby. It was also the most unwelcome I’ve felt anywhere while traveling. Getting there and getting out of there was an adventure but being there was nothing like what their website said it would be.
We learned the hard way that the coastline of Sarawak is not a place one goes for relaxing fun in the sun. Much of it is filled with industrial development (mostly oil refineries) and most of it is simply inaccessible from the main roads and bus lines. On top of that, while it was hot, sunny, and dry in Sabah, it was the rainy season in Sarawak. We had some nice weather here and there. We also had some of the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen – a bunch of times.
Inaccessibility was an issue when it came to the mountain trekking opportunities as well. There are definitely rugged mountains filling the interior of Sarawak and they have incredibly diverse and unique wildlife. They also have a number of indigenous groups that it would be pretty interesting to see. The problem for us was that in order to see any of this we would have to sign up for a trekking tour, which would be maybe 5 days, involve flying out to a remote mountain location, having a guide or guides the the whole time, and having them cart us around in off-road vehicles to the wilderness sites as well as indigenous villages, then fly back to the city. These tours are all over Sarawak and some of the stuff they do looks pretty interesting but it’s very expensive and it doesn’t seem realistic to just go do it on your own.
If I were to plan a trip to Sarawak specifically for these treks it would certainly be possible and probably amazing, but Fern and I are trying to travel for long time and we need to be a little bit frugal with our money. We had to pass on the trekking tours. If we could have simply rented a motorbike and ridden out to the jungle for some hiking I would have loved that but renting a motorbike was not going to be as easy as it would be in some other places. And there weren’t a lot of roads. And the intense rain was a problem.
The rain really surprised us and started to have a negative effect on our travel experience. We made our way to Kuching, in western Sarawak and stayed there for a few days at a nice relaxed Air B-and-B. While we were there we took one excursion that probably made it all worth while. We got up early and walked about 45 minutes to the bus terminal and took the bus out to Semengoh orangutan sanctuary. It’s a substantial piece of protected wilderness where orangutans live freely in the jungle but they have a little help form some caretakers. It’s a rehabilitation center and the goal is to eventually transfer them to a completely wild environment. It’s a pretty cool place.
We got there a little before the morning feeding time. A couple of the caretakers went out to a little wooden platform with some fruit and bottles of milk and tried to coax some orangutans out of the trees for a meal. It took a little while but it worked. A young male came down to have breakfast, and then his mother joined him.
There were no cages or training stunts. I wondered out loud to Fern “What will they do when they’re done eating? Will they be curious about us?” Well, when they were done eating and the little one had goofed around a little bit, they came down from the platform and walked right out to where we were all standing and watching. I grabbed my bag because they were headed straight towards us. We all gathered around to watch but kept about 15 feet away from them and we all just followed them as they meandered up the road.
They are such beautiful creatures and Fern and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to see them up close like that.
And then we saw this huge centipede on hike back.
jim@snorkelbandits.com