The first tip, before embarking on any picturesque descriptions of tropical paradise, is the following, and you will heed it: if you decide to fly anywhere inside Malaysia with AirAsia, a thoroughly agreeable (and cheap) airline, make sure that if you’re flying out of Kuala Lumpur, you’re aware that AirAsia flies out of LCCT. This would not be an issue in and of itself, except that LCCT (the Low Cost Carrier Terminal), while using the same runway as the rest of the airlines flying into and out of KUL, is located, for lack of a better description, at the ass end of nowhere.
Fine and good, you can find a cab for 30-35RM (the 5RM is a premium for driving like a bat out of hell — score extra points by comparing your chauffeur with various Formula 1 drivers as he’s screaming down the motorway at a breakneck pace — or as fast as a venerable old Toyota will go) to get you there within about 20 minutes. That, however, does you little good if your JetStar (another fine airline, except, read as follows) flight from Singapore is the inaugural flight on that particular route, meaning you’re stuck at the back of the cabin behind the CEO, CFO, CTO, CwhateverO, their families and friends, every single Singaporean journalist who is chattering breathlessly into their voice recorders about how this is the most anticipated event in Singapore aviation history (aside from a couple hundred Jap bombers popping up out of nowhere sometime around late 1941, one assumes), and of course, all the various bastards who got their tickets for 99 cents (along with a free goody bag, zealously guarded by KUL airport security at the plane exit.) Plus, the damn plane was late. Nice touch hosing it down with fire engines on arrival, though, albeit not worth the extra 350RM for the ticket on the later flight to Kuching.
Deep breath.
Kuching isn’t much of a town. It doesn’t have many “official” attractions beyond the (not-so-spectacular but oft-touted) waterfront — something that could use a lot of tourist dollar investments. However, the real fun of the city lies in the Satok Saturday night market (apparently on Sunday, as well), and in the fish market just South of the main touristy waterfront stretch. They’re loud, smelly, and full of excellent food (I didn’t try the Chinese food market just a few meters inland from the fish docks, I’ve cultivated a healthy suspicion of people who manage to cut a chicken in such a way that every part is guaranteed to have a large chunk of bone in it. Even after we watched a butcher creatively dismember a bird this way, we still had no clue about the mechanics or logic behind it.) At Satok, I recommend any kind of satay, fried bananas with chili sauce, and pretty much anything that doesn’t move. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much on my feet. Not much in the way of souvenirs, but great photography.
That said, I have decided that Malaysians are the nicest people in the world. Everywhere I’ve been in the country, it took little more than a nod or a smile to provoke huge shit-eating grins, thumbs up, and “OK! WELCOME!”. Even two young thug-types who blew past me on their moped around midnight slowed down so the passenger could turn around and should “HELLO! WELCOME TO SARAWAK!” before they motored off. Amazing.
In Kuching, I stayed at a neat little place called the Singgasahna lodge. It’s run by a bunch of Malaysian travel photographers, with generally very friendly staff and beautiful photos on the wall. The communal areas are designed to get people chatting — something not helped by the grumpiness and reservedness of most-but-not-all of the people I ran into there. The double rooms are 85RM/night, and the dormitories cost something silly like 10RM/person/night. It’s clean and nicely decorated, with a pretty central location (inasmuch as Kuching actually has a center.) Check it out.
I did manage to make friends with Antonio, a Spanish air traffic controller, and we decided to head out to Bako national park the next morning. It’s a 35RM, 20 minute drive from Kuching; park entry is another 10RM, the boat round trip is 94RM and a guide costs about 80RM (well, at least for us — I just didn’t feel like negotiating) for the day. Apparently the night hikes are amazing and full of animals; for us, it was fortunate that we ran into long-tail macaques, silver leaf monkeys and large troop of proboscis monkeys goofing around in the mangroves at the end of our hike, despite the pouring rain. The park has basic lodging and take-away lunch boxes; even though we only did a few of the shorter (~4 hours total) trails, the landscape is spectacular. And muddy as hell.
My main reason for visiting Borneo was to see wild or semi-wild orangutans at Sepilok center, which is around 30 minutes by cab from Kuching. Naturally, I overslept on Sunday morning, after staying up late explaining to an slightly odd, drunk American girl how to use her camera. Next time, sleep. That scotched plans to go on the Irrawaddy river dolphin tour, fortuitously so, as I found out later, as my friends spend 3 hours on a boat in order to see two fins. Good stuff. So, I headed out to the Kuching cultural village, a fairly hokey collection of re-built native huts showcasing Sarawak’s various tribes and people and god-knows-what.
Despite the steep price (85RM), it was actually kind of fun; I was fortunate enough to arrive around 11:30, when all the bus tourists were watching the twice-daily dance performance. The joint was empty, and I was able to explore in peace. In one of the replica longhouses, a Chinese guy was jamming on a traditional native string instrument that he’d converted into a sort of hyper-ethnic electric guitar, with an old man obviously belonging to one of the various inland tribes looking on. Things picked up when an Iraqi tourist stopped by and started banging out Kurdish hard rock tunes — maybe it’s just my weird sense of humor, but there’s something fun about that kind of absurd combination.
Which brings us to the orang-utans. I’d been dying to see them in the wild for ages. I love the apes, they seem…well, tough to describe this without wading into dangerously clichéed phraseology, but somehow wise and content. That, and they’ll rip your arm off if you have something you want, hence 5 meters distance minimum, and no loose objects.
The Sepilok center gave me a generally good vibe. The staff seem highly dedicated, and everywhere one sees reminders of how grateful they are to tourists for visiting and supporting their work — they’re very clear on the fact that the daily feedings are for the benefit of the tourists (the orang-utans only come if there aren’t many fruits in the forest) but that this helps maintain the place. At 5RM entrance, who’s arguing? I just wish they served snacks.
Sepilok has two main feeding areas, and although the various trails were unfortunately closed, this was enough. One feeding platform is about 200 meters in the forest, and is frequented by apes who grew up in the wild. The other is in the middle of things, for those “graduates” of the center’s wildnerness “acclimatization” program who’re used to humans. In any case, we saw a total of 7 that day, including a mama with two tykes and a big male. Watching these guys was otherworldly, and made the trip worthwhile.
Two thumbs up, check it out, and don’t forget to take any cash out of your passport sleeve when you hand it to Malaysian border guards at the Singapore causeway — it could (purely theoretically) come back missing all your Sing cash. Bastards.
As a side note, to get back to Singapore, fly into Johor Baru — if the buses are no longer running, take a cab to “Baste Lama” — I think that’s how it’s spelled. This is a taxi depot from where you can catch a ride into Singapore itself for around SGD $35.
