Borneo Part 1

On March 6th, I flew to Kuching horribly early. By early, I mean 8 o'clock. But for that, I had to get up at 3 o'clock to take a bus for 1 hour to the airport at 4 o'clock. For the rest of the day, I slept when I arrived at my hostel. Kuching is located in the southern part of the Malaysian section of Borneo. Kuching means cat in English, and that's why there are large cat statues everywhere in the city. They even have a radio station called 'CatFM', completely crazy. And as an absolute cat lover, I couldn't resist visiting a cat cafe.

Otherwise, in my opinion, the city doesn't have much to offer. But there are 2 special things in the vicinity of Kuching. One is the Bako National Park and the Semenggoh Wildlife Center. There you can see orangutans if you're lucky. Because twice a day is feeding time and orangutans who are interested can come and enjoy some fruits. The area is very large and unfenced, meaning the animals live here freely. And only during feeding times are visitors allowed. However, when there is fruit season, there are plenty of fruits in the forest and the likelihood of them coming out is rather low, and when it rains, they prefer to stay in their nests. Both of these happened to me - fruit season and rain, but I was lucky!

I was able to see a total of 3 orangutans. The special thing was that there was no fence between the animals and us humans, only a few ropes to keep us from getting too close. I still remember exactly when I saw the arm of an orangutan slowly emerging from the undergrowth. It was a magical moment, and my heart skipped a beat because I couldn't believe that there was actually an orangutan coming. One of the last living ones. Their habitat is only on the island of Borneo and Sumatra, and due to massive rainforest deforestation, they are now endangered. It was so exciting to watch the orangutan, how it moves, how it looks, and how it eats. From the first moment, everyone was so fixated on it that the others didn't really notice. The funniest and absolute 'AHA' moment was when it suddenly started making a hat out of leaves.

It's totally logical that animals, in this case monkeys, don't like rain. With that, it definitely broke the ice and made everyone laugh. Eventually, the news came that another orangutan had been sighted at another feeding station. I also saw that one, and when I came back, a third orangutan was discovered. These animals are absolutely fascinating. When orangutan number 1 suddenly came down to the ground and walked through our crowd of people, you could immediately feel how everyone held their breath and respectfully made room.

It calmly and slowly walked past us and into the forest. What an amazing experience.

On my last day in Kuching, I went to the Bako National Park. It is about 1 hour by bus and another 20 minutes by boat to get to the national park.

There are various hiking trails there. I first walked a slightly shorter one, where you can also see the proboscis monkeys well. And I did.

At the end, there was a small beach area. There, you could once again see how much garbage is washed ashore.

Next, I wanted to hike the longest trail, but I gave up after about 45-60 minutes because it wasn't very nice and I didn't feel comfortable. Then I started another one, but I also gave up because I was getting pretty tired and didn't feel like it anymore.