Borneo - Kuching

From Bali I flew to Kuching - Borneo. I had really high expectations about Borneo and was super excited to get there. Borneo has a lot of jungle and national parks all over the island, and they are home to one of the richest populations of wild animals and birds in the world. Another reason to go there was that it's not as touristy as other countries in Asia. But I soon figured out that traveling in Borneo is not as easy as in Indonesia. Everything is much slower here, and you need to get used to waiting. It's not common here to go by scooter; most people here own a car or go by bus. So it's not easy to find a scooter for rent, and the buses only drive when they are full and without a timetable. It can be really frustrating to wake up at 6 am to be early at your destination and then wait for one or two hours until the bus is full. Also, most things here require a guide, and guides are expensive, especially when you are traveling on a budget.

The forests and national parks are really beautiful. Especially now, because it's the rainy season and everything is super green. When you walk through the rainforests, you can literally feel that everything around you is alive. You hear screams, twitters, and all kinds of sounds all the time. But spotting a wild animal in the forest here is as challenging as it is in the forests in Europe. The animals and birds are really shy and can sense you coming way faster than you can spot them. On my first day in the forests, I was so lucky to see a wild peacock. The next three days, I didn't see a single slug. But obviously something saw me because I felt a bite on my left leg when I went back to the hostel after taking a shower. I gradually improved my sneaking skills. The first few days, I had more in common with a hippo. But after a few days, I managed to move less noisily through the forests, and on my fourth day, I saw a group of about six orangutans. One big male and a few smaller ones, even a mother with a baby.

Spending the day in a rainforest can be really exhausting sometimes. You sweat a lot because of the high humidity, and it rains every 20 minutes. I guess that's what a rainforest is supposed to do, but after a week, I had enough. So due to this and the fact that it's really hard to move around, it was hard to keep up my motivation to spend an hour or more every day on my laptop researching. And most of the time, your well-conceived plan is worth nothing in practice.

Don't get me wrong, Borneo is beautiful; you just have to learn to be patient.

I am in Miri now and going to explore the area here before I fly to Bangkok on November 29th.