Borneo - Rainforest, headhunters and wildlife

So our final stop in Malaysia was Borneo, the western part of Malaysia.

Starting off in Kuching, the capital of the state Sarawak, proved to be a good decision since you can cover a lot of the popular sites of Sarawak using Kuching as a base.

As you probably read in the last blog post, we arrived in Kuching one day later than planned, but what difference does a day make when you have loads of time on your hands?

Kuching Waterfront - hosting the Wakeboard Worldcup from Sep 15!

We went to Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre, just outside of Sarawak, where Orang Utans who have been saved from captivity or found hurt in the wild are rehabilitated and then allowed to live semi-wild within the park.

We did not see any animals (except for insects) during the actual feeding in the djungle part of the park, but we did see six Orang Utans in total on the visitors parking lot; 2 mothers with babies, one young Orang Utan and the big male.

Matthias after a sweaty jungle trek, Bako

Bako National Park was our next stop and we spent one and a half days there jungle trekking. In total, we covered about 15 km of trails. It was very hot and humid, not exactly the trekking conditions one is used to in Europe. That night, we both slept like babies, totally exhausted.

The jungle in Bako is very beautiful and stuffed with wildlife. We heard different monkeys while trekking, but again all the spottings of wild animals were close to the canteen and our accommodation. It is a bit of a shock to face a wild boar on your way to dinner or seeing a pit viper in the tree just 1 m away from the walkway, not the kind of wildlife I am used to...

Jungle trekking is not the kind of sport I normally prefer

Jungle trail, Bako National Park

Pit viper, a bit too close for me...

Tajor Waterfall, Bako National Park. Well worth the 2 hour trek and the sweat it takes to get there!

The highlight of our stay in Borneo was a tour to a Iban longhouse in southern Sarawak, along the Lemenak River. Our guide, Amin, was a local from the Melanau tribe who could speak Iban as well. His English however had a lot of room for improvement. On the way to the longhouse we stopped in Serian to have a look at the famous market where you can get anything, literally anything. Pythons, cow heads, fruit, vegetables, you name it...

Serian market

According to Amin's drivers license, his name was Flemingh and when we asked why he called himself Amin, the answer was because it is easier for everyone. Matthias has a theory of his own: When speaking English, Amin constantly used the phrase "I mean..." when he tried to translate what he wanted to say into English. Maybe the Iban thought Amin to be a more fitting name for him?

The 3 day longhouse trip included two overnight stays at the guesthouse of the longhouse and one night camping in the jungle. The stay at the longhouse was nice, but the more exciting part was the night in the wild.

The skulls are a relic from the time when the Iban were still headhunters. They are still considered to bring luck and the more skulls a warrior brought home, the braver he was.

Inside the longhouse

We set out on boat together with Amin and two elderly Iban men. After going upstream for about one hour, we stopped to set camp on the riverside. We had expected to be asked to help in setting up our camp site, cooking and making fire. How wrong we were... We spend 75% of the time sitting around, walking around or swimming. The rest of the time we ate or had tea. Every time we wanted to assist the others, Amin told us that we had "relax time".

The old boatmen did not speak any English, but they were very nice and really funny. One of them loved throwing bamboo logs into the fire and see how everyone else reacted when the logs exploded because of the steam pressure inside. Well, explode might be an exaggeration, but they do boom loudly.

The other one went fishing with his fishing net or listened to Hari Raya songs on his little portable radio.

One thing that the Iban seem to love is their arrak, or rice whiskey as they call it. They drink loads of it. The one word we learned in the Iban language was oha, pronounced "ooooooohaaaaaaaa" - cheers...

Our camp

Relax time

Lemenak river

Bamboo cooking

Our last days in Kuching happened to be the last days of August, the end of Ramadan this year. The muslim holiday is THE holiday of the year and people go to visit their families and friends. Kuching was very empty, only the tourists and the Chinese were to be seen on the streets.

But across the river from the Kuching Waterfront, at the Astana, the palace of the Governor, loads of people were gathering. I had read that the Astana is closed to the public all year with one exeption: Hari Raya.

We decided to join the party! Malaysian men have a traditional costume that resembles a pyjama in the eyes of a Westerner, so imagine how hard we had to try not to laugh when hundreds of men wearing something looking very much like a pyjama were lining up in front of the palace. It was really nice and everybody were very friendly wishing us a nice stay in Malaysia.
The Hari Raya celebrations (with loads of free food) were an extremely nice way to wrap up our stay in Borneo.