31/01/2012 5:13 PM
So it’s my last evening in Kuching and I’ve had a wonderful stay here and a fantastic last day. I finally booked my tour yesterday for both the Cultural Village as well as the Orang-utan Sanctuary. I was picked up at 9 AM and bussed to the Cultural Village about 37km away from Kuching. This “village” consist of eight different exhibits, one for each of the cultural groups. It was very similar to the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. So I walked around there for a while and at 11:30 there was a show that consisted of traditional dance and music. It was quite the spectacle.
From the cultural village we stopped at the Cat Museum. This museum was not all that great, but was nice to see, and as it was located at the top of a hill, giving a nice view of Kuching.
From here we went to the Orang-utan Sanctuary. This was the highlight of my day and possibly of my week spent in this city. This is not a western-style zoo, but rather a giant protected forest that was home to semi-wild primates. They are considered semi-wild as they are fed by the park due to the fact that there is not enough food for them to live off naturally. The way the park is set up therefore makes it not all that likely to see any Orang-utans. We, however, were lucky. All together, we saw four. One huge male, named Richie, who is 160 kg and close to 1.6m in height, and another family consisting of a parents and their new born. I’ve got lots of pictures and a number of videos, so no worries on that front. There were also some crocodiles, however, they were in cages, but I swear were not real given that they were not moving and did not move the entire time that I was there. I did ask one of the rangers and was informed that they were sleeping. I still don’t understand why I couldn’t seem them breathing. Anyways. So yeah, that was really cool.
So my flight to Miri is tomorrow at 4:25 PM so I will leave my hostel around 3 PM and head to the airport. I will probably stay in Miri for two nights, then head inland to Bario which will serve as my hub for hiking Pulong Tau National Park. I am somewhat limited to what I can hike as these require trekking equipment, ie, tent, sleeping bag, food rations, cooking utensil, etc, etc, so I will be limited to day hikes. However, this is not like Bako National Park as the accommodations are located outside the Park so there will be no bug-infested dorm rooms. Unfortunately, I will have to fly to Bario even though it is only about 120km as the crow flies from Miri.... there simply are not any roads. There is the option to go inland by boat, as cool as this would be, it is far more expensive and requires much more planning and time.
I have already booked my flight to Kota Kinabalu from Miri because the sooner I booked it the cheaper it would be. It cost me $46 to fly one way which means I’d rather not miss my flight, but it would not be the end of the world. So as the plan sits now, I will have two nights in Miri, then three nights in Bario, one more night in Miri, then on the following day I will fly to Kota Kinabalu. I will most likely spend a week in KK and then move on the Mt Kinabalu. If all goes to plan I will arrive at the Kinabalu National Park around the 19th of February and have a few days to organize my trip. I plan to climb on the 23rd, celebrating my birthday atop the highest mountain in SE Asia. I also want to give myself ample time in Kinabalu National Park in case my first summit attempt is thwarted by bad weather.
That’s all for now!
31/01/2012 7:40 PM
Well Bario is not going to be straightforward as I originally intended. It seems as though the soonest flight I can get is on the 10th of February and returning on the 15th. Due to the lack of road access flights must be booked weeks in advance. So this is throwing off my schedule entirely. I am going to sleep on it. I may, instead of going to Bario, fly to Mulu Airstrip. From there I can hike Mulu National Park for a few days. This is most likely the compromise I will have to make if I want to stick to my itinerary and get to Kinabalu for the 23rd. I can always forfeit my flight to KK but this present another problem as I have zero interest in spending 10 days in Miri. So it seems as though Bario will not happen, but rather, I will fly to Mulu Airstrip and hike there.
31/01/2012 8:43 PM
So it is settled. This is my finalized plan. All flights and accommodations have been booked at this point. So here we go. Tomorrow, February 1st, I will fly to Miri. I will spend two nights there and then fly to Mulu Airstrip on the 3rd. I will spend four days (three nights) hiking in Mulu National park. I will fly back to Miri on the 6th and spend the night there. Then on the 7th I will fly to KK. The reason I have to fly to and from Mulu from Miri is because Miri has the only airport that services flights to Mulu. Busy week coming up. Should be fantastic.
I’m going to stop writing at this point so I can get this posted and go through all the pictures I took today so that I can upload a few.
Gnight!
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