Back in Kuching I had just one more day for something else I really wanted – to kayak along the river, under the weeping jungle trees. George had to go back to work in the hostel but Tom decided to steal his Go-pro (I’m still waiting for edited video…) and join me.

First we had to head to a new laksa house for breakfast. This one is known as very traditional and quite spicy. We got a bit lost along the way and it was therefore further than I thought but completely worth it. It was delicious (if a little oily).

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Honestly, A MONKEY STOLE MY HOTDOG!

People should really pay attention to those signs about wild animals attack.

Bako National Park, sometime in the not too early morning

The animals are out in force before breakfast. Hundreds of long tailed macaques roam amongst the trees near park HQ, eating fruit from the grounds, the trees, wherever is easiest.

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Okay, so I haven’t been to EVERY national park in Borneo (it’s a big island and I was only in Sarawak) but of the three I did visit in the north west of Borneo (southern part of Malaysian Borneo), Bako was definitely my favourite. They have proboscis monkeys there.

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Although I have no comparison (yet), I’m willing to bet that Kuching is one of the most pleasant towns in Borneo.

One of my favourite things about Borneo is laksa for breakfast. The laksa in Borneo is very different (and according to my taste buds, superior to) the asam laksa which is so famous in Penang. In Kuching your bowl of spicy, coconut broth is loaded with noodles, chicken, prawns and beansprouts. Although my hostel supplied bread and stuff for breakfast, most days I dragged Tom, the brother of the awesome George who was running Borneo Seahare hostel at the time, down town to various laksa cafes.

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Semmengoh Nature Reserve is the premier destination for seeing orang-utans in Sarawak but not, unfortunately, during fruiting season, as it was during my stay in August. Semmengoh is one of the final stages of rehabilitation for rescued orang-utans so by this stage, when there is a lot of fruit growing in the jungle, the animals don’t find the need to return to the centre for feeding and prefer to live in the ‘wild’, foraging for themselves. I heard of a number of folk at the hostel I moved to (bit different to my fancy hotel but in the centre of Kuching) who had made the trip out to the centre to see nothing but orchids.

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