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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