Kuching, Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia

Formerly a British colony, Sarawak gained independence in 1963 when it joined with neighbouring Sabah and peninsular Malaya to form the new nation of Malaysia. On 31 August, coincidentally Merdeka Day (Malaysia’s celebratory Independence Day), we flew from Sandakan back across North Borneo to Kota Kinabalu. The Malaysia Airlines flight took 30 minutes, much shorter than the six hour bus trip on the outward leg. In KK we spent Merdeka Day lounging around and walking along the beach at Tanjung Aru, the following morning catching an early flight to Kuching, the capital city of Sarawak about 1,000 km to the south-west.

Kuching is a pleasant place with a good balance of the old and the new. We spent a couple of days walking around the sights in the town centre and along the Sarawak River that bisects this attractive green city. On the riverside we inspected the Chinese Migration History Museum and passed by the impressive State Legislative Building and Astana, the palace built by Charles Brooke in 1870 as a bridal gift to his wife Margaret, and these days used as the official residence of the Governor of Sarawak. We also spent an hour in the worthwhile Sarawak State Museum that has interesting displays on the region’s ethnology and fauna.  One of the quirkier exhibits was a ball of hair, gold watch and dental plate recovered from the stomach of an estuarine crocodile shot some time after father of 11, Abang Superi Abang Saat, was seized by a croc while taking his early morning bath by the river on 28 October 1993. The watch belonged to Mr Saat. The dental plate didn’t, begging an obvious question.

On Thursday we made an overnight trip to Bako National Park, Sarawak’s oldest, that covers an area of about 3,000 hectares at the tip of Muara Tebas Peninsula about 40 km north of Kuching. To get there, visitors need to take a bus or taxi followed by a 30 minute boat ride down an estuary, across the river heads and out on to the sea before wading ashore on a beach near Park headquarters. A minor adventure in itself. Bako is renowned for the diversity of both its flora and wildlife, making it a popular destination for visitors. We stormed ashore with a young couple from the Netherlands with whom we had shared a boat, and in the afternoon we hiked a couple of the Park’s shorter trails. Our efforts were rewarded at dusk just back from the beach on the Paku Trail when rustling noises and grunts from the jungle canopy above heralded the appearance of a harem of rare proboscis monkeys. They were too high for close-up photographs but their bulbous noses and fat bellies were unmistakable. We watched them feed and swing from tree to tree until the light began to fade, before making our way feeling very satisfied back to Park headquarters. And what’s more, the one animal we definitely didn’t want to meet, we thankfully saw no sign of. Wagler’s Pit Viper. Enough said.

More...We returned to Kuching and on Saturday took a minibus to the Matang Wildlife Centre within Kubah National Park west of Kuching. Our objective was to hike the nearby jungle Pitcher Trail and hopefully see some of the pitcher plants that give the trail its name. The Centre appeared a bit run down with maintenance needed in places. The visitor centre was closed for renovation, there was no place to buy drinks, the only drinks vending machine was broken and in any case empty, the picnic area was closed due to a recent croc sighting and to top all that off, the friendly ticket attendant told us that walks along the full length of the Pitcher Trail were not recommended due to recent wild orang-utan sightings. We solved our water problem when we found a construction worker willing to sell us a bottle of his, and we then struck out on the Pitcher Trail. Within minutes we had sighted clumps of beautiful, perfectly formed pitcher plants, larger than I expected and each charged with insect-digesting liquid. We pressed on and what followed soon after was the most exciting hour of our whole time in Borneo.

Shortly after entering a thicker and more luxuriant part of the jungle, we heard loud rustling in the leaves overhead. We stood still while surveying the surrounding hillside for the path of least resistance should we have to make a run for it. The rustling noise grew louder and a ginger-haired creature emerged from the camouflage of leaves and rested on a tree branch barely 10 metres away. It was a large female orang-utan carrying her baby. We watched quietly and took photographs while she sat with her baby on the branch for several minutes before continuing down the tree. We took this as a signal to leave, so we scrambled quickly up the hillside, and while so doing I wickedly remembered the advice I was once given on escaping a pursuing crocodile. You don’t need to be able to run faster than the crocodile – you only need to be able to run faster than the person you’re with!

To our surprise the orang-utan dropped to the ground and followed us up the hill with alarming alacrity. We “power-hiked” down the jungle track to put some more metres between us and her, and until we saw her stop. Her facial expression was one of watchfulness and curiosity rather than aggression or anger. We stood still and watched for several more minutes, then she moved slowly forward towards us again. We silently took a few more photos and a short movie until she came near, then we sped off leaving her in our wake. It was an exhilarating 20 minutes and certainly the experience that we will most remember from our time in Borneo. To see up-close one of these human-like creatures moving about freely in the jungle makes it easy to see why they are called orang-utan (“man of the forest”), and to appreciate how utterly dependent they are on us to leave them at least some habitat if they are to survive as a species.

We ended our time at Matang with a quick look at the few rather forlorn animal enclosures near the visitor centre. But one contained a magnificent old-man orang-utan from Sumatra, about 35 years old. He was sunning himself on the grass and looked as though he had long given up any desire to return to a life in the wilds of the jungle, preferring the more genteel existence he now enjoyed. But he showed he could still mange a scowl for the camera, or was that a yawn? One thing’s for sure though – if we met him in the jungle we wouldn’t be bothering to stop for photographs. That’s all I’m saying.

__

Sandakan, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia

Sandakan on the east coast of Borneo is Sabah’s second largest city, a six hour bus trip or 45 minute airplane ride across the ranges from Kota Kinabalu. We were interested to see the countryside of north Borneo, so we took a bus on Wednesday, passing towering Mt Kinabalu before heading east through vast palm oil plantations, tropical vegetation and the occasional jungle remnant. Sandakan was established in the 1870s as a port for the export of logs and timber and is located on a beautiful natural harbor with offshore islands visible from the mainland.

The Japanese army seized Sandakan in the early 1940s and allied bombing to liberate the town shortly before the end of the war left little standing. In retaliation the Japanese burned what was left, and Sandakan ceased to exist in June 1945. But in the post-war years the city rose from the ashes to once again become a bustling commercial centre (this time its economy underpinned by the expanding palm oil industry), and more recently, a gateway to the many tourist attractions in the region.

Our first stop was the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre 25 km from Sandakan that cares for orphan or displaced orangutans and prepares them for return to the wild. A feeding platform in the jungle provides a twice-daily opportunity for visitors to observe from a distance these rarely seen animals, native to only Borneo and Sumatra, in a semi-wild setting. A signboard in the nearby visitor centre states that the orangutan is the third closest relative to man and that over 96% of our genes are identical to those of the orangutan! We shared the morning viewing time with many other overseas visitors, mainly Europeans it seemed, before going on a short hike down the Centre’s jungle Bird Trail.

We intended to move on to the further-afield Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary to see these intriguing primates, so named because of their big bulbous noses. But we decided that an admission fee of over AUD$20 each plus travel costs just to see a monkey, albeit a cute one, was a bit rich. Malaysia has a slightly irritating approach of charging foreign visitors much higher admission fees than locals to visit tourist attractions. A modest markup might be palatable but we’ve noticed the markup sometimes exceeds 700%, a figure which gets up our own proboscises! The photo below of the proboscis monkey is from the internet.

The most sobering spot in Sandakan is the Sandakan Memorial Park that commemorates a World War 2 tragedy and atrocity that surprisingly many Australians know little about. Following the fall of Singapore in 1942 the Japanese moved about 2,700 Australian and British POWs to Sandakan to build a military airstrip. In early 1945 the Japanese decided to force march about 1,000 emaciated POWs through the jungle to Ranau about 250km to the west. This became known as the Sandakan Death March. 500 POWs died on the way (by bullet, beating, bayonet or disease), and all but four of those who made it to the destination camps subsequently died similar deaths. Back in Sandakan, all of the hundreds of prisoners left behind were either murdered or left to die.

Of the approximately 2,000 POWs alive in January 1945, only six survived to bear witness after the war to what had happened. They were all Australians who had escaped into the jungle: two during the death march and four from the Ranau camps. One had his 21st birthday while hiding in the jungle. Without the local Malays who risked their own lives to provide food and help, these six would certainly also have died.

These days most of the site of the former Sandakan POW camp has been redeveloped for housing and town services but a small section has been retained as a commemorative park with a small interpretive pavilion in the centre. There’s not much else here now apart from a small concrete water tank that once supplied the Japanese Quartermaster’s store and a rusting boiler from the camp’s electricity generation plant standing forlornly amongst the trees. Signboards inside the pavilion detail the appalling conditions endured by the POWs and the tortures and murders committed by the Japanese (and their conscripted Formosan) guards.

A few months ago there was an excellent edition of the Australian ABC TV program Compass. Titled Windows to Sandakan, the program told of the efforts of historian Lynette Silver who visited the town a few years ago and while passing the St Michael’s and All Angels Church perched above the town centre she noticed pieces of cellophane stuck to the widows, a cheap alternative to the stained glass windows the church could not afford. On her return to Australia Lynette embarked on a successful fund-raising quest and engaged an elderly stained glass artist, Philip Handel, to make the windows that were to be not only religious in theme but also to reflect the Sandakan POW experience.

The program covers the construction of the windows, the installation ceremony on Anzac Eve 2008 that included presentations to some of the local people who had helped the prisoners and escapees, and the tour along the Death March route taken by several POW descendants who came to Sandakan for the ceremony, several of whom had only recently learned the full truth of what happened here in 1945. Shortly after accepting the commission to make the windows, Philip Handel discovered that the soldier engaged to his much older sister decades ago had died at Sandakan. Philip was also shortly to learn that he himself was suffering from a terminal illness, and he died just a few weeks ago on 29 July 2009.

We found and walked around St Michael’s on Friday. It’s very English in design, set in a small, neatly manicured garden. Unfortunately it was locked but pressing our noses against the clear glassed doors, we were able to see the design and colours of two of the large stained glass windows inside. We passed by again briefly on Sunday morning to take some photos inside.

The waters around Sandakan are warm with prolific marine life. The result onshore is the largest fish market in Sabah with a surprising variety of fish, shell fish and other sea creatures for sale. A little further along the coast is Kampung Buli Sim Sim, a photogenic settlement of shacks built on stilts above the sea in widely varying states of repair and crisscrossed by narrow, rickety access jetties on which we spent an hour gingerly walking up and down observing the different perspectives. The people we encountered were happy and very friendly, and the children were eager to have their photos taken.

We chatted with one man sitting outside his cottage who spoke excellent English and was eager to ask questions regarding things he had read about Australia. Strangely he was particularly interested to learn what became of all the roadkill created by the collisions of trucks with kangaroos and other fauna on Australian outback highways. I told him the wedge-tailed eagles and blazing sun looked after that problem. Possibly his line of thought was prompted by a report in that morning's edition of the East Malaysia Daily Express on a high speed collision involving a Ninja King 4WD just outside Inanam in West Sabah. The report was accompanied by a very explicit photo of the mangled vehicle that looked just as you'd expect it to after ploughing head-on at 90 km/hr into a fully grown buffalo. Wedged under the front of the Ninja King, with its head and front shoulders poking out, was the dead buffalo, prostrate in an alarmingly large pool of blood. The shaken driver told police he hadn't seen the animal crossing the road in front of his vehicle.

Elsewhere, the Borneo Post reported on a successful turtle egg bust by officers of the Sandakan Marine Operations Force. Four foreign nationals were arrested after being caught caught red-handed with 1,250 sea turtle eggs in their possession, destined for illegal sale. And the New Sabah Times reported that in Ipoh, 98 anteaters were saved from the cooking pot thanks to a successful raid by the Kedha Wildlife Crime Unit. Collectively weighing 500kg, the anteaters were destined for dinner tables in north Asia where their meat fetches much more than 100 Ringgits per kilogram. And speaking of high prices, the Times also reports that Kedah consumers are shell-shocked over the spiralling price of garlic. The recent 300% increase is put down to the widely-held but erroneous belief that consumption of large amounts of the stuff wards off swine flu.

Back at Kampung Buli Sim Sim, an ominous sky encouraged us to catch the next mini bus back into town where faced with limited eating venues, we decided to dine at the local Halal KFC. It was excellent.

Our hotel was right on the water’s edge with great views from our window of the harbour and the constantly passing boats, and with the waterside Sails Restaurant downstairs. Friday night was seafood buffet night at Sails but when a wet and windy electrical storm swept in for half an hour around 7pm, the staff and patrons, including us, were sent scurrying to drag the heavy tables and steamboat gas tanks under cover until the usual balmy calm returned to the Sandakan waterfront.