Just got back from Borneo and there is A LOT to write about! I'll do my best here. My friend Alex Kung came out to visit from Chicago on Friday, and then I had my exam Saturday morning and gave Alex a 10 hour walking tour of Singapore for the rest of the day. We flew to Kuching, Malaysia (on the island of Borneo) on Sunday morning. Found a nice little guesthouse that was in the Lonely Planet called the "B&B" and pretty much immediately met a very cute Swedish couple- Olaf and Jenny- who were also staying at the guesthouse. We all got on very well from the beginning, though Olaf and Jenny departed the next day for Bako National Park and Alex and I decided to spend some time exploring Kuching. Kuching is one of the nicer Malaysian towns that I have visited- a very developed waterfront and a main street lined with souvenir shops at one end of town, and big hotels at the other end of town. Here are a couple pictures of me at the waterfront:




Besides exploring town, we went to a cultural center set up with life-size models of the homes of the many native peoples of Borneo. There were longhouses of the Iban people, nomadic huts, tall houses on stilts used by those who made their living fishing, and many other structures. In fact, it was very interesting for me because the longhouse lifestyle of Borneo seemed very reminiscent of the longhouses of some of the native peoples of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Of course, a notable difference would be that Alaskan longhouses were built to withstand the cold, while these were in the tropics and built to keep cool and withstand the wet. We saw some demonstrations on how to make birds nest soup (made of bird regurgitation- yuck) and how to make some sort of palm flour. Then we went to a dance show that ended with the cheasiest rendition ever of the "Malaysia Truly Asia" government tourism campaign song. It was like a Miss America Pageant song that totally destroyed any seriousness of the show. It was pretty cheesy from from the start anyway....

Here is a picture from the cultural center- it is set in a very lush and beautiful part of the country:



The next day we decided to take a day trip to Bako National Park, which is known for having extraordinary flora and fauna and being the oldest national park in Borneo. We took a rickety old city bus about 45 minutes outside of town to a jetty where we could catch a motorboat out to the park (the only way to get there is by boat). Unfortunately we couldn't take a boat immediately because the water was too rough, so we sat around with some very grumpy Germans, waiting for our summons to the boat. By this time, Alex and I realized that a day trip was a bit too limiting, and that we better spend the night out there if we really wanted to see the park. So we finally boarded a boat that the driver skillfully maneuvered through surprisingly large waves, waded onto an empty beach, and walked up to the nearby national forest headquarters, where we were able to successfully secure a room for the night and a map of the hiking trails around the park. And we also found Jenny and Olaf, who were lurking around the one and only cafeteria, looking for food. Not only that, but we had our first sighting of one of the huge bearded wild boars that like to wander around the park grounds, and come right up next to the main buildings. In fact, that evening we even witnessed a good-natured fight between two boars right next to where we were eating our dinner! In fact, not only were there boars around, but tons of mischievous macaques waiting to get into our rooms and steal our belongings:



After lunch we set out on our first hike around Bako, a 3.5 hour loop trail through the jungle with a 45 min detour to see some of the proboscis monkeys that Bako is famous for. And wow, that first sighting of a proboscis surprised the hell out of me. Here we were, wandering through the jungle all by ourselves, with only the chirping of birds and insects all around us, and I look up to see a HUGE monkey standing right in our path, drinking from a puddle. I stopped, shocked at how huge and strangely human-like the proboscis was, and admittedly also a little shocked and worried for my own welfare when next to such a large wild animal... The monkey quickly swung back into the trees and we heard it crashing around over our heads. How to describe the probsocis? They have huge protruding noses, are a reddish-orange color, have long tails, and are probably about as big as half a human. They look exactly like a muppet!!

So that was exciting. Then we continued on with our hike and didn't see anymore monkeys. But we did see some cool pitcher plants and other jungle plants. About halfway through the hike we were caught in a huge downpour and got absolutely drenched. This really sucked cuz we didn't have any extra clothes as we had not initially planned to stay the night! Luckily when we got back the German girl let us borrow shirts and we ingeniously used the bed sheets as sarongs. Pics from Bako: