Just Back From
Sarawak, Borneo
Selamat Datang - Welcome to Borneo
By Eleanor James
An unusual place to be ‘just back from’, Sarawak, the southern Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, is opening up to Australians as an exotic tourist destination.
Most keen travellers will be aware of the northern East Malaysian region of Sabah, with its white Kota Kinabalu sands and formidable mountain ranges, and as such, its southern neighbour Sarawak is keen to help itself to a piece of the tasty tourist pie.
The name Borneo conjures up visions of shaggy orange ‘wild men’ swinging through the rainforest canopy, head hunters ambushing an unsuspecting enemy tribe on a tranquil river bank, intrepid explorers of yore mingling with vibrant river traders, colonial kings grabbing land and constructing incongruous epitaphs to their antipodean greatness, and ancient customs passed down through the generations, not yet disturbed by an ever-smaller world.
Fortunate enough to secure a seat on the inaugural Malaysian Airlines 7-hour flight direct from Sydney to Kuching, the bustling yet concise capital of Sarawak, I found all these things and more over five of the most otherworldly days of my life.
Not yet taken over by Western-style industrialisation, this charming city is a disparate muddle of wealthy and poor, high-rise apartments and vibrant shop houses, with a selection striking colonial architecture thrown in for good measure. Meaning ‘cat’ in Malay, Kuching is easily explored, especially if you travel by free city tourist tram (tram in name, not function, although the romanticism was appreciated, as was the helpful signage asserting ‘you will get wet if it rains’).
When adventurer Sir James Brooke was ‘made’ Rajah of Sarawak in 1841 after suppressing a revolt against the Sultan of Brunei, he and his successors brought a little bit of home, or at least an approximation of it, with them in the form of the Sarawak Museum, resembling the Normandy town house dreamt of by the Rajah’s homesick French butler. It is the island’s most prominent repository of Bornean culture, complete with a life-size reconstruction of a native long house, tribal art and artifacts, and a thrilling array of stuffed fauna lovingly and creepily arranged in glass boxes, and as a final bizarre touch, the decorator saw fit to line the corridor carpet with ominously gigantic crocodile skulls.
The bustling Kuching markets are the perfect place to tour your tongue, with a mix of Western, Malay, Chinese, Indian and indigenous dishes literally at your fingertips. (Also a good place to find ‘Engrish’ curios and pirate DVDs, naughty, naughty!) The main bazaar is the oldest street in Kuching, a preserved link to the city’s past as a centre of trade. In these deep, dark shops you can pick up local handcrafts and trinkets without trekking miles into the jungle, and Nanna won’t even know the difference.
What is most striking about the city is its visually abundant ethnic diversity. A huge variety of mosques, temples and churches proliferate the city. Muslims make up half the population, with Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, Christians, and tribal religions contributing to the pot. Interestingly, in Sarawak alone a staggering 27 distinct indigenous ethnic groups speak 45 languages and dialects.
Opposite the main bazaar is the lovingly tended, and proudly award-winning waterfront precinct. Once a centre of riverside trading, this landscaped esplanade is a modern addition to Kuching connecting the city’s open civic spaces. It is the perfect place to cool down under a shady tree with a deep fried ice cream and enjoy vistas of the distant but imposingly purple Mount Santubong and the colonial structures that dominate the opposite bank.
The sprawling Astana (‘palace’) built in 1870 by the Rajah as his personal fiefdom is now the Governor’s private residence, and although tourists are encouraged to stroll his gardens, the armed guards were slightly off-putting. Downriver, but still close by is Fort Margerita, built in 1879 in a romantically odd late English Renaissance style (think fairy tale castle complete with parapets) as a fortress to guard Kuching’s river approach from pirates, assumedly not the same ones who push illicit DVDs in the markets.
For the more courageous tourist, a trip across the Sarawak River is a must. My journey was made alone, as it seems not everyone knows how to enjoy the stunning beauty of an orchid garden when in Rome. Fortunately I had been briefed by a local named Seamus on the way of the ‘sampan’ or dinky riverboat. The crossing is only a brief couple of minutes, however you can spend up to 10 minutes bobbing up and down on the bank waiting for the boat to fill with a minimum of six passengers, and upon disembarkation, the exact change of 30 sens (15 cents) must be deposited on your seat.
From Kuching, half-day trips can be arranged to the Semenggok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre about 45 minutes drive from the city. Of course you can’t go to Borneo and not see a fabled wild man, so I followed the hoards about a kilometre into the rainforest to stand in wait a courteous distance of 30m from the feeding platform. Before too long, our presence was graced by two agile, hungry females, followed by a surprise visit from the dominant male, who at 120kg was a fearsome sight swinging through the trees above our heads. They key was not to look him in the eye, for fear of him taking a particular liking to the human ladies, but that was a difficult request, as that’s where you want to point your camera, and that’s also where you look to check if he’s going to pelt a branch down onto your head, or worse, give you a taste of his medicine, so to speak. And it did happen.
After two days in Kuching, I called home for what might be the last time, mustered all my bravado and boarded a Buddy Holly plane and ventured deep in the rainforest up near Brunei. Our destination, Mulu, boasts a 1,000-foot long airstrip hewn out (read hill-levelling) of the dense, mountainous rainforest. Before the airport was built in 1991, you were in for a painfully winding 12-hour boat trip from the coastal town of Miri (a favourite locale for legitimate fun-seeking Bruienites to while away the wee hours across the border.)
Our place of respite was Royal Mulu Resort - a unique rainforest paradise built on raised timber walkways in the style of traditional Sarawak long houses. Consisting of 188 (thankfully air conditioned) rooms, including a royal suite, the resort has all the features you would expect from a five-star property, with spa facilities and all-day dining. This wasn’t taken for granted once I discovered it took two years to construct with materials brought in by boat from Miri. Another thing I didn’t take for granted was the pre-dinner cultural show involving delicate finger dancing and feats of strength with bamboo poles when I realized our performers were none other than the waitresses who had served my drink minutes before, and gardeners I passed on my way to breakfast.
The World Heritage-listed Mulu National Park is home to some of the world’s most ancient rainforest and cave systems, which have only been open to the public since 1985. Traditional open-air long boat is the way to travel in Sarawak, as the rivers are more like roads, with all human activity taking place on the banks. From the resort, I journeyed up the Melinau River, making sure my weight was centred for fear of an early-morning dunking, to a Penan settlement where you can purchase authentic (if customs-baiting) handicrafts from this semi nomadic tribe who as well as subsisting on a semi-nomadic agrarian lifestyle also (shrewdly) charge a nominal amount for you to capture their soul on film.
Sarawak’s rainforest the is roughly the size of Austria (but sadly rapidly shrinking) and is home to the world’s largest flower, the carnivorous rafflesia, both smelling and looking delightfully like rotting flesh, but unfortunately my itinerary didn’t permit a flora horror quest. However it did permit encounters with the giant Rajah Brooke Birdwing butterflies, bright green in colour and the size of small birds. In fact most of the fauna that bumped into me was oversized, most memorably the type that delivered nasty bites, such as the audacious fire ants who invited themselves to my picnic lunch.
The highlight of Mulu was undoubtedly the world’s most extensive cave system, with 1106km of passages discovered since 1974, only an estimated 15% of the entire system. The 5 million-year-old limestone passages are lit during specific times and feature plank walks to reduce human impact. Similar caves in Sarawak’s Niah National Park have evidence of being inhabited over 40,000 years ago.
Wind Cave is accessed by a treetop walkway clinging to sheer white cliffs that are exposed in startling contrast to the rich green vegetation. Its upstream neighbour Clearwater Cave was formed by 118km of subterranean river and is reached by climbing 200 steps up the hillside, however I left my camera down the bottom after posing for group photos, so what were 400 steep steps became 800. And those expansive buffets from my earlier Kuching Hilton stay certainly came back to haunt me.
After lunch and a refreshing dip in the cool, murky river, we trekked a few kilometres through the jungle (okay, so they were planked walkways… but to our credit we were soaking wet at the time thanks to a torrential equatorial rainfall - so much for cooling off in the river) to the world's largest cave passage. Deer Cave is so cavernous (unsurprisingly) that it can fit a jumbo jet, not that anyone's tried, with staggering dimensions of 120m high, 115m wide and 680m deep.
Perhaps not so aptly named, Deer Cave is truly the ultimate Bat Cave. You could just hear Alfred calling to ask if Sir would like to dine at six. The millions of bats that inhabit the cave make a breathtaking twilight exodus, which can be viewed from an open-air observation platform outside the cave, but not when it’s raining buckets, as we discovered. Surprisingly (in a statistical kind of way), no one in our party of intrepid adventurers had the pleasure of being a target for a portion of the 3 tonnes of guano (bat poo) that falls each day from our little friends on the ceiling. Although I did soon realize that an ill-conceived footfall could result in a slippery slide, unless you catch hold of the handrail, which was covered in… you guess it!
In Sarawak, most people you will deal with speak English, although a few words of Bahasa Malaysia wouldn’t go astray, especially when you’re asking a favour, which in a foreign country is most of the time. The climate is equatorial, so be prepared for days averaging 30 degrees or more, so keep up the fluids and be sure to wear light clothing that covers cleavage and thighs, as although it’s not inconsiderate to dress less, you’ll stop the traffic if you venture out in the streets in standard Aussie beachwear as I soon found out. For a trip to the rainforest, be sure to pack industrial strength insect repellent, sun cream et al, a vegetarian crocodile-proof cossie and good walking shoes. And a raincoat that can stand torrential downpours, unless you have a Belinda Carlisle approach to the weather.
