Hello! In keeping with my promise to catch up on my posts, today I thought I'd share with you some pictures from our trip to Kuching in Borneo. Kuching is in the Malaysian state of Sarawak and is about a two hour direct flight from our home in JB. In November last year we had the opportunity to take an extra long weekend away, thanks to two consecutive national holidays in celebration of 1) the Hindu festival of Deepavali and b) the Johor Tigers football team winning a big competition somewhere!
We decided this would be a great opportunity to take our first visit to Borneo. November is actually the low season, when the rain is usually pretty relentless, but as you can see from the picture above we were mostly very lucky and enjoyed lots of sunshine. Visiting in low season also meant fewer tourists, cheaper flights, hotel room discounts and empty beaches.
Borneo is so beautiful, so I will let the pictures do most of the talking. Enjoy!
Firstly we explored the city of Kuching. We enjoyed visiting the cultural museum and adjoining park:
There is some very cool street art:
We also admired several of the impressive buildings:
Chinatown is at the heart of Kuching, and although it was relatively quiet we had a great time exploring, trying local restaurants and sampling the Borneo coffee. The coffee shops also provided shelter from the occasional downpour!
After spending a couple of days in Kuching we headed out towards the coastal area of Damai. The first thing we saw was the lovely beach:
Before heading to our accommodation we visited the Sarawak cultural village. It is set up to show how people in Sarawak traditionally lived, in tribe communities centred around longhouses. Only a small minority of people still live in this way, and it is actually possible to stay as a guest in a real functioning longhouse, but we chose to visit this 'living museum' to get the experience instead.
There is an interesting performance of traditional dance and music which was fun (so much so I forgot to take pictures!) and there was also the chance to try out some traditional hunting techniques such as blowpipe shooting. It was a bit of a touristy gimmick, but Dan couldn't resist the challenge:
While we were visiting there was a short but heavy downpour so we sought refuge inside one of the longhouses...
...and during this time, several Malaysian families who were enjoying their holidays decided to try out some of the traditional dress. We were asked to join them for a photo!
After visiting the cultural village we checked into our accommodation for the night - a treehouse! Although there were a LOT of creepy crawlies around, it was very cool to sleep up so high in a rainforest and we had an incredible view:
In the evening we took a short stroll down to the beach to enjoy the lovely sunset over the South China Sea.
We only had one day to spend at the beach, so we were beyond lucky to wake up to this the next morning:
So after breakfast we headed over to the much larger beach and, much to our delight, we were the only people in sight.
Dan was quite excited about being on the beach...
One of the reasons we wanted to visit Borneo was to see orangutans, so this is what we decided to do on our last day before our flight back. Seminggoh Wildlife Centre is around 40 minutes from Kuching, where rescued orangutans live in a semi-wild environment. You can pay to take a tour, but by this point we were feeling pretty comfortable and confident in Malaysia so we took the local bus from town which was a lot cheaper. The orangutans are free to roam as they please, so there are no guarantees you will actually see any on your visit, but fortunately for us a few of them did come to say hello. It was amazing to watch these huge, powerful but also gentle creatures and after taking a few photos we decided to put the camera away and just enjoy the experience.
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