Easter in Borneo

We made the most of the Easter break to visit the state of Sarawak in Borneo, East Malaysia for a week. We began in Kuching, the Malay word for cat, with an obligatory visit to the cat museum. A rather bizarre collection of cat-themed memorabilia, apparently the only one of its type in the world. It was rather random, even for Malaysia!

At the Kuching 'Cat' museum

Our favourite day was probably in Bako National Park, a really diverse mix of jungle, beaches and wildlife. During our very hot and sweaty 6 hour walk we saw three types of monkey, a viper and a bearded pig who potters around the HQ and cafe.




A rare breed of monkey at Bako National Park

After a long walk in Bako National park












We also joined a day tour to Semenggoh orangutan rehabilitation centre where the orangutans are fed every day, but otherwise live in the wild. It was great to see a mum and baby swinging from the ropes. We also took canoes down the river and visited traditional longhouses, some of which are still inhabited by the Orang Asli tribe.


Orang-utans in the almost-wild

Hitting the rapids in our canoe

A traditional longhouse

A short flight later and we reached our second destination of Miri, a town close to the Brunei border. We were lucky enough to stay with some fantastic hosts, David and Pascale, who made us feel really welcome and at home. David works at another Tenby group school and we arranged a house swap, with them coming to visit us in Penang in May. They are members of a boat club which, we discovered, is an amazing place to watch the sunset. They also arranged to borrow a boat, which we took up the river on our last day. Steve particularly liked driving it!


Steve having a go at driving a boat

Sunset from the boat club in Miri







We decided to spend one day across the border in Brunei. It surprised us by being a lot more jungly and less opulent and showy than expected. It has some beautiful and lavish buildings, like the Mosque, and a fun museum displaying lots of gifts received by the Sultan from countries all around the world. However, the capital still has a rustic charm and is less developed in some areas than we expected. We couldn't resist a visit to the Empire Hotel for high tea on our drive back. It was built by the Sultan's extravagent brother and cost US$1.1bn apparently! Even charging $25,000 per night for some of the rooms, it will take a long time to make the money back! We were very impressed that they had proper tea and even clotted cream for the scones, things you would never find in Malaysia. Shame we could only drink red grape juice, since it's a very strict Muslim country and alcohol is illegal.


Brunei mosque

The Empire hotel



Afternoon tea at the Empire Hotel

An hour from Miri are Niah caves, a huge cave system which you need head torches to explore. We went in the late afternoon to watch the bat exodus which supposedly takes place every day around sunset. We didn't see quite the 'exodus' we were hoping for but being in a national park by ourselves, after dark was a great experience nevertheless.



Niah caves

Waiting for the bat exodus in Niah caves 





 

We certainly made the most of the week off and now need another holiday to recover! It's only 3 weeks now until the next one, with the rather odd term dates this year. We're getting scared about our Mount Kinabalu climb, wondering if we've bitten off more than we can chew...

We hope everyone had a great Easter and we were jealous of you all with your Easter eggs (although the Easter bunny did bring us some cheeky mini creme egss by post!).  I struggled to properly explain to a local Malaysian where the Easter egg tradition comes from. It's more of a Christian celebration here, with many students missing school to go to mass on Good Friday, since it's not a public holiday.