it's been so long, we'll have to backtrack.
bako national park: our final destination in borneo. bako is just outside of kuching, two hours in a bus, an hour in a boat, and was described in our guidebook, more or less, as "a beautiful park where jungle meets sea, and good place to hopefully spot wildlife." this was an understatement.
we spent two days in the park, and should have spent more but we just didn't know. it was like staying in a zoo with the cages left open. i have never, ever, seen so much wildlife in my life. one of the parks celebrity species are proboscis monkeys, the monkeys with the comically gigantic noses that hang over their mouths. we had been given the impression that if we hiked a specific trail at a specific time of day, and if we had luck on our side, we might catch a fleeting glimpse of a proboscis. turns out, after five minutes of hiking, on a random trail, we saw five of them. then we saw five more, up close. then we saw some macaques. then silver leaf monkeys. and wild bearded pigs (possibly my new favorite animal). and eagles. and pit vipers. giant centipedes, crabs, mudskippers, leafcutter ants, and so on. and when i say we saw them, i don't mean from a distance, through the leaves and occassionally. i mean in your face, clearly, and all the time. you couldn't not see wildlife there. the sight of the three pit vipers and giant poisonous centipedes made for a rocky nights sleep, but we had a blast.
and that says nothing about the natural beauty of the park, the blue water smashing into cliffs, the impossibly massive trees teeming with parades of ants so big that they look like black ropes, the sandy beaches, the mangrove forests. can i possibly get across how amazing it was? i don't think i can.
after bako we spent one night in kuching, which is a beautiful city, very modern, with a long riverwalk that looks like something you would expect in california rather than borneo. we lazed about, saw the sights, strolled through chinatown, and watched the sun set to the soundtrack of the muslim call to prayer blaring from a half dozen different mosques.