Kuching - An intro to Malaysia!

Kuching - Thanks Internet!

I arrived in Kuching without knowing what to expect.  I had done little to no research, other than deciding that Kuching was a better gateway to exploring the jungles of Borneo than Kota Kinabalu.  Transportation from the airport into town was easy enough, and I found a nice room at the Singgahsana hostel for 90 Ringgit a night (a little under $30...more than I should have paid).  I put up with it, because Singgahsana was a fairly central traveler's hangout with a nice bar up on the roof.  The first night, I ended up having drinks with the 5 or so other guests staying at the place, and we had a nice time, except for the fact that beers were quite expensive.

Though I try my best to be anti-social and grumpy when travelling, I got roped into a group expedition out to some nearby caves for the next day.  The plan was to rent motorbikes and ride for an hour or so out to the Fairy Cave.  There were 9 of us, and it turned into kind of a disaster, as most of the group was significantly hung over from the night before.  We didn't get rolling (zing!) until almost 1pm, and somehow I ended up driving a manual transmission bike.  I'd done it before, but that was almost six years ago and I'm pretty sure that experiment ended up in me throwing a nice Korean girl off the back end while trying to start the bike on a steep uphill slope.

With only one single girl in our group, the odds were good that I would be buddying up with one of guys.  I ended up chauffeuring around poor Neal, a nervous young Canadian fellow who I could tell was prepared to meet his fate at any moment on the back of my bike.  All went well...no one died, though there was a lot of screaming and swearing by me.  We also lost the group for about 15 minutes, but through sheer luck managed to join them again to much cheering and high-fiving.  The caves were fine, and the riding was great fun once we got out of the busy city, but I felt like kind of a tool walking around the city and riding the highways with a large pack of white folks.  Not that I'm some great friend of the locals, but something about wandering around a place as an obvious tourist in a group of more than 3 or 4 just bugs me.

Ok...I tried to hold off, but I just can't.  Sorry fellow backpackers.  You're generally real nice people, easygoing, always up for a beer, very welcoming, and always have some great stories and experiences to share.  The problem is that I hate all of you.  There have been a few exceptions over the years, but they've mostly been couples or people over age 35.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but I just don't quite fit into backpacker culture, and something about the typical backpacker just rubs me the wrong way.

Proboscis monkey - funny looking guy

After 3 days wandering around the city, I headed out for a few nights at Bako National Park to see some wildlife and do some jungle trekking.  The place is crawling with macaques, monitor lizards, bearded boars, and the rare proboscis monkey, found only in Borneo.  I divided my time between walking the trails and hanging out near the park HQ watching the monkeys do their thing.  The macaques are sneaky little guys and will grab food off your plate if you turn your back for long enough.  I could watch them fight over bags of potato chips all day long.

Though I'm still figuring out my camera situation, I was lucky enough to get some bad photos of the rare German out of his natural habitat.  A little known fact about Germans is that for only the cost of two beers, they will often let you share the room they booked at the park because you're an idiot and didn't plan ahead.  Since I didn't want to impose too much on Marcus, I spent my second night camped out in a hammock near the beach as fireflies lit up the nearby trees.  Not a bad compromise.

Bako Park at low tide

German - This one was named Marcus...