Borneo is one of those exciting, wild places that you hear mystical things about when you are young and it was somewhere we really wanted to visit, mainly for its potential for seeing wildlife. Borneo is part Malaysian and part Indonesian. On our trip we had just planned to visit the Malaysian section as we had a longer visa for Malaysia and had the time there. Malaysian Borneo is divided into two main sections- Sabah and Sarawak. We were keen to visit both as they both have orangutan sanctuaries so it gave us more opportunities to see them, however they are divided by thick heavy jungle so a plane is the only option between. Due to the time of year and in order to keep costs down we had pre-booked flights in advance from KL- Kuching, Kuching to Kota Kinabalu and KK straight to Singapore. The flights we booked gave us about a week in Sarawak and a week in Sabah area.
Sarawak is made up of lots of nature reserves and jungles. There are lots of opportunities to go to these but many require dedicated longer and more expensive trips. As much as we would have loved to do a more involved jungle adventure we didn’t have the time or funds, so we opted to base ourselves in Kuching and then planned to do some day trips to different places from here, these will be in separate blogs.
On arrival into Kuching airport we took an Uber (12 MYR-I know very wild and adventurous!) into Kuching city to our accommodation for the week. We based ourselves at a lovely small boutique hotel called My place lodge which was in the centre of Kuching and gave us a queen room for a week. There wasn’t too much accommodation left when we had booked due to their being an international music festival on over the time we were there but we definitely lucked out with this place as it was clean, comfortable, quiet and had a couple of common area spaces that were nice to relax in when you didn’t want to be in your room.
The first couple of days and a couple of days in between day trips we explored the city. There are a few interesting sights in Kuching including a very kitch cat roundabout, a nice riverside walk, an area filled with interesting street art. But first thing was first, we went out to find a coffee shop. We ended up walking to explore the Black Bean Cafe, which was very small and very busy (also well known from trip advisor). The coffee shop has local beans, which it roasts and grinds on site for their coffee. After squeezing our way onto one of the outside tables we had a nice iced cappuccino (5.50MYR) to cool off from the intense heat and humidity. We wandered back along the riverside and tried to explore the malls, although these were disappointing for the size of the city. In the evening we found a local restaurant, Atmosphere3 where we had Nasi Kandar. This is buffet self-service style meal where you can choose from different curries, dishes, rish and poppadoms.
On other days we continued to explore the city. We found some lovely other coffee shops for coffee, cake and breakfast including the Coffee Garden with a plant theme and the Bing Coffee shop. We meandered one day around the Little India area and wandered around the Old Courthouse with the original architecture, that had been turned into art spaces. There was a stunning, interesting photographic exhibition on in on of the rooms which had images of different human cultures that are dwindling, and on the edge of extinction themselves. We also explored some of the museums there in the Kuching Sarawak museum we learnt about different tribes and local history as well as spending time looking at souvenirs in the shops nearby. We also found other cheap local food in several restaurants dotted about- The Rose (Nasi Goreng 6MYR), pizza at Balenko (L for 19MYR) and the Chinese food court for food- wonton kolo mee (5MYR).
Whilst relaxing in our hotel one evening there was suddenly a lot of commotion and noise in the streets below. Outside our bedroom window was a parade full of performers and Chinese dragons dancing along the street. We watched this spectacle from our bedroom window, getting to wave to a lot of young performers.
Whilst in Kuching we did some day trips to Semenggoh Wildlife Centre, the Rainforest Music festival at the cultural centre and Bako National park which will be in future blogs. We quickly ran out of time in Kuching and there were many more day trips we could have done including:
Spending time at the cultural centre and the beach nearby
Kubah and Matang wildlife parks
We read there were some good caves to explore nearby
Gunung gading national park
Exploring more trails at Bako national park- Telok Pandon Keal is apparently the best beach (1 ½ hour trail)
And plenty more amazing sites if you have more time and a quick google. For us we wanted to have a balance of interesting, nature day trips, time to explore the city and not be too exhausted because we tried to fit too much in. We saw some amazing sites here and would definitely recommend Kuching for a great base to explore from if you only have a short amount of time and are on a budget.
Alex
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