Bako National Park
Bako national park is very close to Kuching. It is a beautiful rainforest park along the beach. To reach it, you first have to take the bus, then a boat and then walk for a bit longer. I decided to spend two full days there and sleep in the park dormitories. Unfortunately, half of the park was closed because they were renovating some trails, but there were still enough other trails that were open.
Bako was a great way to complement my time at the Indonesian Tanjung park. Both parks are rainforest parks, but one is along a river and the other one is along the beach. Also, in Tanjung I spent most of my time on the boat, so it was nice to get out and actually explore the rainforest on foot.
None of the trails I did were particularly difficult, but what is always challenging in the rainforest is dealing with the heat and humidity. A particular challenge in Bako was also dealing with the monkeys. There were no orangutans in Bako, but plenty of other smaller monkeys including the proboscis monkey. At the end of the day, I was sitting peacefully on the beach with my drink and chocolate when I totally got mobbed by five monkeys. And “mobbing” in this case is exactly the right term for what happened. The monkeys appeared from absolutely nowhere, making loud noises and running straight towards me. As they were about to jump on me, I immediately dropped all my stuff and ran away. They gathered everything that was edible or drinkable and left as quickly as they came. It was quite a scary encounter!
In the evening, the park got quite empty as most people only came for the day. All overnight guests were hanging out at the cafeteria and it was a great time to exchange some travel stories with other backpackers.
On my second day at Bako it unfortunately rained in the morning, but once it cleared up, I managed to take a few more trails. One of the nice features of the Bako trails is that many of them end at a beach. So it is a nice reward to go swimming in the ocean after hours of walking.
I really loved my visit to Bako. The trails were very diverse, but easy to follow, and it was a great place to meet and hang out with other travelers.
See more pictures here.
