Sarawak - Bako National Park

We travelled 45 minutes out of the city to Bako Bazaar, the jumping off point for the transfer by small boat to the peninsula that is Bako National Park. In the river estuary fishermen had constructed scaffolding structures from which to hang their nets to catch shrimp on the incoming tide.  The coastline around the peninsula, jutting out in to the South China Sea was dotted with mangrove swamps, 2 million trees having been planted by the authorities within the last 5 years to attract marine life.  

Bako is notable for its incredible biodiversity, which includes almost every vegetation type in Borneo, and our guide proved to be an authority on the plants and their uses, whether medicinal, for cooking, for building materials, or even for making poisoned darts!  He was also an expert in spotting the wildlife.  Amongst others we saw hermit crabs, fiddler crabs, monitor lizards and mudskippers

(fish with lungs), in the mangrove swamps.  Around the boardwalks bearded pigs were rooting through the undergrowth in search of edible roots.  On the jungle trail, which was possibly the hottest, sweatiness thing I have ever done in my life, we saw proboscis monkeys, silver-leaf monkeys, palm squirrels, and a nocturnal flying lemur almost perfectly camouflaged against the tree trunk where it

was sleeping. Oh, and of course snakes, including two bright green vipers, whose venom kills in 3 hours, long enough the guide assured us to return to the city for treatment since no antidote is kept at the Park HQ!

Back at our hotel we enjoyed a couple of whiskey-sours whilst sitting at the terrace roof-bar before transferring to the airport for our evening flight to Sabah.