Orangutans, Crocodiles and the Cultural Village

Monday, February 21, 2011
Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
My flight from Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia (the first one had been cancelled, they booked me on another one and even that left late) landed in Kuching ~6pm. I booked a taxi to my hostel at the taxi counter in the main terminal, they were a very cheap fixed rate of RM26. I was staying at the Singgahsana Lodge, which got very good reviews in my Lonely Planet and had free WiFi. They didn't do single rooms, only dorm beds or twin/double rooms, so I thought I'd treat myself to a twin room at RM108 night (~£21), en-suite and a/c too. The hostel was across the road from the Sarawak River esplanade, so I had a walk about in the evening and had a snack at the "Riverside Food and Drink Stalls" - 10 chicken satay skewers and an orange juice for RM16.

Sarawak has a very interesting history. From the 15th until the early 19th century, it was under the control of the Sultan of Brunei. In 1836, there was an uprising by the ethnic Bidayuh people. Sir James Brooke was invalided out of the East India Company after being injured in Burma and rather than go home to retire, he set sail looking for adventure. This brought him to Sarawak where he suppressed the rebellion and by way of reward, the Sultan of Brunei installed him as the Rajah of Sarawak in 1842, the first of the so-called "White Rajahs"; nice work if you can get it! The Brooke's (three of them in turn) ruled Sarawak until WWII when the Japanese invaded and after the war it was ceded to the British. In 1963, Sarawak joined Malaya and Sabah to form the Federation of Malaysia.

With James Brooke's appointment, Kuching (then itself named Sarawak) became the capital of Sarawak. In 1872, the second of the White Rajahs, Charles Brooke, renamed the city Kuching, the Malaysian word for cat. Today, the Brooke legacy is very much present in various buildings, walks and street names. It is quite a progressive Asian city and has a population of about 500,000. It is very relaxed, with a long esplanade by the River Sarawak, and plenty of green scenery scattered about. There are excellent restaurants, craft shops and markets, some fine museums and religious buildings, and relics from the time of Brooke.

On Saturday morning, I'd booked a trip to the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre, hopefully to see Borneo's famous great ape, the orangutan, as iconic to Borneo as the panda is to China or the koala to Australia. The trip was organised through my hostel at RM37, which included the entrance fee of RM5 (or you could also get a public bus there which was much cheaper, but there is a half hour walk from the drop-off to the Centre).

Orangutan numbers have declined massively over the years, mainly due to human "intervention", ie. poaching and destruction of habitat (especially due to conversion to oil palm plantations). Semenggoh is a fairly natural place to see orangutans. It's a small area of protected forest, but there isn't enough natural forest in the surrounding area to make full reintroduction into the wild possible. Orangutan sightings aren't always guaranteed there - there are two hour-long feedings per day (at 9am and and at 3pm), but when the surrounding trees are fruiting between Dec and May, sightings are less likely. Sometimes, no sightings are made for days or weeks at a time. It was also chucking it down in the morning, another reason why it would be less likely to see the apes. Being the rainforest, I figured it was going to chuck it down every day, and I'd come prepared with raincoat, waterproof trousers and dry bags, so I might as well put them to use.

At 9am, the walk to the feeding platform was opened. At the platform, the rangers shouted out calls to try and attract orangutans. Then, about 10 minutes later, there was movement in the trees and the noise of crashing branches and an orange bundle of joy appeared, my first (semi-wild) orangutan! About 10 different orangutans appeared during the hour, including an absolutely massive male, a baby, and a mother and baby together. They were majestic creatures, so peaceful, intelligent and human-like. It was a mesmerising hour which ended all too quickly.

Back in town, I went to a few travel agencies to see what tours I could book for the following week - I was interested in visiting Bako NP and maybe an overnight stay at a traditional longhouse. Unfortunately however, as is the bane for single travellers, for virtually all tours they needed a minimum of 2 people (or I could have paid double for the tour on my own, which I didn't really want to do). Since they didn't have any tours booked for the next week, I was stuffed so I just left my contact details with them and hoped they'd get another booking during the week on a trip I wanted to do. I then had lunch at McDonald's (gotta try them out in every country I visit) - RM11 (~£2) for a Big'n'Tasty meal including curly fries which I love!

In the afternoon, I paid a visit to Jong's Crocodile Farm and Zoo. I could have got a public bus (only a few RM) but they only ran every hour or so, so to save waiting around as it was already about 1pm, I decided to get a taxi there and maybe get the bus back. It was RM50 (~£10) for a taxi there, which was pretty good value considering it took about an hour, and as my driver said he'd wait for me while I was at the farm, I decided to use him to return to Kuching too for the same price. Entry to the Farm was RM16.

They had over 2,000 crocodiles bred in captivity at the Farm. They didn't really say what they did with them all, the website just said most were exported - I suspected a combination of wildlife centres, for food and to make products out of the skin. Many of the crocs were in small enclosures, some resembling prison cells. Others were in ponds and lagoons, maybe for breeding, while mothers with eggs were in large lagoons. The website also said that "The farm provides a perfect sanctuary for the reptiles, saving the species from extinction" - yeah, right! There were also a few other animals at the zoo which were kept in small cages; I'm no vet but some of them looked pretty mangey. There was a small crocodile museum with photos and exhibits of some massive crocodiles, including the skull of "Bujang Senang", a legendary hundred year old Sarawakan croc which had polished off over 100 villagers before being killed in 1992.

The reason why I wanted to go to the Farm was the crocodile feeding show at 3pm. As the bell rang for dinner time, amazingly, lots of crocodile heads popped up out of the water in the feeding pond. Pieces of chicken were then winched across the pond on a pulley system and jiggled up and down to attract the crocodiles attention, some of which would spectacularly jump out of the water to try and snaffle a bit of meat. The noise of the snapping jaws was amazingly loud and powerful, like a bear trap going off. The day was rounded off with a chicken dish with some delicious wedges at the Westernised James Brooke restaurant across the road from the hostel, all in ~RM33.

On Sunday, I booked a trip to the Sarawak Cultural Village, a living museum with examples of traditional dwellings built by the different ethnic tribes of Sarawak (except the nomadic Penan, who have their traditional shelters instead) as well as Malay and Chinese townhouses. The dwellings were staffed by tribespeople, traditionally dressed, who demonstrated local arts and crafts, including basketry and weaving, cooking, blowpipe shooting, sago processing and bird's nest soup production, and also played local instruments and performed dances. This was a really excellent "museum", giving the opportunity to see how the different tribes in Sarawak lived. The dwellings were decked out with items of daily life (utensils, musical instruments, weapons, etc) and one house also contained trophy skulls of the headhunters'. There was also a (twice-daily) theatre performance showcasing the traditional dances of the various tribes, spectacular human feats such as the Melanau funeral pole dance and picking up a massive wooden block with teeth, and a blowpipe demonstration.

It was RM100 for the trip to the Cultural Village (which included the RM60 entry and a shuttle bus there and back) and was well worth it. Many longhouses are now modernised, and families also now tended to want individual houses, so it was a good opportunity to see the original styles of the houses. In my opinion, it also pretty much satisfied my desire to visit and stay at an actual tribal longhouse, although I did notice that there were rooms in most of the longhouses set aside for visitors who wanted an overnight experience without trekking out to an actual village.

It was late afternoon when I got back to Kuching and I ventured out to Pizza Hut for a 10" chicken pizza and iced chocolate which came to a very reasonable RM29.

Expenses (excluding food and shopping): RM728, ~£146 (£1 = RM5)
Flight Kuala Lumpur to Kuching (AirAsia) RM125 (flight was RM89, paid an extra RM30 to up my check-in weight allowance to 20kg, plus RM6 credit card fees).
Taxi from airport to hostel RM26
Accommodation: Singgahsana Lodge (3 nights twin room) RM324
Semenggoh Wildlife Centre trip (organised via Singgahsana Lodge): RM37
Jong's Crocodile Farm RM16 entry, RM100 taxi there and back
Sarawak Cultural Village RM100

Links:
http://www.singgahsana.com/main.html
http://www.forestry.sarawak.gov.my/forweb/wildlife/center/semeng/rcenter.htm (Semenggoh Wildlife Centre)
http://www.jongscrocodile.com/
http://www.scv.com.my/main.asp (Sarawak Cultural Village)

Comments

2025-02-11

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank