Bako National Park, Sarawak

One of my favorite, top of the list, destination is always about the nature. Mountains, beaches, islands and more recently National Park. I am an outdoor person, so, it’s only natural for me to love these places.

I visited Kuching a couple of weeks back and on top of my list of places to visit is the Bako National Park where the Amazing Race Asia 1 race ended. I wanted to see for myself the beauty of this place.

Well, Kuching is always synonymous with ever presence cats and its everywhere. And the people in Kuching are so proud of it that they have them every nooks and corner of the town.

Am I the only one who think this cat has his whiskers on the eyebrown?

However, another that is famous in Sarawak is the crocodile. Everytime I cross the river that pass the Kuching town, somebody in the car will asked, is there any crocs bashing by the river bank?

Ah, yes, I am diverting. So, the trip to Bako National Park. It’s about 45 minutes drive to Bako, obviously, and its a pleasant drive there.


Once we reached the jetty, we were greeted with the infamous smell of ‘kaim hu’ or salty fish. The jetty has nothing to shout about, just an office and a jetty. This place is actually located at a fishing village. So, from the jetty, you can see lots of fishing boats and also houses built on stilt. This reminds me of the trip I make to Ranong last year.

The trip to Bako National Park cost us RM 94 for the boat ride both ways and also RM45 for the group ticket admission to the park.

One thing that continues to haunt us is the notice board reminding of crocodiles in the river.
On the way there, we can see a lot of nice scenery as we headed out towards the sea. Left and right are just swamp and at all times, we remind ourselves to keep our hand in the boat.
And not too long into the journey, we saw this!
Once we reach Bako, we were amazed by its beauty of the surrounding. And they have built basic amenities for visitors and if you want, you can opt to spend a few nights there too.
As we only planned for a day trip, we went to the reception to check ourselves in at the national park and choose to go for the short trail hike. We must always check in at the national park no matter how long you plan to be there. And if anytime we want to go for a hike, we have to register at the counter informing them of the time and trail we plan to do. This is for security and emergency reasons, so that they can come to look for you if you don’t make it back.
For the short trail, it says it takes about 3.5 hours to complete it. And this should be fine for us so that we can be back on time for the boat ride back before low tide. You don’t want to take a boat during low tide, if you don’t want to vomit!

This trail start back at where we landed and for the first part, we just walk on platform built on top of the swamp. One good reason for us to start here is that here we will do less hiking on the way up but more of descending. If we use the other way round, we will have to hike up the ladder more. So, from this side, it’s more gradual.
One thing that surprises me as we hike is the soil at this place.

The higher we go; we see white sand like we are at the beach. And, when we are at the top, its just lots and lots of rocks and flat plateau.
But we enjoy the hike up. We can see a lot of Nepenthes or more commonly known as monkey cup.

We saw lots of wonderful trees too.
But further we go into the trail, the trail gets harder. Too many roots on the ground and being cover by leaves make it hard for us to walk.

Then, we are going downhill. This is a relive since that we are running out of time. I think this took us more than 4 hours to complete. We thought we have walk so long only to see the mark saying half a kilometer that we covered in an hour.

Going downhill will bring us around big boulders, which sometimes can be scary. You don’t know what’s inside those holes!
But at the end of the hike, we love it and enjoy it much. But, if next time I am going again, I will plan to stay there at least for a night and take the long trail and bring LOTS and LOTS of WATER with me….

Such a paradox that we are surrounded with water (sea) yet we can’t drink and even the stream water too because it’s full of leaves and the facts it’s brownish it’s acidic.

At the end of the trail, we head out to the beach to check out the infamous beach during the Amazing Race Asia 1.

ahhh…

Oh yes, we saw another croc on our way back to jetty from the park!