Around Kuching

The most accessible mountain on the Sarawak/Kalimantan border, the spectacular 1300-metre-high GUNUNG PENRISSEN stands 5km west of Annah Rais. The Penrissen hike involves tough walking along narrow paths and crossing fast-flowing streams that descend from the source of the Sarawak River; vertical ladders help on the last section. As the trails aren’t easy to follow, you must hire a guide. Some hikers opt to come with a Kuching-based tour operator (most don’t advertise Penrissen but can arrange trips); some contact the Tourist Guide Association; and others try to find guides in Annah Rais. The last is a good option if you have your own car (there’s no public transport), but don’t just drive up and expect a guide to be available; contact Edward (t016 871 1957), one of the residents, in advance for help.

Cut off from Kuching by the Santubong River to the south, the Santubong Peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Excavation in the 1960s and 1970s found tens of thousands of artefacts, including digging implements, across six neighbouring sites; they dated back to 3000 BC, when the Indian/Javanese Empire extended here, though little of any ancient civilisation can be seen today.

Dominated by the 810-metre Gunung Santubong, the area is dotted with oddly shaped geological formations amid patches of thick forest. The mountain is actually a national park (though there are no facilities and no entrance fee to pay) and makes for a moderately taxing trek. It takes around four hours to reach the summit, with rope ladders to help where things get steep; one trail up is clearly signed next to the Green Paradise Café on the main road. However, most visitors prefer to venture out to the beaches of Damai, 35km from Kuching at the peninsula’s northwest tip, or the excellent if pricey folk museum nearby, the Sarawak Cultural Village. Since the 1980s, stretches of the river and coastline have been developed as retreats for tourists and city-weary locals, though thankfully the resorts have left the tranquil, almost lonesome, nature of the area largely undisturbed. There are also two low-key villages, Buntal and Kampung Santubong.

East of the Santubong Peninsula, and no further away from Kuching, a second peninsula is occupied by the fabulous BAKO NATIONAL PARK, named for its location at the mouth of the Bako River. Sarawak’s oldest national park (once a timber reserve, it attained its present, fully protected status in 1957), it’s also among its most memorable. Its steep coastal cliffs, offering huge vistas over the South China Sea, are thrillingly different from the rest of the predominantly flat and muddy Sarawak coastline, and there are opportunities to spot proboscis monkeys, swim in jungle streams or at isolated sandy coves, and hike through terrain that takes in rainforest, mangrove and kerangas, with pitcher plants easily visible on some trails.

Bako is such a gem that trying to pack it all into one day is not ideal, though you can make a go of it if you set out early from Kuching and pay a boatman at the park to take you out to a remote beach, then walk back to the park headquarters; this gives you a good taste of the park without having to do a trek in both directions. A stay of at least one night is still preferable, though, and there’s a range of accommodation to choose from, some newly built.

The first forest reserve in the state, the Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre was set aside by Vyner Brooke in 1920. Today it’s a sort of open zoo in a surviving pocket of forest, where tourists flock to watch orang-utans being fed fruit by rangers, who have names for all of them. How many you’re likely to see will depend on the time of year – when wild fruits are in season, fewer orang-utans emerge from the forest to seek out the rangers.

Most of the action takes place at a clearing, with seating close by, reached by a short jungle trail from the car park. Don’t be surprised if you see the critters roaming around the car park itself – and give them a wide berth if you do. Look out also for orang-utan nests, which they build in the treetops using clumps of leaves and branches, for sleeping.

Nineteenth-century prospectors were drawn to BAU, half an hour’s drive southwest of Kuching, by the gold that veined the surrounding countryside, but the modern-day market town is mundane in the extreme, though it does have a picturesque mining lake, Blue Lake, on its southwestern edge. Pretty though the lake is, it contains arsenic and is unsafe to swim in; the main reason to come to Bau is to visit the two nearby caves, around 4km apart to the west. If you have to pick one of the two – which you may well have to do if relying on public transport – go to the larger, Fairy Cave. Steps inside enable you to wander through the gloom towards a gaping maw at one end of the system, which lets in refreshing breezes and enough light for the cave floor to be blanketed in ferns and moss. Wind Cave meanders through a rocky outcrop on the banks of one branch of the Sarawak river system, and again steps and planks make it possible to wander from one side of the outcrop to the other.