Beginning with a day hike at Bako National Park, our time on the island of Borneo has been arranged by a travel agency, Borneo Ecotours. If you ever decide to visit Borneo, contact them. The guides they use and the lodgings they book have all been superb.

Twenty-five miles from Kuching, Bako National Park is the oldest and one of the smallest national parks in the state of Sarawak, established in 1957.

The park can only be reached by boat from the village of Kampung Bako through the southernmost end of the South China Sea.

After a 20-minute boat ride, we neared our landing point. It was nice being on the water again.

The tide was out, so we waded ashore.

There are 13 trails to choose from at Bako National Park and overnight lodging is available. Our guide took us first on Telok Paku, the cliff forest trail, to a secluded beach, then back through Ulu Assam, the swamp forest. After lunch, we took a short hike on the boardwalk toward Tanjung Sapi.

The Telok Paku trail went up along the cliff face from the beach…

… to a viewpoint.

From there, it was up and down, up and down, for what seemed longer than the half-mile it actually was.

Here’s the view at the end of the trail. We arrived just behind a group of Germans who had arranged for a boat to pick them up here. Good thing, since one of their group was really struggling in the heat.

We opted, instead, to hike back down through the rocks…

… to the mangrove swamp and back along the water to Park HQ for lunch.

We got our first glimpse of Bornean wildlife while on the hike (below, clockwise from top left):

• Colugo (Flying Lemur), a nocturnal mammal that can glide between trees;
• Long-tailed Macaque, the most common monkey in Borneo, traveling in troops;
• Green Pit Viper, a venomous snake; and
• Bearded Pig, rooting for something to eat – they make a real mess.

It was a moderately challenging hike, mainly because of the heat and humidity, and just a small sampling of what’s to come.

After our boat ride back, we were taken to Kuching International Airport for our flight to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah, then on to Sandakan to visit a couple nature reserves and wildlife rehabilitation centers there.