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Bako National Park and Why There Are No Snakes in Borneo

Tuesday July 4, 2006

Posted In: Borneo | Comments: 13 | Written By: Kai Conragan

A trail in Bako National Park

The previous day, not knowing what we were doing in Kuching – or how we had ended up there for that matter – we had made the unthinkable decision to visit the Information Center. Normally, Information Centers are a thing to avoid; they inevitably will point you to the most sanitized experience possible for the highest price imaginable. But – we had finally come to admit – we were lost—and damn hot too.

In the past few days it had gone from hot to hotter to hottest to—whatever comes after hottest. How hot? Well, truthfully, I have no idea for I still haven’t mastered the whole celsius thing. But a far more accurate way to gauge the heat than any thermometer is quite simple: the locals. Specifically, the old locals. Go to any place in the world, and the locals, the one’s sitting on a parkbench in the shade or inside a favorite restaurant, will inevitably talk about the weather. And what were they saying here in Kuching? It’s hot. When you are two degrees North of the equator and the locals are complaining about the heat, it’s safe to say it is, in fact, hot.

Standing on the sidewalk with the heat bearing down on us, facing our existential plight of what we were doing?, how had we gotten here?, and, most importantly, why?, the Information Center stood like a white beacon of hope. (I use the word white here not to represent some western ideal of beauty, but simply because the Information Center is, in fact, an old white building). And far more important than the color of the building is the simple fact that it is air-conditioned. The cold air was oozing out of the old white walls, fighting it’s way through the heat and humidity, in a slow, epic battle to reach the air that surrounded us where we stood.

And so we entered the Information Center because we were lost and because we were hot, though not particularly in that order. The sweat on my back, upon entering, turned frigid in a matter of seconds as it was greeted by the cold air. (You can never be comfortable in these parts of the world. You are either sweating from oppressive heat and humidity or shivering from over-zealous air-conditioning. There is no middle ground). We scanned the walls for several moments, studying the maps of Sarawak that had been tacked up along with the bright orange and pink computer pages with fuzzy type containing suggested itineraries: River rafting. Longhouse visit. Giant caves. Rainforest. I had to admit, Borneo seemed to have a lot going for it.

“Where do you want to go”?, the woman at the counter asked, with all the enthusiasm of a rock.

“Bako National Park”, we said. Having digested all the information on the walls, we had decided on Bako National Park as the place to start. Only one and a half hours travel time from Kuching promised ancient rainforest with excellent hiking, a wide-variety of unique plants, and the extremely rare proboscis monkeys. Accomodations for a private bedroom with a fan were only $40/ringit per night, so the price wasn’t bad either.

“How many nights”? she replied, if at all possible, even less enthusiastically than her last question.

“Two nights”, we replied. And with that, we were off. Well… almost. After another night in Kuching, an early morning bus-ride to Bako village, and a boat ride up river and into the South China Sea we were off at which point we found ourselves dropped on the outskirts of the jungle on a white sand beach, where we then hauled ourselves and our backpacks up the sand and to the park ranger’s office.

Boats to Bako National Park

A beach in Bako National Park

Here it must be said, in all fairness to Julie, that she suffers from extreme bouts of Ophidiophobia- fear of snakes. So having been dropped off by a riverboat on a tiny patch of jungle on the island of Borneo was, admittedly, intimidating. Nevertheless, she’s a tough girl and she loves the outdoors, so she was determined not to let a little fear of snakes stop her from experiencing the rainforest. And so there she was, looking at a poster pinned to the wall, one of the one’s you often see in state and national parks that have the cute little illustrations of plants and animals your likely to see. Her eyes made her way down the poster, looking with excitement at the illustration of the proboscis monkey that live in the park, and with determined understanding at the various plants unique to the area, including a good variety of pitcher plants. (She’s good with plants. Had math not frightened her off, she would have made a damn fine biologist). And yet, as her eyes came to the bottom of the poster, there was a decided look of terror as they rested upon the two bottom-most illustrations: one portraying a cobra in it’s classic strike pose, the other being a pit viper wrapping itself around a tree.

“There are no snakes in Borneo”, Julie declared to me as we exited the ranger’s office. It wasn’t so much that she was denying the existence of snakes in Borneo as it was that she was determined that, should she deny it long enough, there would, in fact, cease to be snakes in Borneo. It was a simple issue of mind over matter for her, and through sheer will and determination, she would deny snakes out of existence. On Borneo at least.

The park rangers had been friendly and informative. They gave us the run-down on the trails as well as the general practicalities of the camp. Breakfast is served every morning from 7-9am, lunch from 12-2pm, and dinner from 6-7:30pm. “Watch out for the monkeys when you’re eating”, one ranger had said, “they’ll grab your food if you don’t pay attention”.

Check-in time for our room wasn’t until 2pm, and it being only 10am, we had decided to set off on a short hike to get a taste of what the park offered. We left our oversized backpacks in the storage room and headed off.

We started off our jungle adventure with a nice easy 3km trail that led to a nearby beach. The trails in Bako National Park are extremely well-marked. Every trail has a color-code (white-red, solid white, solid red, etc.), and this color-coding is painted every 30 meters or so on the nearest tree trunk or rock. Short of being color-blind, you’d have to try to get lost. One of the remarkable things about Bako National Park is that, within it’s relatively small 27 sq km boundary, you can experience 7 of Borneo’s main vegetation types. This particular hike started off on a long, wooden walkway that brought you through the mangroves that fringe the coast. Here, we were told by the ranger, is one of the best places to see the proboscis monkey. Morning and evening time are best, when they are feeding. As it was getting close to 11am, there were no monkey to be seen in the trees, so we pushed onwards, entering a deeper patch of trees. A short while later, we found ourselves emerging from the canopy of trees and into the sun, the white sand reflecting brightly as we came out of the shade. The beach was nice. There wasn’t much to it besides a few logs and some nice sandstone formations, but what more can you expect from a deserted beach in Borneo?

Surprisingly, there was someone else on the beach, a local, who approached us and offered us a boat ride around the point for $30/ringit. Apparently there were some nice rocks to see, and another deserted beach. We declined politely and soon set off back to camp for lunch.

Lunch was held mess-hall style in a building adjacent to the ranger station. Besides rice, there was chow mien, some steamed vegetables, chicken, fried eggs, and more. The food wasn’t bad, but wasn’t great either, but seeing as it was the only option, we helped ourselves to generous portions and went and grabbed a seat on the eating deck to dig in.

I hadn’t really payed much attention to the ranger when he had warned us about the monkeys. I’d been in Bali for two months, they had macaques there—hell, one had even pissed on my hat in Ubud. So it was with more surprise than fright that I looked up, moments after sitting down, to see, a mere 6 inches from my face, a momma macaque, standing on the table, with a baby clutching to her stomach. For a few seconds I was even amused, but that quickly ended as she approached closer and, without even a hint of fear, reached down and swiped a giant handful of chow mien from my plate. Now the rangers had said not to leave your food unattended, but I was literally mid-bite when this monkey swooped in. I sat and stared, stunned. It reminded me of a time when I was about 4 and my parents had taken me to the San Francisco Zoo. I was sitting happy as could be, holding a hot dog in my hands that was to be my lunch, when, all of a sudden, a seagull swooped down and took the hot dog right out of my hands, thus making it his lunch, and not mine. At age 4, a hotdog is particularly nice treat, especially when you’re at the zoo. The event had been devastating, and went on to spur a life-long hatred of seagulls. Now, staring eye to eye with a monkey with a handful of chow mien noodles hanging out of her mouth, I was just stupefied.

And yet, there the monkey stood, staring me directly in the eye, as unconcerned as could be, taking me back to some forgotten place in time when a seagull had taken my hotdog and left me feeling utterly helpless in the universe. It may have been my first true existential crisis, the point when a man realizes that there are seagulls out there, some of them may even steal your hotdog, and when they do, nothing or no one is going to help you. I thought for a moment about screaming insults at the monkey – or at the seagull, for at this point they were one in the same, linked in some cosmic way – before I realized how stupid I would look yelling at a monkey for taking my chow mien and, besides, modern day science tells us about 4 DNA – and 1 Y chromosome as it were – separate me from her, so hurling insults at her was really like insulting myself in a way, and this idea just added to the gravity of the situation. Somehow, an animal which is both smaller and supposedly dumber than I, had just stolen my chow mien and was now staring me in the eye, noodles dangling from her lips, as if saying “what are you gonna do about it?”. And the answer was not a damn thing. Julie, fortunately, had the presence of mind to smack the monkey off the table. She’s not good with snakes, but watch out when it comes to monkeys.

The next morning we were up early. As a man still recovering from the shock of having his chow mien stolen from him and the questions about his place in the universe that such an occurrence presents, the only logical step was to show to myself and everyone else that I was still, as it were, a man. I was to do this by hiking 7km through the jungle to what was supposedly a beautiful waterfall in the center of the rainforest. Julie was right there with me—continuing her quest to deny snakes out of existence.

Hiking in the rainforest shares something in common with diving: the slower you go, the more you see. I’m not much of a diver, nor a hiker, and I think it’s safe to say that for the first 3km of our hike, I saw nothing, determined as I was to reach our destination. Julie, who is quite a good diver, and hiker, saw nothing as well. Her hyper-active imagination, however, coupled with that pesky Ophidiophobia led her to think that every root – of which there were thousands – was most certainly a snake. It didn’t help that I kept agreeing with her, musing just how serpentine looking the roots really were. Every time she mentioned that a particular root looked like particular snake, I agreed with her. Every step for her was a deliberate victory in an epic battle of will taking place just steps behind me. I of course, was completely oblivious to this and kept imagining some Tolkien-esque moment when one of the roots would suddenly spring to life, at which point I would chop it down to size with my trusty Leatherman, saving Julie and at the same time regaining my sense of worth in the universe.

Forunately for Julie, none of the roots turned to snakes. Alas, we pressed on. After another hour or so of hiking, Julie altered her snake strategy a bit- an admirable display and one that demonstrated those 4 extra DNA may just be significant after all. She shifted from straight denial of snakes and adopted a more zen philosophy towards them that was to be admired: If a snake slithers in the rainforest and I don’t see or hear it, then certainly it doesn’t exist.

Finally, just before noon, we made it to the waterfall. It was everything one could hope for in a waterfall in the middle of the rainforest. The waterfall wasn’t overly dramatic, it was more cozy and quaint. The water cascaded consistently, yet gently, to a large pool below. The shores had soft moss growing around the edges, perfect for sitting and eating lunch. The water was a dark orange – rust colored almost – giving the water a less than appealing look, but the ranger had told us the water is extremely clean. The color is simply due to the high amounts of iron present in the water.

And what do all men do when faced with an existential crisis while standing beside a waterfall? That’s right, they climb to the top. And climb to the top I did. After which, I climbed down. Satisfied with my feat, Julie and I got started on the lunch we had packed: fried rice with fried egg and some fruit. The combination of lunch and the tranquility of the environment eased both our minds and after an hour or so of just hanging out and enjoying the setting, we both were feeling quite good. Julie, temporarily at least, had forgotten about snakes, which was good, for I had neglected to tell her that I had in fact, seen one, a ways off the trail while I had returned from a jaunt down river. But this only proved the zen attitude had worked, for she had not seen it, and therefore, it did not exist.

Leaving the waterfall in the early afternoon, I felt a familiar sense of sadness, one that I often feel when leaving a beautiful place that more than likely I will never see again. The world is such a big and beautiful place and you can only see so much in a lifetime.

Our quaint little waterfall in the middle of the rainforest

We made the hike back to camp at a much more leisurely pace. We stopped at one point in a semi-dry waterbed and played with the porcelain clay we kept getting our shoes stuck in. Julie made a female figure and I made a valiant attempt at a teapot, which ended up looking like kindergartner’s creation. We left our creations perched on a large rock in the trail as an omen for the next hikers to find their way to this part of the world. And with the slow pace we even saw a few things. We finally caught sight of some pitcher plants I was both relieved and disappointed to realize they don’t grow to sizes that allow them to swallow large mammals. Almost all the way back at camp we caught site of a giant, male proboscis monkey, chewing away at some leaves in a tree. At this point the trail was still quite high in the rainforest, so we were nearly at eye-level with the big monkey. The male proboscis monkey has a distinct feature: a very large nose. In no small parallel to their cousins, the homosapien (that whole DNA thing again), the larger the nose the more attractive the male is to the female. The only problem is, and there simply is no tactful way to say it—the proboscis monkey nose looks like a big penis. This particular monkey must have been popular with ladies, for not only did he have a giant nose, but his actual penis- which he was showing us by sitting spread eagle in the tree – was fairly large and the color of bright red lipstick.

Monkey showing us his goods (next time we’ll bring the long lens)

Pitcher plant with a lunch of a dead ant inside

Pottery time in the jungle

As amusing as the monkey was (and as cool as it was to see something so rare so close-up), the best was yet to come. Only a short while later on the trail we saw what was hands down my favorite thing of the day: a dung beetle. I first learned of the dung beetle while watching a wonderful movie given to us by Julie’s cousin Trevor called Microcosmos (well worth a watch if you’ve never seen it). The dung beetle, for those who don’t know, lives by collecting feces and rolling it into a ball, which he then rolls with him wherever he goes. If he gets hungry, he simply eats from the source of his labor. The other fascinating thing about dung beetles is that they are always determined to walk in a straight line. No matter what obstacle stands in their way – be it a rock, a root, or tree – they will continue to persevere until they have gotten themselves and their ball of dung up and over the obstacle. Watching this dung beetle struggle valiantly to get his ball of dung up and over a particularly nasty root was a thing of beauty. The dung beetle is truly a poetic existence, for he knows exactly his place in the universe, even if it is rolling around a giant ball of shit.

Poetic journey of the dung beetle continues

As for Julie, she never did see a snake, proving once and for all, there are no snakes in Borneo.

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