Bako National Park

Sarawak'S Oldest Protected Area, Reached Only By Boat, Where Proboscis Monkeys Come Down To The Mangroves And The Sandstone Is Too Poor To Grow Anything Ordinary · Kuching, Sarawak

BAKO IS SMALL, OLD AND REACHED ONLY BY BOAT, and it does something no other Malaysian park manages: it puts SEVEN DISTINCT VEGETATION TYPES into a few square kilometres, because THE SANDSTONE HERE IS SO NUTRIENT-POOR THAT PLANTS HAVE HAD TO GET STRANGE. There are PITCHER PLANTS all over the kerangas scrub, stunted forest that looks bonsai-ed, mangrove, cliff and beach, all within a morning's walk. THE ANIMALS ARE THE OTHER HALF: PROBOSCIS MONKEYS - found on Borneo and nowhere else, absurd-looking and genuinely hard to see elsewhere - come down to the mangroves in the late afternoon, and BEARDED PIGS wander the beach at the park headquarters. THE SEA STACK at Tanjung Sapi is the postcard. YOU GET THERE BY BOAT FROM BAKO VILLAGE AND THE BOATS DEPEND ON THE TIDE, which strands people who did not ask. Stay the night if you possibly can - the monkeys come down late in the afternoon and the night walk is the other half of the park - and lock everything away at headquarters, because the macaques there are organised and fast.

Bako National Park, Kuching Division, Sarawak, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

BAKO IS ABOUT FORTY MINUTES BY ROAD FROM KUCHING TO BAKO VILLAGE, then a TWENTY-MINUTE BOAT - AND THE BOATS ARE TIDE-DEPENDENT. At low tide they cannot land at the park jetty and you wade; at times they do not run at all. ASK ABOUT THE TIDE BEFORE YOU GO AND BEFORE YOU COME BACK. A PARK FEE IS PAID AT THE VILLAGE. ACCOMMODATION INSIDE THE PARK IS LIMITED AND MUST BE BOOKED AHEAD - staying overnight is how you get the late afternoon and the night walk, which is the whole point. THE TRAILS ARE COLOUR-CODED AND RANGE from twenty minutes to a hard full day; register at headquarters before setting off. MACAQUES AT HEADQUARTERS ARE AGGRESSIVE AND ORGANISED - lock everything away. It rains in every month.

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