Travel

Spread out over 13 states on the island of Borneo and on peninsular Malaysia in Southwest Asia, Malaysia is a relatively young country with a colorful past and a lush cavalcade of tropical riches. Well after my return home, I still have vivid memories of my time spent traveling in the states of Sarawak, Sabah and on the island of Langkawi, in the state of Kedah.

SARAWAK

The southern state of Sarawak, the largest in Malaysia, takes up most of the northwestern half of the island of Borneo. The region has an interesting history: it was once a private fiefdom for three British rajahs, as well as a pristine frontier where headhunters practiced their ways well into World War II. After the eradication of piracy, Sarawak eventually became a modern state.

The view overlooking Kuching, the capitol of Sarawak, is breath-taking. Mount Santubong broods mysteriously in the distance, and the Sarawak River is where Sir James Brooke, the first white rajah, parked his private gunboat in 1839 and forced the Sultan of Brunei’s lackey to cede part of the sultanate to him. Nearby is the teeming rainforest—one square mile of this region contains more tree species than the whole of Europe or North America.

Music lovers now flock to Kuching every July for the Sarawak Rainforest World Music Festival. The festival’s goal is to preserve and encourage native music from across the globe. Naturally, Malaysian music can be heard here in a locale that is nothing short of unique. Located right in the rainforest, next to towering trees and in a living museum that showcases the indigenous long houses of the former head-hunting tribes of western Borneo, the Rainforest Festival has become a draw for Malaysians and non-Malaysians alike.

But there are other sights and sounds to see. The eerie shrill of the early morning cicadas greeted us as we arrived at the Semenggoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (an orangutan sanctuary), just 40 minutes outside Kuching. Here orphaned or injured orangutans are nursed back to health with the goal of returning them to the wild.

Encountering an orangutan in the wild is not an easy thing—they spend their time high in the trees, and sightings are usually limited to a glimpse of them building sleeping nests in the towering Dipterocarpus trees.

New strains and tones of cicadas reached us as we made our way through the jungle past regiments of army ants. We stopped on a bridge to view huge, creeper-covered ironwood trees that looked as if they had grown right out of “Jack And The Beanstalk.” Suddenly we saw a huge male ape. He appeared content to live the life of Riley with frequent meals at the sanctuary his overgrown coat made him appear as wide as he was tall. A guide then reminded us that a dominant male has the strength of five men and can rip your head off in one stroke. We stopped in our tracks and frowned, remembering that a smile and showing of teeth would be interpreted as a challenge.

SABAH

Sabah, the Malaysian state located on the northern side of Borneo, also abounds with natural wonders. On the Sea of Sulu, just across from the Philippines, the historic capital of Sandakan is the center for excursions into the rainforest. An even better choice for accommodations is a jungle lodge in the heart of the rainforest on the Kinabatangan (Sabah’s longest river). The lodge at Sukau, which serves as a place to eat and as a launch for boat excursions, offers the perfect experience of the jungle’s sights and sounds.

Gliding in a small boat, with a motor designed to make as little noise as possible, we began the day accompanied by more wildly intriguing cicada calls, and then the “whoop-whoop” of a hornbill bird as it made its way across a tributary of the Kinabatangan. A rare green pigeon shot across the bow of the dugout as a blue-eared kingfi sher observed us from the riotous mish mash of root systems that make up the shore.

The proboscis monkeys made an appearance, with the huge bellies and the enormous, long noses of the males presenting an almost comic scene. The guide recognized them from the way the distant tree branches began to swing. Then, as if to remind us of their presence, we heard the rough roar, or so-called “long call” of a dominant male orangutan.

As we continued along, intermediate egrets signaled the way to go like sentinels at almost every turn, and then a wild, mournful and truly otherworldly call rose up from a gibbon monkey hiding in the canopy above. Later we pulled our binoculars out for white-bellied sea eagles, Chinese egrets, estuarine crocodiles, purple herons and stork-billed kingfishers. On the lower Kinabatangan wetlands, we encountered the largest concentration of wildlife in Malaysian Borneo.

Later at a nearby village, we planted trees in a rainforest reforestation program with the local chief. It poured for a moment and then stopped, the rain nourishing the trees that provide fruit for the orangutans and proboscis monkeys. The chief summed up his paradise with a simple maxim: “Yes, it’s peaceful here—no roads, no cars.”

LANGKAWI

The island of Langkawi is located within sight of southern Thailand, at the western extremity of Malaysia. Here in the dense rainforest of the northwestern part of the island, we met up with Irshad Mobarak, one of Malaysia’s best nature guides, and he confirmed the hundreds of species of cicadas that we’d been hearing across Malaysia. He leads morning and evening nature walks from The Datai, which is a jungle resort concealed in the rainforest that blends naturally with the surroundings. (When the resort was being built, elephants—rather than bulldozers—were brought in to remove the logs.) Walks on the grounds guarantee sightings of such diverse wildlife as flying snakes, tiger tarantulas, hill mynah birds, all of the hornbills indigenous to Langkawi, and the colugo (not to be mistaken for the lemur).

Irshad clearly loves the forest, waxing poetic on his favorite tree, the strangling fig—but he also stresses the medicinal value of the forest, stopping to explain plant after plant. Rainforest land should never be stripped for agriculture, he says, and he gestures dramatically as he observes, “This is the way God designed farming.”

Travel notes
		TRAVEL TIPS WHERE TO STAY In Langkawi The Datai http://www.thmhotels.com">www.thmhotels.com Meritus Pelangi Beach Resort & Spa, Langkawi www.pelangibeachresort.com The Westin Langkawi Resort & Spa www.starwoodhotels.com In Kuching, Sarawak Crowne Plaza Riverside www.crowneplaza.com In Sukau, Sabah Sepilok Nature Resort www.sepilok.com AIRLINE CONNECTIONS Eva Air Malaysian Airlines