Bako National Park

Bako national park was established back in 1957 (same year that Malaysia became an independent country) and covers an area of about 2,700 hectares. It is quite a small area for a national park (and is one of Sarawak's smallest) yet it contains almost every type of vegetation found in Borneo. There is one trail within the park (which takes roughly 3 hours to complete) where you can see 5 out of the 7 different ecosystems that are contained within the park.

These are the deadly (to ants) pitcher plants. Inside, they contain a lethal (yet attractive to insects) acid. The poor insects hop in, then get eaten alive as they slowly dissolve in the liquid. They grow in dense forest, usually where there are fallen leaves.

Mangrove forest

Baco is probably one of the best places in Sarawak to experience wildlife, which is why we decided to spend three days here. It is home to some rather scary animals (such as snakes and the unruly macaque monkeys, not forgetting the carnivorous plants!), but also some lovely ones (such as the proboscis monkeys and comical crabs).


This is the sight that greeted us at Bako national park. It is a Bornean bearded pig. We saw 5 of these trotting in and out of the vegetation.

Having had previous experience of the macaque monkeys we knew about their stealing habits. But on arrival we were forewarned that the ones in the park are particularly bold and are constantly on the rob, so we should lock all doors, windows and ensure all food is locked away. However, we weren't prepared for the day that one scally macaque did a smash 'n' grab of Andrew's foodplate at the restaurant and nicked his fish. The cheek of it!

And they look so innocent and cute....

The snakes in the park, although potentially dangerous (though not lethal to humans) were very docile. During the 3 days we were there, they didn't change position. Could they have been plastic?

These are both types of wagler's pit viper. We also saw a whip snake a couple of times, but in true whip snake style, they were too quick to photograph, or to even say "there goes a whip sn.." before it's buggered off.

We found the hermit crabs very funny, with their borrowed shells. They're all roaming the beach (when the tide is out) in some really odd outfits.

Cocky crab - "come down here and say that"! (were sure it was saying that to us). We think this is some type of fiddler crab. It just has one huge pincer - they were all like this - it's not a disabled one.

We were quite fascinated by the mudskippers, which leap about the shoreline and are very quick (though wouldn't win a race with a whip snake)

Other than the (frankly annoying) macaques, there are some nice monkeys to be found within Baco. One type is the silver leaf monkeys (or silvered langurs) which are quite shy, sleepy and spend most of their day sitting up a tree doing not very much.

Silver leaf monkey

We were really pleased to get to see the proboscis monkeys in their natural habitat. They were quite high up in the canopy, and we could see them clearly leaping from tree to tree. These monkeys are endemic to Borneo and are considered an endangered species. They are mostly arboreal, and spend their time eating young shoots, leaves and sour fruits (they are unable to eat sweet fruits as this causes gas in their stomach and they are in danger of exploding!) One lucky male has a harem of around 12 females. He differs from the female physically; not only is he larger and has a pot pelly, he's also the one with the funny looking, huge pendulous nose (the bigger the better to attract all those females into his harem).

Proboscis monkey

Different view of the same proboscis monkey

If it wasn't for the mosquitoes, we could have tried a nocturnal walk, where we could have spied such delights as a slow loris, western tarsier, mouse deer, flying lemur, pangolin, palm civet and different kinds of bats. But we'd already been eaten alive in the daytime, so we'll watch these from the comfort of our settee, on the telly, with David Attenborough for company (the BBC have been into the Baco national park several times to film).

Bako at sunset.