Beautiful Bako National Park
Bako National Park
The highlight of my too short stay in Borneo was a visit to Bako National Park. I had experienced a bit of jungle adventure at the Semenggoh Wildlife Center and then Gunung Gading National Park, but Bako was the place to go if you are staying in Kuching in the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
The park is located on the Muara Tebas peninsula at the mouth of the Bako and Kuching Rivers. There is no road access to the park. You have to take a bus from Kuching and then a boat to the park entrance along the coast. More on how to get there in a future post.
I knew this park was going to be something special when I saw these cliffs
Bako is the real deal with beautiful cliffs along the coast as you approach the park with thick impenetrable jungles as far as the eye can see. As soon as I arrived I was greeted with fish eagles, bearded pigs, and proboscis monkeys. Except for the other people in the park and no Wilson, I felt like I was on the set of the movie Castaway as the scenery was similar to the movie with both marine and jungle environments.
Bako through an eye hole
Enjoy these photos and be sure to put Sarawak and Borneo on your next Southeast Asian itinerary. I was a guest of Planet Borneo during my stay in Kuching. I made the trip to Bako on my own, but I highly recommend staying and booking tours through them. Although I was a guest of Planet Borneo, the thoughts, pictures, and love of this jungle park are purely my own.
Bearded pigs are one of the Ambassadors of the park welcoming visitors at the visitor’s center
Proboscis monkeys are the other greeters
Tidal river and dead tree forest
Spider lilies at Bako National park
- Incredible root network on a Bako hiking trail
Bako National Park cliff face
Bako plant along a hiking trail
Boardwalk trail leading into the Bako jungle
Bako National Park view
The beach leads right up to the jungle in Bako National Park
Bako National Park overlook
Adventure on!
The goal of Traveling Ted is to inspire people to outdoor adventure travel and then provide tips on where and how to go. If you liked this post then enter your email in the box to get email notifications for each new entry. Daily travel photos are excluded from your email in order to not flood you with posts. There is no spam and email information will not be shared. Other e-follow options include Facebook (click on the like box to the right) or twitter (click on the pretty bird on the rainbow above).
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Looking forward to reading through more. Excellent blog.Truly looking forward to find out more.
Thanks Des,
I appreciate the comment and the compliment.
Ted Nelson you your article was useful. Bako National Park is indeed one of the must to visit attraction during stay in Borneo. If you also try different place try to travel to Brisbane There are lots of wonderful places here. Brisbane accommodation is also fantastic.
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Thanks John. I will keep Brisbane in mind.
Ted – what a very cool looking national park. The bearded pigs look like the African warthog – my fave animal over there. I feel sorry for that monkey with a nose like that!
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The monkey looks like Jimmy Durante cha-cha-cha
Those are some really awesome shots! I never want to return to Malaysia but I may just go back for Borneo
Sorry you had a bad experience in Malaysia. I think you would like Borneo though.
Sarawak is how Semanunjang wants to be
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I had to google Semanunjang to see what you meant. Semanunjang is too populated to compete with Sarawak in outdoor adventure travel related activities, but I have not traveled enough in mainland Malaysia to see for myself. I need to do more research.
What happened in Malaysia?
We had the worst ferry from Georgetown to langkawi.
Got drugged in penang, couldn’t find food in perhentian islands for about a week, being vegetarians we dint have many options and the ones that were available were below average.
We changed our eating preference to taste the street food in penang, and it was just average. KL was too dirty n polluted and dint really have that much of a feel.
We also went to Cameron Highlands but they were just like any other indian hill station.
Sorry you had such difficulties.
Stunning pictures. The environment is so green.
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Thanks Jeff!
Bearded pigs? That’s so funny!
They need a shave 🙂