Borneo – Kuching

A species very high, if not at the very top, of my would love to see in the wild list is the orangutan. It’s a species I have long been fascinated with, they are very special animals and have suffered such persecution and habitat loss, it’s heartbreaking. I’ve watched “Orangutan Jungle School” and Monkey World” on the TV and even visited Chester Zoo to see them in the flesh, but to have a chance to encounter in their native Borneo was an opportunity I never thought I’d have. So when friend Gemma was asked to be a bridesmaid at a wedding in Kuching, Sarawak, and suggested I might like to come too, even with the exorbitant cost, I couldn’t refuse!

The bulk of our photographic opportunities will come after we depart Kuching for Sabah, but we booked a few outings from here too as well as exploring the wildlife found in the city.

First impressions of Borneo – it’s hot! REALLY hot! With very high humidity. Difficult for a pale skinned, cold weather loving Scot. There’s no air at all and it doesn’t seem to matter what time of day or night it is. How people live in a climate like this is incomprehensible to me. It apparently rains a whole lot, but it’s been dry for us so far. The wet weather results in lush flora. It’s very green in Kuching. There are some beautiful trees and a few are in blossom right now which is very pretty.

A river runs through the city, it’s a nasty brown colour and littered with rubbish.

Taxi boats travel back and forwards across it and a few men fish both from boats and the shore.

Amazingly it does appear to hold wildlife. I’ve seen fish jumping and something about 3 feet long swimming into the undergrowth, fishing is what many people do in Borneo, so the colour of the water can’t affect what lives in it. A monitor lizard was enjoying the sunshine at the water’s edge outside our hotel too and a heron, similar to ours, was hunting for prey.

The food here is a mixture of Malaysian and Indian. The oddest thing is that locals eat spicy curries for breakfast! Our hotel breakfast buffet serves an amazing array of options from the recognisable for us westerners to traditional alternatives. Much as I’m keen to try Malayan food, I’m sticking to granola. The coffee is quite different too, it’s very sweet and is made with either evaporated or condensed milk. As for tea it’s primarily green tea or bubble tea (also very sweet apparently). I do miss Tetley.

As for wildlife, there are quite a few different birds in the trees in town. Most are unfamiliar, although there are a large number of feral pigeons and tree sparrows. We’ve seen common myna birds, zebra doves, glossy starlings and yellow-vented bulbul within minutes of our hotel.

I walked to a local park, Reservoir Park. Not far away but hard work in the baking sunshine. Amazingly there were people jogging here… insane! It’s not a particularly large park but has 2 ponds and a variety of trees as well as quite a few seats and shelters out of the sun, thank goodness. The first bird I spotted was a great egret. I quickly realised that there was no need to creep up on it, it was very relaxed. Beautiful, elegant bird that was adept at catching prey. I watched it locate and eat what I think was a gecko. Whilst watching it I also saw a few dragonflies. Not sure of the variety but they were a bit like our darters.

The next bird I came across looked like a smaller version of our magpie. It was black and white and, again, relaxed in my presence. It was an oriental magpie-robin. Also very chilled was a zebra dove which was scavenging for food on the paths. Aside from tree sparrows the only other bird I saw were a pair of yellow-vented bulbuls and a white breasted waterhen.

I’d read that there were squirrels in the park and, as I sat on a bench enjoying a break from the sun movement in a nearby tree caught my attention. It was a red coloured squirrel. Sort of similar to ours, but a deeper colour with no tufts and incredibly quick. It was almost impossible to photograph. Very enjoyable to watch though. It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours although I did come home with a number of insect bites… first of many probably.

There are a number of morning or evening wildlife trips on offer from Kuching, so we’ve booked on a few of them. The first was an evening jungle walk in search of tarsiers (a small, nocturnal monkey) and creatures of the night. Sadly no sign of the tarsiers but the creatures of the night were plentiful. We walked through dense jungle much of which was bamboo. Beforehand we were instructed to walk unless we came across fire ants, in which case we were to run! Fortunately this never happened as running here would have been a challenge. As someone who really doesn’t like spiders this walk was a tad uncomfortable at times. There were quite a few different ones, some large, some small but at least most were static and their eyes lit up from the light of our torches so we knew where they were! Many of the other insects were huge, it’s hard to tell from these images, but really, they were big! Especially the stick insects, grasshoppers and centipedes. Yet the frogs were tiny! We’re going on a frogging walk in a day or two so will hopefully see more species of these. It was a fascinating walk and what I enjoyed the most was the sound of the jungle, it was awesome. Very loud calls, croaks and chirps coming from every direction.

Our other trip was less successful, Semenggoh Wildlife Reserve, where the semi-wild orangutans are offered food twice a day. Sadly they were a no-show, but we have many more opportunities to see them later. And, to be honest, if they are a no-show it means they aren’t needing supplementary food which is a good thing. I made the most of it though, watching and photographing large tortoise, a couple of species of bird, a dragonfly and numerous varieties of butterfly.

Still to come in Kuching, once Gemma’s bridesmaid duties are over, we have two boat trips booked to look for irrawaddy dolphins and hopefully probiscus monkeys plus the aforementioned evening frogging walk. We’ll give the orangutan another go too. On Thursday we head to Sabah. This longer part of our Borneo adventure has been booked through World Wildlife Travel and we’re visiting three different locations so wildlife sightings should be varied and plentiful.

You can read about the second half of my stay in Kuching in this blog.

Other related blogs:

Sepilok (lots of close ups of orangutans and proboscis monkeys)

Kinabatangan

Tabin (coming soon)

All images copyright Karen Miller 2025, no unauthorised use.