World Malaysia Sarawak Kuching

A Whole New World

Night Hike Jul 15, 2012

As a warm up for what I hope to be a week’s worth of hiking on Borneo, I spent two days in Bako National Park located on a peninsula extending into the South China Sea. It is only about 1-1/2 hours from Kuching but it can only be accessed by boat. The trails through the jungle are well marked and quite beautiful. I spent the night in a Park Service dorm so I also had a chance to take a ranger-led night hike. That hike was particularly interesting because we saw a flying lemur, which is like a large flying squirrel (approximately 2 feet long and up to 4 lbs. in weight). These animals have a large flap of skin between their legs which allows them to glide up to 100 meters. They spend their entire lives in trees because that flap of skin makes walking on the ground next to impossible. We were fortunate enough to watch the one we spotted glide from tree to tree as though it were really flying. It even changed directions in midflight. We also saw a tarantula, which is the first time I ever saw one in the wild. At one point the guides had us all shut off our flashlights and the jungle floor was glowing with luminous mushrooms and fungus. I was standing next to a particularly large patch and it seemed as though a full moon were shining on the ground when in fact it was overcast and drizzling. Very interesting.

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