Off the beaten path

Many tours of Borneo will take travelers off the beaten path to tribal villages and to places for trekking like the Mount Kinabalu National Park. Operators speak the language and can help with lodging for travelers. Mount Kinabalu is also an excellent place to go mountain climbing and there are mountain climbing tours of the area.

Mount Kinabalu is well known for its tremendous biodiversity with species that exist only in the park and not anywhere else in the world.

Some of these include incredible orchids, of which there are eight hundred species, as well as over six hundred ferns. Fifty of those ferns are found nowhere else in the world. Insectivorous plants live in this National Park.

Animal diversity

Borneo is home to more than three hundred species of birds and over a hundred mammalian species, including one of the four great apes—the Orangutan. While there are less than a hundred orangutans in the Mt. Kinabalu National Park alone, visitors can take in the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary where the tourist can see the orangutans in their natural habitat and learn about their rehabilitation.

Lucky tourists can see baby orangutans being raised in captivity and prepared to one day join the natural outdoors. The goal of the Sanctuary is to keep safe those orangutans that can’t be returned to the wild and to attempt to get as many as possible ready for life in the wild.

Environment

Visitors to Sarawak will be most attracted to the lovely natural environment that the state has to offer. Sarawak is divided into three natural areas. There is a coastal region with lots of swamps and other lowlands. It is a very wet environment. There is a hill region which is more habitable. Many of Sarawak’s towns and cities have been built into this environment. The ports have been built a ways into the rivers because of the swampland near the ocean. The third environmental region is the mountainous region that lies along the border between Sarawak and both Kelabit and Murut.

Kuching

Kuching is the capital city of Sarawak and can be a place to visit in and of itself. Some places to visit are the Boulevard Shopping Complex, expected to open in December of 2007. It will be a great place to shop and will have numerous stores within it. Another good shopping area is the Grand Centro shopping complex. The Green Heights mall is a smaller neighborhood mall with an international cold storage market. The Isthmus Hypermarket mall is another shopping facility for modern shopping. Several large four and five star hotels are available, including the Novotell Interhill Kuching, a four star hotel with a three story market and shopping center. The Spring is the largest lifestyle shopping center in the state and includes a department store.

Tourist attractions

There are several places for tourists to visit, particularly in Kuching. Several excellent museums such as the Sarawak museum, the Chinese museum and the Cat Museum can be visited. Other landmarks are the Astana, which is the Rajah’s former palace, Fort Margherita, the Tua Pek Kong temple and the main bazaar in Kuching. The waterfront is also a lovely place for a stroll, particularly at night.

Arts and Culture

There are numerous local artifacts and cultural exhibits to be seen in the Penang State Museum. Interestingly, the building is actually half a building because the other half of the building was destroyed by Japanese bombing in WWII. One can see a bronze cast of Captain Francis Light, housed at Fort Cornwallis, an old fort in the region. Art lovers can visit the Penang State Art Gallery and the Pinang Gallery to see some of the local artwork.

The Universiti Sains Malaysia Museum and Gallery has a special section on wayang kulit, a type of shadow Puppet Theater. There is a performing arts section as well. Those loving music may want to check out the Penang State Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, a government sponsored youth orchestra and choir. Another amateur orchestra is the Penang Symphony Orchestra. Another lovely musical experience is the Fingerprints Chamber Choir, an a cappella group formed by vocal students of Penang.

Festivals

For those interested in culture at its finest, Penang has a festival called Chingay, held each year as part of Chinese New Year. It also has festivals honoring several Chinese deities. The Chingay highlights flag bearers who balance giant flag poles on their shoulders and toss them to each other. Another festival is the Penang International Dragon Boat Festival; it attracts competitors from all over the world and involves dragon-like boats dating back from ancient China.

Another colorful and exciting festival is the Pesta Pulau Pinang, held every year in December. It includes outdoor concerts, variety shows, food, exhibitions, pet shows and a beauty pageant. An interesting festival is called Thaipusam, a yearly religious festival celebrated by the local Hindus in order to commemorate the victory of Lord Murugan over demons. It falls on a full moon on the tenth month of Thai. This festival involves devotees wearing hooks and spears in their bodies without having the appearance of pain.