Other Twin Otter flights head to settlements in the upper reaches of the Baram river system, from where it’s possible to reach isolated Penan villages offering homestays and yet more treks. Here, close to the Indonesian border, you can undertake extended treks through jungled and mountainous terrain, overnighting in Kelabit villages. Miri itself, though a bland affair that thrives on the proceeds of Sarawak’s oil and gas industry, has good accommodation and is the hub for Twin Otter flights to interior settlements, most notably Bario and Ba’ Kelalan in the Kelabit Highlands. Most tourists fly in, either making the short hop from nearby Miri, Sarawak’s second city, or direct from Kuching, to trek to the park’s limestone Pinnacles and see its extraordinary caves. In terms of pulling power, Bako is exceeded only by Gunung Mulu National Park (just “Mulu” to locals) in the far northeast. A handful of longhouses are also worth visiting, notably east of Kuching at Batang Ai. Although Sarawak is not noted for its beaches, there are beautiful ones in Bako and decent ones nearer Kuching at the family-friendly resorts of Santubong. The Kuching area also packs in lesser national parks, an orang-utan sanctuary and substantial caves. In the southwest, Kuching, the understated, attractive capital, makes a perfect base to explore the superb Bako National Park, with its wild shoreline of mangrove swamp and hinterland of kerangas bush teeming with proboscis monkeys. There are fears, too, for the future of indigenous languages, as only Malay and English are used in much state-run education.įor visitors, the most popular attractions are concentrated at either end of the state. So while there’s no shortage of indigenous people pursuing careers in Sarawak’s cities, you’d be hard-pushed to find Orang Ulu aged under 50 still sporting, say, the once-prized distended earlobes that previous generations developed by wearing heavy earrings, and teenagers are more likely to be downloading Western pop than playing folk instruments. Classic multi-doored longhouses do survive and can be superb places to visit, and some peoples still subsist semi-nomadically in the forest, but social and economic change, along with widespread conversion to Christianity, mean that the old ways are fast dying out.
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While this cultural mosaic is a huge highlight of Sarawak, it would be a mistake to regard the state as some kind of ethnic menagerie full of exotically dressed peoples leading a rustic jungle lifestyle. They’re grouped together in that they live in the “ulu” or upriver regions of this part of the state. Finally, the Orang Ulu include disparate groups of the northern interior such as the Berawan, Kenyah, Kelabit, Kayan and the traditionally nomadic Penan. Then there are the Land Dyaks, who live up in the hills chief among them are the Bidayuh of southwestern Sarawak, representing almost a tenth of the population. They, along with the Muslim Melanau and other tribes, comprise the so-called Sea Dyaks, a slightly odd name given that these groups historically lived along river valleys. The largest tribe by far, the Iban, constitute nearly thirty percent of Sarawak’s population. They’re sometimes subdivided under three broad headings, though it’s nowadays much more common to refer to the tribes by name. Malays and Chinese each make up almost a quarter of Sarawak’s two and a half million people, but indigenous tribal peoples account for nearly half that figure. The lie of the land is complex on many levels, not least demographically. While much of this will have little practical impact for visitors, it’s as well to be aware that the changes you will see throughout the state have a subtext in the ongoing struggle for Sarawak’s soul. The state government has repeatedly won electoral mandates for its policies, but critics complain it has opened up Sarawak’s resources to corporate exploitation in a way that’s at best not transparent and at worst mired in corruption. Many of its forests have been degraded by logging or cleared for oil palm, putting wildlife and the traditional lifestyles of tribal communities under severe pressure. For all its attractions, Sarawak encapsulates the bitter dichotomy between development and conservation more clearly than anywhere else in Malaysia. Would that the reality were so blissfully perfect.