Bako National Park Travel Guide | Sarawak
The Bako National Park is one of the top National Parks in Sarawak and was one of the best experiences we had been while we traveled through Boneo/ Malaysia. You will find the wild of Borneo, but it’s easy to get there, the park is near Kuching.
From deep rainforest, various beautiful beaches, mangrove forests, carnivorous plants and rocky outcrops – a journey to Bako National Park offers it all! In fact you can find nearly all kind of Borneo’s vegetation inside this area.
Additionally to the natural beauty, you are going to find plenty of wildlife in this park. A perfect place for wild-life lovers who have the possibility to see the famous big nosed monkeys – the Proboscis Monkeys in endemic inhabitant.
It was so cool to see this guy’s hanging around just next to the walking-paths. Also, you have the chance to see long-tailed macaque monkeys, silver leaf monkeys and wild boars strolling around. Keep your eyes open – we also saw some snakes inside the bushes.
We recommend to stay at least 1 or 2 nights inside the park: You will have much more time to explore the jungle trails and to make sure you have the chance to see all the wild animals around.
Beautiful sandstone cliffs and limestones are remarkable for the Bako beaches, such as the Sea Stack – an interesting rock formation. The trail-system in the park is really huge- it provides a wide range of hiking options.
Most of the animals are active in the morning and in the late afternoon – so it’s more likely to see wildlife at these times. At the beach near the National Park Head quarter we saw lots of silver leaf monkeys with their orange babies hovering around in the late afternoon.
Stay overnight
You should definitely stay for 1 or 2 nights in one of the simple lodges. There is a National Park office in Kuching where you can do the reservation. Also you will find a basic restaurant which serves cheap food and drinks.
How to get to Bako National Park?
Take the public red bus nr.1 from Kuching (ever full hour, Square tower waterfront). The bus ride takes about 1 hour.
For protecting the wild life, the National park only can be reached by boat (20 min).
In front of the boat jetty you can buy your boat tickets and the entrance to the park.
With this fantastic scenery, the boat trip by itself was really amazing too.
Read more about Malaysia:
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Malaysia travel guide & backpacking trip highlights
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Borneo – Backpacking Trip Guide East Malaysia
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Visiting the Niah Caves in Borneo
8 Comments
Never heard of this place before but certainly looks like a must visit place.. Love the pictures in this post. Thanks for sharing.
Bako National park seems like a great place to see wildlife in Malaysia. The pictures are really good. Thanks for sharing.
Bako Park looks like a great destination when in Borneo! I would love to see the Proboscis Monkeys & the other wild animals running about though the snakes popping up may be a bit worrisome! Love the little orange baby monkeys you found on the beach. The coastline there looks amazing. Are you allowed to go swimming there?
I loved the young ones in their orange coats, and was wondering how evolution had determined that to be a good move – enabling mum to spot them, maybe? What a brilliant opportunity to see such a range of wildlife. I’d have been eyes-on-stalks the whole time.
Great pictures! It seems that we have seen the same male proboscis next to the path at the headquarter. This big nose looks familiar 😉
Wow that looks incredible! We loved Malaysia but didn’t make it to that side of the country. Look at the noses on those monkeys and that beautiful beach!
What a nice eco park. I love wandering around wildlife parks and sancturarys. Thankyou for introducing us to this one in Borneo. So good to learn about different places to visit
I was in Borneo rainforest last year on a press trip and I loved it. I was lucky enough like you to see the Proboscis Monkeys in the wild and watched them play together. They are definitely interesting. Very cool that you got to walk around and see them, we could only see them from the small boat.