Similajau National Park

From Bintulu I travelled by taxi the thirty-odd kilometres to Similajau National Park.  Much of the journey is dominated by what I guess is a large oil refinery with a sinister grey cloud sitting above it, like an upside-down pyramid pointing to a bright flame at the top of a pencil-like chimney.  The National Park itself is a long strip of coast with sandy beaches fringed by forest which, from the look of the logos around the place, appears to get some funding from Shell, perhaps as compensation for the sinister cloud next door.

The Park offices are smart and air conditioned and staffed by smiling young women in green polo shirts.  I book a room for the night, which requires the completion of several forms.  This is done, in mandatory Malaysian bureaucratic style - like a new procedure introduced two minutes ago with no training.  It must actually take a lot of concentration to repeat this pantomime several times a day, week in, week out.

Finally, key in hand, I make my way to my hostel, which looks modern and clean and faces the beach, about two hundred metres away through a patch of woodland.  As is so often the case in Sarawak appearances can be deceptive.  My room is large and was no doubt cleaned after it was last used several weeks ago, but is now littered with the aftermath of a vicious air battle between two armadas of flying insects.

In the afternoon I cross the suspension bridge that leads to the National Park trails along the coast.  These are splendid, allowing one to stroll along paths and boardwalks in the shade of the forest and discover remote beaches with smoothe yellow sand.  Swimming is prohibited, most likely because the staff don't have the language skills to explain what to take care of.  I'm hot and sweaty and I decide "sod it" and take a skinny dip anyway.


Back at the Park HQ in the afternoon I meet a number of other travellers, mainly white and European and all clutching the mandatory Lonely Planet Guide which brought us here.  There was a young East European woman who dismissed most of the places she had been as "nothing special", as if the world existed solely to tickle her jaded palette.  She herself was, I have to say, quite good-looking, but "nothing special".  Also a Canadian woman who was travelling with her three year old daughter around Southeast Asia for several months, so they could "get to know each other".  Tired, under-stimulated and separated from her two older siblings and her dad, I'm sure the poor little mite was having a whale of a time circumnavigating her mum's ego.  Then there was the mum, dad and teenage daughter from the English midlands who spend their summers travelling on a shoestring, dawdling and taking photographs.  Also two lugubrious young Poles throwing themselves enthusiastically at Borneo with smiles on their faces.

Next morning I spent some time at breakfast with two local Chinese journalists.  We talked about democracy, or the lack of it, and corruption in Malaysia, the UK and Italy.  Serious, intelligent young women with a thirst to change things in their country, while making the inevitable compromises which living in a place like Malaysia demands of you.  While discussing tourism in Sarawak they asked me what all these white folk were doing here in an out of the way national park.  I showed them my "Lonely Planet Guide" and explained that if you use the Guide to tour Sarawak in more than about seven days you just inevitably seem to come here.  They didn't seem entirely convinced and remained incredulous at the strange ways of foreign tourists.