The Adventures of Doug and Bec: Kuching

On Sunday we headed an hour north east of Kuching to spend the day kayaking on one of the local creeks with the Kayak Kuching company on a trip that was 188 ringot each (ie; $60 AUD each).

After 45 minutes of driving we arrived at a small village where the kayaking company worked from. Here we piled several kayaks on the roof of the van to head another 15km upstream where we would start our trip. The creek flowed through the middle of the town, and a quick walk over the suspension bridge showed it to be shallow but running quite fast.

We arrived at our starting destination shortly later and geared up quickly as there was only Bec and I in our group, along with our local tour guide, Beko. The kayaks we used were the sit-on type kayaks (and funnily enough the one Bec and I had was identical to the one Mum and Dad own). The creek water where we started was flowing quite fast, and we were happy to finally find some cool water, as the whole way through Asia we had been swimming in 30+ degree temperatures.

We kayaked down the river, and over small rapids for about a hour before stopping on the bank and walking up a small creek to a waterfall. Here we ran into another kayak group of four people. The waterfall was quite small, but an excellent place for a bit of a swim and just like the main creek, the water was quite cool.

After another hour of kayaking and some slightly bigger rapids (still only class 1 rapids) we stopped at a large sand bank (well actually a rock bank really) and headed up the steep bank to a small village for lunch. The Village was perhaps 20 metres above the creek, and our guide explained that in 2005 the area flooded and the village had about a metre of water through it, and didn't get electricity back up and running until 2010!

Unfortunately for me, our lunch consisted of egg sandwiches... so i had a great lunch of pineapple instead and had a muesli bar I had luckily added to my backpack. Our lunch came with a drink we had been seeing around town called 100plus, which we had intended to try and turned out to be a sort of soda based lemon drink... not quite like anything we have back home, but was extremely popular in Malaysia. After our lunch we had a bit of a walk around town and saw some of the local buildings. We met 2 hyperactive puppies and saw the drying of pepper corns which is one of the main agricultural products of the area.

At about 1pm we headed back down to the kayaks and set off downstream through more minor rapids before coming to an amazing section of the creek where the water had washed away the massive rocks on the sides of the creek to form large overhanging rock formations that we could kayak under. We also kayaked into a small cave on the side of the creek which was home to at least one bat that we saw hanging from the roof above us.

The scenery throughout the kayak trip was incredible, and a lot of the time the rainforest canopy basically covered the creek and the large trees sent down massive vines to levels just above the creek. One of these we stopped out and after being given the idea from our tour guide I managed to climb up it... about a metre!

We had a very interesting tour guide, and throughout the day we heard some stories from him including everything from the time he crashed his motorbike and had amnesia for several months, to the time he nearly drowned out to sea! He spoke to us about how awkward it is when his sister and her husband come over for dinner, as they are Muslim and do not eat pork... something his family loves to eat! I was glad we had him as a guide, as he had some interesting insights on religion and even the politics of his country!

We arrived at the end of the kayak trip at about 3pm before an hour drive back to our hotel. This trip, which we did not originality plan to do, ended up being one of the most enjoyable parts of our trip, and definitely had some of the best scenery!