Daybreak comes with thick mist and drizzle in Kampung Bako. The inhabitants of the languid fishing village, perched on the muddy banks of the Sarawak River's mouth in western Borneo, grin and say the rain is a gift from the gods. Bad weather means good business: rainproof ponchos are in big demand among the ill-prepared tourists who pass through the village on their way to the jungle. The cause of all the dampness is Bako National Park, a vast tract of towering dipterocarp rainforest that sprawls across the Muara Tabas peninsula, a region that remains pristine and relatively pollution free thanks to the Sarawak government's decision not to let hotel developers in or extend access roads.
'Forget the camera and pack the binoculars if you really want to savour the rainforest experience,' advises Stephan Veiss, a Swiss wildlife filmmaker spending two months documenting the feeding habits of Bako's most famous resident, the bizarre-looking proboscis monkey. Endemic to the island of Borneo, its numbers have dwindled to an all-time low of about 1,000 (from an estimated 6,400 in 1977) owing to a loss of coastal and riverine habitat caused by logging and human migration.
For zoologists and wildlife filmmakers, Bako is one of the few places left in Asia where this large, bulbous-nosed tree leaper can be glimpsed at close quarters, along with the abundance of other rare wildlife that inhabits the park's seven distinct ecosystems. Not surprisingly, the professional creature-watchers outnumber tourists by two to one and camouflaged viewing hides lend the coastal mangroves the strange air of a covert operation.
After a frantic, vertebrae-jarring bus ride from Sarawak's capital, the sleepy river port of Kuching, the journey becomes more of a Conrad-style river adventure at Kampung Bako. Beyond the poncho sellers, an assortment of marine craft awaits with willing (and not so willing) crews of clove cigarette-puffing boatmen to carry you an hour farther along the coast to Bako National Park headquarters at Telok Assam beach.
Weather conditions can deteriorate rapidly across the Bornean land mass and I suddenly find myself buffeted by strengthening sea winds and staring up at a darkening sky. Joseph Raman, the village's only available boatman, is not keen to take passengers out in a squall.
A change in mood, unlike weather, can be tempted, however, and 10 minutes (and M$10/HK$22) later I sit hunched in a coffin-sized boat bobbing violently at the river mouth. My hands grip the gunwhales and the old man's huge outboard engine catapults us out into the ocean.