Sydney’s Corner: Bako National Park

We went to Bako National Park on the island of Borneo.  I thought that Bako was so cool I had to tell you about Bako National Park.

We took a 45-minute bus ride and boat ride to get to Bako National Park.  When we got off the bus, we had to take a boat ride through crocodile infested waters.  Sadly, we saw no crocodiles there. I was really hoping to see crocodiles. Ohhh well.

When we got to the beach of Bako National Park, we had to walk a little bit to get to the park headquarters.  As we were walking to our lodge, we found a troop of mean monkeys called macaques (ma-kaks).  We walked through the troop, looking at the cute little baby monkeys.  When we got to the door, dad was trying to unlock it when a male started growling at us.  He started coming forward.  We were whacking him with the towels and he did not go away.  He kept on coming.  He jumped at us just as the door slid open.  We went into the house.  We were safe.  We took peeks at the monkeys from inside the safety of the house.  They would not go away.  Finally we grabbed a water bottle and filled it with tap water and we sprayed them with the tap water.  We went on a short hike after the monkeys left.

While in Bako, we did lots of hiking and saw some animals of Bako.  We also went on a night hike.  We spent 3 days at Bako National Park.  When we were leaving someone told us we had a giant python living behind our house. How scary! Well sadly that is the end of our stay in Bako.

Here are the animals we saw in Bako: proboscis monkey, snakes, spiders, bugs, turtles, catfish, kingfisher, swallow, silver langur monkey, macaques, bearded pig, and bats

Now I will tell you facts about some of the animals and plants we saw.

Proboscis Monkey

This monkey has an odd shaped nose.  Only the males have the dangly nose.  The females have elfish looking noses.  The males use their nose to attract females, because females really like the big noses.  The males have that nose because it makes their bark louder.  Proboscis Monkeys are only found in Borneo.  They are endangered, but common to see in Bako.

Silver Langur

Now this is a rare monkey to see.  They are silver and their babies are gold color.  How weird!   They spend most of their time in trees and rarely come down to the ground.  They are also called leaf monkeys because they mostly eat leaves.

Macaques

This monkey is VERY cheeky.  It is a common monkey to find in SE Asia.  This monkey will sneak into kitchens just to get food.  This monkey is fearless of humans.

Snakes

We do not know what snakes we saw, but they were cool.  The snakes are harmless at Bako park except one breed.  The wagler’s pit viper is the only poisonous snake in Bako.  Sadly, we did not see the wagler’s pit viper, but mom is glad we did not see the wagler’s pit viper.

Kingfisher

This is a very cool bird to see.  It is very colorful.

Pitcher Plant

This plant is really cool and interesting.  It looks like a pitcher of course.  When a bug climbs into the plant to get water, the bug will fall in and dissolve in the water from the plant.  The plant uses the bug as food.  Like that?  That’s the end of the bug’s life when it falls into the water.  Some of the bigger pitcher plants can even catch a frog.

Bearded Pig

This is the biggest mammal in Bako.  Its’ hair makes it look like it has a beard.  These boars have tusks.  Bearded pigs eat roots, worms, seeds, fruits, herbs and small animals.  We saw a lot of them around park headquarters.

My favorite animal we saw was the Silver langur, because it was beautiful.  What is your favorite animal?