This week’s travel dream: Malaysia’s ever-so-convenient rain forest

Only on a trip to Kuching could you spend an afternoon with orangutans in the jungle and be back to the city in time to enjoy a French dinner, said Daniel Robinson in The New York Times. The biggest city on Borneo and capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak is “kaleidoscopically diverse.” In an afternoon, you’ll encounter both “dragon-festooned” Chinese temples and a 19th-century South Indian mosque. Drive an hour out of the city, and you’ll discover “some of the most ancient and species-rich rain forests on earth.” Spend a week here and you can “plunge into an exotic world of primeval flora and endangered fauna,” yet still have time to shop in the main bazaar for handmade artifacts.

A 20-minute drive from Kuching put me deep in the tangle of Semenggoh Nature Reserve, one of the best places to see Asia’s only great ape in the wild. An “energetic rustle of leaves” indicated our first orangutan’s arrival. Seconds later, a young ape swung toward us, “grabbing onto vines and branches with gravity-defying agility.” A mother carrying a baby appeared, stuffed as many bananas as she could into her mouth, then scrambled up a vine and disappeared into the jungle. By sunset, I was back in the city, strolling along the Waterfront Promenade, a “ribbon of flower beds, tropical trees, and food stalls” on the Sarawak River. As I snacked on “deliciously crunchy” jungle fern tips, or midin, I wandered in and out of “arcaded colonial-era Chinese shophouses” showcasing artifacts handcrafted by Borneo’s indigenous Dayak people.

One afternoon, I received a hot tip about the “elusive rafflesia, the world’s largest flower.” Rafflesia flowers last just a few days, so I jumped at the chance to see one in bloom. I drove two hours to Gunung Gading National Park. A guide led me through a patch of rain forest to locate the flower. Stepping off the park’s plank walk, we crossed a rocky hillside. Suddenly, there it was: “an orange-red Rafflesia tuan-mudae 30 inches in diameter, its five meaty petals mottled with warty raised spots” circling its “basketball-size diaphragm.” One of the “most extraordinary plants on earth”—but just another of Kuching’s “sundry delights.”

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