Our National Park

From Bangar, a bus picked us up to to Batang Duri where the road ended. At Batang Duri we went on a ride on a longboat going further upstream. This is the most exciting part of the journey. The Temburong river is no doubt the most amazing river in Bumi Bertuah. This is the only river that has very fast water flow, that is laced with rocky beds and has lots of rapids. The quick change in the overall elevation also makes the water cold and refreshing.

This is my third time here. Previous trips were to the UBD research centre further upstream and to the waterfall or the wasai location. This time around we went for the canopy walkway.

There I met a chap who also works as a tour guide but for another company. He said that this park is no doubt a real beauty and that many foreign tourists were thrilled by the trip and the jungle experience. However he said unfortunately there are hardly many locals who wanted to go here. It seems that the locals twinge on the idea that they have to pay a small amount to visit their own national park. Like today there must have only been about 30 locals who visited the park.

When everything are free in the country - education, health, land, housing, Ramadan dates and an endless list of other things, the idea of paying when in-country is really something hard to swallow. It is as if everyone are expecting that a trip to our own National Park is also to be made free as well.

And the chap said that surprisingly these very people will not even blink an eye when they have to pay for entrance fee to national parks outside the country. At this moment, someone was saying that about 20,000 of our countrymen are holidaying in Sabah, visiting all sort of places. That number is really hard to believe but imagine that right now every hotels and apartments are full and that the "B" licence plates are causing traffic jams over there.