It’s our last night in Sarawak before we get the bus tomorrow to Brunei (another stamp for the passport!). From Kuching we caught a 45 minute flight north east to a small town of Bintulu, to base ourselves from to visit the Niah Caves on the way to Miri. We stayed for 2 nights in the swankiest place we’ve stayed for a long time – actually looked like a hotel and had the best shower ever and a tv! Our room was the best thing about Bintulu – in hindsight we should have just stayed the night and caught the bus the next day, but we thought we’d check out what the town had to offer for a day… hmmm not a lot. We wandered around for about an hour and the most exciting thing that happened was some Indonesians wanting their picture taken with us! We decided to visit the nearby botanical gardens and zoo – well, it amused us for a couple of hours but was weirdly deserted and in a bit of a state of disrepair. And the animals, especially the birds, were kept in very small cages which didn’t make us feel too happy about the place. At least the tiger had a big area to roam around in. They did have a few hornbills – indigenous to Borneo and was kinda nice to see them up close as in the wild you usually only see them flying way above your head.
All in all, I wouldn’t really recommend Bintulu for your next holiday destination. So we were quite happy to jump on the bus to Niah the next morning – although we got rushed onto the bus before we could buy breakfast so by 12.45pm when we we’re able to get food, I was starving! The bus journey took us past many many palm oil plantations and some jungle. We arrived in Niah junction which is about 11km from the national park. We hired a man and car to drive us to the park, and lo and behold, about 5 minutes down the road, the road was flooded and impassable. The driver attempted to tell us that we had to get out and walk (with ALL our stuff) through the puddle and then we’d get through from there. But then we reached an even more flooded point where they were using boats to cross! Fortunately a man at the big fat puddle told us that the national park was closed as the caves were flooded to waist height. Oh dear. So we walked back through the puddle and the man and car were more than happy to take us back to the bus station, and take more of our money of course. Gah. Fortunately, this was all in the morning so there were more buses stopping at Niah to carry on to Miri where we were heading next anyway. Eventually we found ourselves a bed for the night in a very friendly backpackers place with loads of cats and kittens running around. Miri is also another stopping over town, so we filled a day wandering around the town and visiting the air-con shopping plaza in search of new flip-flops (failed) and a cheapo mobile phone to get us back connected with the world a bit, and mostly to book hotels etc without having to rely on having wifi access to use Skype. We visited the pride and joy of Miri – their themed and landscaped town park – before catching the afternoon half hour flight to Mulu National Park, on the border with Brunei. The flight was an event in itself - we were supposed to be flying on a Fokker-50 but there were only 6 of us, so they put us on a Twin Otter flying bus instead! It was good to see the landscape from above - can really see how much of the land is now being logged or used for palm oil - there's stil a lot of jungle, but it's definitely shrinking...
Mulu National Park is most famous for it’s caves (Deer Cave was featured in the BBC Planet Earth cave episode) and what lives in caves…bats. On our first afternoon in Mulu, after dumping our bags in the dorm room, we walked for about 45 minutes through the jungle to the bat observatory. On most afternoons between 4 and 6pm, the bats that live in deer cave come flying out in amazing patterns like smoke across the sky. They head over 80km to the coast each night to feed on insects washed down with seawater. And we were lucky enough to see them – they hadn’t come out the previous day and everyone had just had to sit for over 2 hours looking at the cave mouth – it was a pretty spectacular sight watching 3 million bats leave their cave.
We had a ‘cave day’ the next day and visited all 4 of the show caves. In the morning we walked for over an hour along treacherously slippery wooden plankwalks and steps to meet up with the rest of the group who had got the boat – we felt and looked ridiculously hot and sweaty compared to them! But we got to see another cave on the way – small enough to have to duck through and not very well lit so headtorches were required. Following our guide, we visited Wind Cave and Clearwater Cave – the latter still has the river running through it and creates a a clear blue pool near the cave mouth which is great for swimming – I was so hot I contemplated jumping in even though I’d not brought my swim things! Clearwater Cave system in the longest in the world – over 150km long and they’re still discovering new bits.
Huntsman's Spider - about the size of a big hand... eek
We bailed out on the walk back and got the boat – a wonderfully breezy trip down the river past local villagers bathing and fishing. After a well needed lunch, shower and rest, we headed to Lang and Deer Cave. We had a really helpful guide pointing out all sorts of plants and insects along the way – never ever would have spotted the stick insect without an expert!
Mating millipedes:
Lang Cave is pretty small but full of amazing stalagmite and stalactite formations – reminded me of Cheddar Gorge (but without the west country accented commentary and a lot hotter). They saved the best for last as Deer Cave is by far the most amazing cave I’ve ever seen – there’s only a few limestone formations, but the place is HUGE. It has the biggest cave mouth in the world – somewhere between 174 and 220m (my two guidebooks differ in their opinion!) and is 2km long and is pretty much around that height the whole way along.
I couldn’t really get a sense of scale of things until now again a person pops into a view and suddenly you realize quite how massive it is. Unfortunately the place stinks as there are between 2 and 3 million bats that make the ceiling of Deer Cave their home and that makes for a lot of guano… Although the guano provides food and nutrients to a lot of insects (including cockroaches that clamber all over the piles on the floor – they are thankfully a lot smaller than the cockroaches that appear in our bathrooms now and again).
Chris and a pile of guano cleared from the paths:
We walked for about 30 minutes into the cave and at the far end, the roof caved in and created what’s known and the Garden of Eden – a jungle filled patch in between Deer and Green Caves.
We had hoped that the bats would start their fly-out whilst we were still in there but nope. As we visited during the rainy season, there were some amazing sights of the water dripping through the roof backlit by sunlight. We decided not to wait to see the bats fly out again, and so headed back along the plankwalk serenaded by frogs and insects (one of which was so loud I had to cover my ears at one point!). Needless to say, I slept very well that night even though we were in an 18-bed dorm.
We caught a late afternoon flight back to Miri, so Chris braved the canopy walk in the morning whilst I kept two feet on the ground and did a small jungle trail. I was very glad that I didn’t pay the £6 to do the canopy walk as even Chris was a bit wary in places – it’s up to 35m off the ground and only 2 planks of wood wide. Eeeeek. Nice views though apparently!
Some bugs from my walk:
We’re back in Miri now for one night and heading to Brunei tomorrow – country number 7 – and we’re treating ourselves to a 3 star hotel complete with pool… mmmm…
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