Mulu National Park - Caves and Bats

On 12th November I arrived in Mulu after a quick flight from Kuching on the beast below. Very exciting flight, and a hairy landing in the middle of nowhere! Now you may not have heard of Mulu but think BBC documentary, David Attenborough lying in a massive pile of bat shit, and lots of bats, snakes snatching bats from the air and so on.

The park is set up quite well and they have amazingly knowledgeable guides, who know everything about the park. The caves are so impressive, it's beyond words and the wildlife is immense and over whelming. Look it up on wikipedia, it explains a lot. I learnt quite a lot but won't bore you but the reason they are so big is because of the composition of the limestone and the extremely abundant rainfall that occurs in Mulu. A combination which leads to some of the biggest caves in the world and stalagmites and -tites that would impress any geologist :) Don't look up though, I managed to get a drip of water in the eye (from 150 metres above) - it's so acid i thought my eye was going to melt. I'm sure I've lost a layer of my cornea or something equally as bad.



First night after visiting the Deer Cave which is unbelievable, you sit and wait for the bats to come out (sometimes they do, sometimes they don't). I got very lucky. They come out in batches of about, oh half a million, so as to confuse the massive eagles that sit and wait for them to leave. Along with the eagles, there are also the snakes hanging in the entrance to the cave ready to eat them. So no wonder they are frightened.

 I visited all the caves in the park that I could, and have so many photos. Anyway, all a bit boring but if you are ever in Borneo it should be on the top of your list.

Along with the walking caves, I thought it would cool to go adventure caving, with a vague feeling that something happened to me in a cave somewhere else in the world that I didn't like but couldn't remember so brushed it under the mat. All very cool, lots of sweaty climbing, mud, water, more mud, bats, swiftlets (do you know they use high frequency sonar to traverse through the caves - very clever little birdies), blind crabs, crickets and even some of those bat eating snakes (Racer Snakes - hence the name of the cave is "Racer"). And oh yes, spiders. Now I remember. Not quite as big as Thailand though, so that was nice.

When I wasn't caving with the living dead, I was lounging, and watching the insects. Some really beautiful ones (incredible butterflies), I am a bit of a convert. Went on a night walk and saw some awesome frogs, stick insects (more like branch insects) and a spider that used a leaf as camouflage, ugly but cool. Worryingly, something ate my banana, that was in my closed bag..... little devil.

Attempted to leave Mulu on 15th November but flight got cancelled because of rain.....hmm. This turned out to be quite disastrous because even though they put me in a "luxury" resort that night, I spent the entire next day travelling on 3, get it, 3 flights to Kota Kinabalu. I originally booked 1 flight direct to KK. How did 1 turn to 3? It was the most illogical experience I have come across in quite a while. To top it off, the plane was the same plane for the entire journey, they wouldn't let me check my large bag into the hold, and at each stop I had to get off with my bag, go through immigration and get back on the plane. RETARDED. Suffice to say I lost the rag on the third flight when the stewardess told me I couldn't have my big bag on the plane! On the plus side I got a free lift from the airport to my hostel by some guy who had come all the way from Mulu with me (his name was Gladstone - why is it asians always choose such interesting western names?). So now I'm in KK until the 18th. Had some wonderful food tonight (Philippino BBQ no less) and can't wait to get to bed already.