Blogs from Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia - page 5

Gunung Mulu National park, a UNESCO heritage site, is the largest national park in Malaysian Borneo and is famous for it's enormous cave network and variety of animal, insect and plant life. It's also very difficult to get to and from Sabah it's nearly impossible overland. So one very short prop plane journey later and we were arriving into the tiny air strip that serves the park and were checking into the hostel that would be home for the next few days. It was a really beautiful big room with huge windows and with an abundance of exotic insects hiding where you would most expect them! The National Park is mainly primary rainforest and, because it gets so much rain, the forest floor is very swampy. There is an extensive network of boardwalks and cement trails ... read more

After all of the negativity of Bali, our trip has returned something of a large dose of excitement in the last few days, with a trip that was quite simply out of this world. Not, however, until the evil claws of Indonesian bus travel hit us again, and it nearly ruined our trip for good. We set off from Bali at 6.30pm on the 11th and it was ample enough time , give or take four hours, to to get to the airport in Java. However, at 9.30pm, we were still in Kuta - about 3 miles from where we set off. A lack of speed by the driver (something which I'd usually love) and lack of ability to direct himself meant that we set off an amazing three hours after we entered the car. But ... read more

Our next journey was into the wilderness of Sarawak, another jungle-clad region of Borneo. A bus ride and three separate boat journeys took us to our destination, deep within the territory of the Iban people. Until as recently as the 1960's, the Iban were fierce headhunters. This wasn't a part time hobby for these people. They didn't just lop off the occasional head. They were dedicated to headhunting, and it was an integral part of their culture which was vital to their survival and prosperity. I will explain more shortly. The Iban live, and still do live, in community buildings called "Longhouses". As the name suggests, a longhouse is a very long house, in which the whole community lives together. Each family unit has it's own section, but everyone in the longhouse is related, and are ... read more

04/04/07 - We flew from Miri to Mulu. Arrived at the Park HQ about 2pm and headed straight out for the 2 cave guided tours. Very well set up National Park with well maintained pathways. We had met an Italian couple (Stefano & Elisa) in Miri at the Guesthouse who were also going to Mulu at the same time as us. We did a couple of Caves one of them being Deer Cave which has the largest Cave entrance in the world apparently.. this was the home of millions of bats (im not kidding!), so around 6pm we all waited for the main attraction of the day - which was the bats flying out of the cave to feed at night (see pictures) - we waited and waited and waited - finally they made an ... read more

Fri 19th Last night wemet the other half of the new group- Luc, Nathalie and Eric from french canada and Michelle from Aus. We had an early start to drive to river where we boarded weird bots that were the top half of aroplans with thee seats stuck onto boats. I got the front sleep and sleped for the first 3hr boat ride. We stoped in a small town for some food and to by sarongs and these completely rubber shoes called Addidas Campong. Then back on a different but same type of boat for about 4 hours. I sat on the roof for a bit of the trip which was good as it was sunny!!! Finaly we got into long boats to take us to Mulu park HQ what had nice big rooms and a ... read more