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Inside of the caves
Distinctly other-worldly I'm sorry...
I fell off the wagon...
I didn't mean to. In fact, I did my very best to avoid it, but I couldn't...
Hello, my name is Stacey and I'm a resort-a-holic.
See, the problem was there is only two places to stay in Mulu - the national park headquarters, or the plush Royal Mulu Resort - and I'd been told by a number of sources that it's not a good idea to just turn up without having booked accomodation, because if it's full you're pretty much screwed. So i spent almost an entire day trying to sort out flights to, and accommodation in, mulu, but I couldn't get hold of the national park, so I had no other choice than to book a deluxe room (there were no standard rooms available) at the resort.
and of course, like any good addict, once I'd had a taste, I binged... when is rome... I booked overpriced tours, I lazed by the pool, I had an aromatherapy massage, I ate lamb cutlets and drank cocktails.
It was quite the difference from the backpacking lifestyle to which i had become accustomed (although I haven't been scrimping as
Bats
Streaming out of the caves at sunset. The video gives a more telling picture, but I can't post that on here. much as i could have). The minute i stepped in there i felt like a fraud and i think they knew it. But by my last day there I had fallen into the flow of resort life akin to my port douglas holiday last year - get up late for the full buffet breakfast, laze by the pool while ordering drinks to be delivered to your sun-lounger. Lovely.
But it wasn't all mind-numbing decadence. On the first evening i was there I was sitting on the deck of one of the restuarants, looking at the cliffs on the opposite side of the river which where lit up by massive floodlights (wait, i'll get to the non-decandent part soon enough). Ofcourse there were insects of all description flying around these lights, which is only to be expected. But there were also birds flying around, which i thought a little strange, cos i didn't think birds flew around at night. So i was trying to think why the birds would still be flying around at that time of the night - maybe cos it's warm enough, maybe cos the lights are so bright they still think it's daytime, maybe they know
Proboscis monkey
This one's female, unfortunately i didn't get a good photo of the male, which has a bigger, more pendulum-like nose that that's where the bugs are, so they know there's good food there.... Then i realised they weren't birds at all... They were frigging bats!! and some of them were flying unnervingly close to my head. It freaked me out no end.
But of course the main reason one goes to Mulu is to see the caves. The caves with claims to fame such as the largest cave entrance in the world - you cold fit St Paul's cathedral (or something like that), the longest cave passage in the world, the longest underwater river system in SE asia... yadda yadda yadda
So see the caves i did, on the aforementioned extremely overpriced tour, I went on the afternoon tour to Deer Cave and Lang's Cave and they were really very cool, it's all walkway-ed and light up so it wasn't treacherous or terribly exciting, but they were amazing. This afternoon tour to timed to finish about 5pm, at which time you go down to the "bat observatory" and watch at the 3 million-odd bats fly out of Deer Cave to begin they're nightly hunting (some, as i mentioned, around the resort). This mass exodus is pretty amazing because
The atrocities of war
and these weren't even the worst ones. they fly out in huge groups and form like twirling ribbons on black in the sky.
The next morning it was Wind and Clearwater caves via a longboat up the river, at which stage i decided that these caves look distinctly other-worldly... especially how they're very effectively lit up.
But apart from checking out the caves and lying by the pool, the only other things to do around Mulu require far too much physical exertion for me (like climbing mountains etc), and so I left and headed up to Kota Kinabalu.
Unfortunately i only had two nights in Kota Kinabalu because the flights out of Mulu were so full when i booked mine, and this was quite disappointing because there is so much to do around that area - diving at sunken WWII battleships as well as the standard reef diving, white-water rafting etc etc. I think I'm going to have to go back there one day.
However, even with such a tight timeframe i did manage to squeeze in another catch-up drink with Lou and Dave (who'd been in miri for a few days) and a half-day tour to the klias wetlands (pretty much on
An american tank
in the same position as it was abandoned after it was hit by an anti-tank mine over 35 years ago. the northern border of Brunei) where I did spot a number of proboscis monkeys (in the wild this time, not like the orangutans in kuching who were only semi-wild) and then, on the night cruise, huge clouds of fire-flies that competely lit up trees like fairy lights. They were amazing but unfortunately they don't come out in photo's, so you'll just have to take my word for it.
From Kota Kinabalu I flew to Johor Bahru on the border of Malaysia and Singapore, then bussed overland to Singapore (not very far, it took about an hour).
Singapore is fantastic! For a girl that likes her cities, it really made me happy. It was fast, efficient, impersonal, clean... all the good things a modern city should be; i could get around on the MRT without having to trust crazy cab or moto drivers who claim to know the way when they really don't. And it was definitely the place were I felt the safest as well... they've got signs everywhere about staying safe and reporting anything suspect..."always alert, nobody's hurt". Although the posters in the subway that had a man giving a child candy and the statement "you can't
Ouch!!
one of the many booby-traps set by the viet cong be sure he's not a peadophile" did make me laugh, but i suppose they shouldn't have - child safety's not a joke son.
And the shopping was great too. Unfortunately my bags are already over the weight limit.. kinda like being a diabetic at an ice cream parlour. I would definitely go back there in a hurry.
I left Singapore yesterday morning and flew to Ho Chi Minh City. Thrown back into the madness of former french indochina. And perhaps it's merely the contrast to the uber-civilised nanny-state of Singapore, but Vietnam definitely tops the lot in the chaos stakes. I spent most of the drive from the airport to my hotel with my eyes closed, and did pretty much the same of the back of a moto that afternoon on my way to and from the War Remnants Museum, which had some absolutely horrific details of the war (which is referred at as "the American war" in these parts). Like at the s-21 prison in phnom penh, I had to take a break from the exhibits because i quite literally couldn't stomach them. It's horrible to read about all the dreadful things both sides did to each other, but to see pictures of it is just gut-wrenching... a number of them were very similar to those photos of abu-graib (is that what it was called? that iraqi prison where the american troops took horrid photos of themselves smiling next to the prisoners and stuff?). How can people be so cruel?
Then this morning I did a half-day tour to the cu chi tunnels (that the viet cong used to infiltrate south vietnam)... Our tour guide was a veteran that fought for the americans, but after 3 years of "re-education camp" (ie prison) he is now ashamed to say that he fought for "the wrong side". It was really fascinating to hear the vietnamese side of the story and all the tricks the viet cong used to fight the americans... not just pretty faces (although sometimes not that either).
So tonight it's an overnight train to Hoi An... The end of the SE asian leg of my trip is getting painfully close, I'll be very sad to leave this theme-park-of-a-region, but i suppose all good things must come to an end (christ, how trite!)
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Natalie
non-member comment
Singapore
Hey Stace, your travels sound awesome. I loved Singapore too, nightlife and shopping are great. We went to Johor Baru also, pretty awful place with lots of people with leprosy but plenty of cheap fake gucci handbags! We also went to an island called Pulau Ubin, between Singapore and Malaysia, so completely different from Singapore. Very weird. Looking forward to seeing you soon, Nat