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Published: February 17th 2014
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We left the Sabah region by plane from Kota Kinabalu to fly to Mulu in the north of the region of Sarawak and not far from the border with Brunei. The plane stopped en route at Miri on the coast and we had to get off briefly to clear immigration into Sarawak and whilst we were off the plane they decided it was broken. After a few hours it could not be fixed and there were no more flights so we were put up and fed curtsy of Malaysian Airways in a 4 star hotel on the beach at Miri - a result!!! Miri looked very prosperous on the route in from the airport but the town was described to us by one of our party who went to see it as a dump - glad I chose the 'paddling in the South China Sea at sunset' option.
The next day we continued our journey by plane to Mulu, only another 20 minutes, but apparently a journey almost impossible by road. The airport is 5 minutes from the headquarters of the Mulu National Park, a limestone region with hundreds of caves. We stayed at the accommodation at the
HQ and despite our tour leader talking of dormitories we found ourselves in nicely appointed bungalows. We ate in the restaurant (OK, a cafe) just outside the gate as it seemed more authentic and it is half the price of the Park HQ cafeteria, with a plate of local food costing about 10 Malaysian Ringgets (£2!).
At Mulu we visited four of the hundreds of caves:
Lang's Cave
Deer Cave - huge high roof, largest cave passage in the world, where we watched the bat exodus at dusk
Cave of the Winds
Clearwater Cave - large river running through it and the longest cave in South East Asia
Inside the Lang's Cave and Cave of the Winds were magnificent rock formations including stalactites and stalagmites but of a different style. Deer Cave is said to be home to 3 million bats and a multitude of swiftlets. As the two species navigate their way around the cave by sonar you can hear the bats' high pitched sound and the swifts' clicking noise. When the bats left for their evening's hunting they did not leave by the cave mouth but looked like
columns of smoke rising from hidden chimneys and then swirled off into the darkening sky.
We reached some of the caves by longboat as a huge boulder has tumbled down and blocked the path. On the way we stopped at a Penan settlement. The Penan people are nomadic hunter gatherers who follow the wild boar through the jungle, circling through the same settlements, so leaving the buildings behind and taking just their belongings. The buildings were just wooden shacks but I did see a satellite dish!! The Malaysian Government has been trying to settle the Penan people into permanent longhouses and a large number have done so.
Mulu National Park has the longest tropical canopy walkway based on anchoring to trees not pylons in the world at 480 metres with 15 individual spans and between 25 and 35 metres above the forest floor. We did the canopy walk on the morning before we left to fly to Kuching in the south of Sarawak. Nothing of note did we see and it was more like an adventure playground than anything.
In addition to caves the other thing at Mulu in abundance are
insects and I have never seen such large ones in my life before. They seemed to like the handrail of the boardwalks, well I suppose compared with clambering over all the vegetation on the forest floor the handrail must seem like a motorway. We only saw one type of mammal: squirrels, and I did manage to get a decent shot of a Pygmy Squirrel. They really are tiny, their bodies only about 2.5 inches long and their tails about 3 inches long and they move really fast! I also saw one snake draped over a bush basking in the sun but he slide away quickly once he knew he had been spotted. A very obliging tree frog posed for us, but the butterflies don't like to pose so are difficult to photograph.
High drama at dinner on our last night when one of the ladies suddenly discovered the back of her leg covered in blood and then on the floor we found a very full Brown Leech (the ones that do not hurt when they bite you). We decided she must have picked it up during the afternoon and it must have been on her for 4
or 5 hours (none of us had had time to shower before eating). Having had a good feed my understanding is that the leech will not need another meal for 6 to 9 months. Peter may have the record for the most leech bites but Ann certainly wins the prize for the longest bite.
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