Blogs from Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, Asia

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Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park February 7th 2020

As we begin to wind down another trip, I thought i would post some pics from our last National Park in Borneo - Gunung Mulu in Sarawak. What has been most impressive with all of the parks we visited, besides all the natural beauty is the amazing infrastructure, that has attempted to preserve the beauty without destroying it - the extensive boardwalks, tree canopies, accommodations and guide services were fantastic! Mulu is known for their caves, and bats. Watching 2-3 million bats do their orchestrated dance as they exit the cave for their evening feeding was truly an amazing site to see. The display lasted at least 30 minutes and included seeing some of the bat hawks waiting for their dinner. Deer cave where the bats exit is one of largest caves in the world and ... read more
World's longest Treetop canopy
Colorful boats in Mulu
Sarawak Long houses

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park August 21st 2019

Thirty percent of Sarawak's population belong to various indigenous groups known collectively as 'Orang Asli' (meaning 'Upriver People'). Customs, traditions, spiritual beliefs, language and way of life vary from one group to the next, though there are common threads that connect some (or all) of them to each other in different ways. The people who have traditionally lived a nomadic existence in the vicinity of what is now Gunung Mulu National Park identify themselves as the Penan. Interestingly, while the Penan have words for every kind of animal or plant that occurs within the rainforest, they have no specific word for the forest itself: they refer to it simply as 'Tongtana', which roughly translates as 'the world in which we live'. This makes sense given that traditionally the Penan spent their entire lives here, finding everything ... read more
Scenic Journey
Heading into uncharted territory... for us at least
Under the forest canopy

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park August 16th 2019

With just ten days left in our month-long Malaysian holiday – and having fully immersed ourselves in the country's cultural offerings during the first three weeks – Linda and I decided it was time to heed the call of the wild and discover some of the country's natural assets. And when it comes to natural attractions in this part of the world, nothing we'd read about came close to matching the aura and mystique of Gunung Mulu National Park. Located in the heavily-forested interior of Borneo, the 500sq km park packs in mountains that rise up to 2300m high, featuring extraordinary geological formations such as the razor-sharp limestone spires of the Pinnacles, riddled with caves of truly epic proportions, and cloaked in some of the densest old-growth rainforest to be found anywhere on Earth – which ... read more
National Park entry point
Wok Frog
A Splash of Colour


Friday 4th May 2018 We left Brunei on Wednesday 2nd May to travel by bus in to Sarawak. It was just a local daily scheduled bus but quite comfortable and the border crossing was easy, no hassle at all: there are still a couple of empty pages in our passports, despite the eager rubber stamping that takes place at each border crossing! We arrived at the terminal bus station in Miri, an oil town, close to the border, at about 4.30 p.m. A taxi in to town and a nice reasonably priced hotel and a very cheap Chinese meal rounded of this travelling day nicely. Miri is Sarawak’s second city, after Kuching, and there isn’t a great deal of interest to the traveller, since it has all been rebuilt since WW2 when it was bombed so ... read more
Natural shower
View from our bedroom window
Sungai Melinau from Kenny's garden

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park March 29th 2016

Mulu National Park & Caves 28 – 29 March 2016 It was lovely to have a sleep in until 7.45am, have a leisurely breakfast before departing for KK Airport. We were very excited about the next section of our tour as we were off to the Mulu National Park to see the second largest cave in the world. This is Deer cave, 1.2km long and the biggest cavity is 120m high. After a 50 minute flight to Miri to get stamped out of Sabah and stamped into Sarawak, we got back in the plane for a 10 minute flight to Mulu. We were met by our local guide Nelson, who worked for the Mulu National Park. Our group was divided between 4 vehicles of varying ages, to drive us 5 minutes to the office of the ... read more
Deer Cave map
Tom enjoying floating down the Sungai Melinau River
Deer Cave entrance

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park October 21st 2015

After one failed attempt to get to Gunung Mulu National Park and an unplanned evening in Kuching (due to the Haze mentioned in a previous post the pilot couldn't see the runway so we were diverted to Kuching), the weather decided to cooperate and we safely touched down in Mulu, the beginning of our jungle adventure in Borneo... This is one of the stops I couldn't wait to get to, and with a full slate of activities planned over the next 3-4 days it was going to be busy...checked into our hotel, and as the accommodations in the park itself were all booked we decided to rough it at the five star Marriott resort, sweet! Not a big selection of accommodation here, there are some dorm style hostels just outside the park entrance but we figured ... read more
The Explorers
Viper
Riverbank II

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park August 21st 2013

After 2 days of jungle trekking along the headhunter trail we got to Mulu national park, and the infamous Deer cave, both the 2nd largest cave in the world and home to millions of bats. When we walked into the cave we could see small black patches on the ceiling which were actually thousands of bats. The cave is very impressive in itself aside from the bats, but the bats add a new dimension of awe. Deep in the cave were areas where the floor was deep in bat poo, an amazing fertiliser apparently but it can't be removed due to the cave's heritage status. This leads to a smelly cockroach infested floor. Luckily a raised pathway has been installed. The cave is also very fragrant the further you go in, due to the high volume ... read more

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park July 8th 2012

Van Kuching had ik een vlucht geboekt naar Mulu. Wat een luxe is dat toch vliegen! De vlucht naar Mulu was al erg indrukwekkend, als je uit het raam keek zie je alleen maar groen, groen en nog is groen. Mulu airport is het kleinste airport dat ik tot nu toe heb gezien. Het is niets meer dan een landingsbaan in een groene oase. Als eerst na het park gelopen om te informeren hoe of wat. Blijkt dat er maar weinig tot geen hikes zijn die jezelf kan doen. Ik had erg geluk want de tour na de pinnacles was nog een plekje vrij voor de volgende dag en duurde drie dagen. Ik werd wel gewaarschuwd dat het een stevige KLIM is. De tour: Eerste dag twee grotten bekeken waaronder de langste grot van de wereld, ... read more
Klimmen!
Photo 6
Op naar Mulu!

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park September 7th 2011

From Kuching I caught a local bus to an intersection and then walked for 20 minutes to the jetty for the boat bound for Sibu, only to find out that it was already booked out hours earlier. So I jumped into a taxi and headed across the other side of town to the long distance bus terminal where I found a seat on a bus leaving at 10am. It was a pretty boring 7 hour ride with not a great deal to see. After arriving at the Sibu bus station and finding out the local bus to the centre had stopped running for the day, I jumped into another taxi and found some nice accommodation in the middle of town. Sibu is not a very pretty city, it mainly acts as a commercial centre for the ... read more
Bat exodus from Deer cave
There is a bug in my satay
Gunung Mulu National Park

Asia » Malaysia » Sarawak » Gunung Mulu National Park August 6th 2011

Mulu National Park Returned now to Kuching after 6 wonderful days in the huge Mulu National Park in Sarawak. We stayed in surprisingly luxurious accommodation at the park HQ, big bungalow with a garden to sit out and watch the birds. The weather was also kind to us, it only rained at night and only one leech was spotted in the whole time! The park is a World Heritage site and known particularly for its caves and bats. We did lots of long (and short) walks around the park and visited all four of the show caves. These are spectacular in their size. The caves are all different with species of insects, bats and swiftlets living in them that the guides point out. One day we did what is called the Garden of Eden Valley walk, ... read more




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