Mulu – caves and bats

Coming from Brunei and getting back into Malaysia was easy – bus starting off directly in front of our hotel, leaving us 30 minutes for the breakfast buffet in the lobby *smiley smiling* However all buses in Malaysia and Brunei seem to originally have been fridges now just with addition of some wheels… *bibber*

Defrosting in Miri was easy with temperatures well above 30 degrees. Overall this city is only a necessary stop over place for us and in general more an oil-industry than a tourist town. We found a nice spot to stay for the night at the Dillenia Guest House and spent the afternoon exploring the city.

Next morning, again a flight because the other option involves hours and hours on small boats with transfers at various places and/ or some serious trekking through the jungle along the “headhunters” trail.

Views out of the window of the plane again makes one thinking about the destruction we cause to nature…wherever you look, you can clearly see the loss of rainforest – being replaced by endless palm oil plantations *smiley sad*

Arriving in Mulu the sun was still shining, but after another logistical challenge on getting checked in to our accommodation in the National Park, managing to get registered for some tours into the cave you can only do with a guide it started raining *smiley sad* What started like a light drissel soon became more like a waterfall with endless supply… We nevertheless made it to the bat lookout, but no bats today – other than us they avoid getting wet and coming home soaked wet onto the underwear we understand why!

As no tours to any caves were available for the first morning here, we decided to trek to Paku waterfall – well, once you are there it looks not really impressive, but Iris nevertheless took the lead and went for a short dip into the water *smiley smiling* On the way there, back to the park office and on to the cave tour in the afternoon, we found some small wildlife and interesting plants around…

Lang and Deer cave are so-called “show caves” meaning there is a walkway through them – so no need to put on additional gear and squeeze yourself through tunnels nearly too narrow for your shoulders…but after some experiences in the mines of Potosi, I felt more comfortable with this kind of exploring *smiley winking* The caves around Mulu are gigantic – often referred to be the biggest in what so ever way of measurement – but what we have to admit both of us have not seen any cave that big before…

And this evening we got lucky…no rain upon the time we were leaving the caves and shortly after the exodus of millions and millions of bats from their day-through resting places started – really impressive *smiley smiling*

Ah, by the way no need to be scared of the “vampires”…bats are feeding only small insects and fruits!

And even on the way back when looking closely there were some animals to be found

Next morning…more caves – this time Wind, Lady and Clearwater cave…with a voluntarily refreshing end in the river *smiley smiling*

A night walk, a canopy walk, a bird tower lookout and some more walking around revealed not much else bigger wildlife due to too many tourists walking along the (fairly easy) elevated walk-ways, but we nevertheless managed to find some…as well as a lot of flowers…

Time to say good-bye to Mulu and move on to Kuching and around – our last stop for this journey. So we took our “private” charter flight with only 2 pilots, 2 cabin crew and well, ok 2 other passengers on the plane – but we even got a “personal safety briefing” *smiley smiling*

P.S.: If you wanna visit Mulu, be aware of the outdated Lonely Planet – other than stated, there are places to stay and eat just outside the park boundary (more easily available and cheaper)