Until recently, the world’s largest caves

Today I head back to Mulu National Park, home of the world’s largest caves after 21 years. There are many ways of measuring “largest” (eg. volume, length etc) and Mulu still has the crown by some measures but has lost it in perhaps one way to a newer discovery in Vietnam.

Mum and stepdad dropped me off at the airport for my 1h35 min flight on MASwings ATR non-stop to Mulu. The flight had lots of kids from Tunku Putra international school near my apartment.

From the airport, I took a very rickety minivan with some others to the Park HQ where I checked in for my hostel accommodation and confirmed some of my sightseeing bookings.

Relaxing in the hostel over an hour later, to sit out the drizzly weather, I realised that others from the flight were just streaming in. They had to wait for transport and then also waited in turn at the Park HQ.

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Once the rain had stopped, I went for a walk the Botanical loop. This consists of plankwalk through the jungle with plenty of signposted information about the local plants and some random botanical facts. Eg.

The belian tree or Borneo Ironwood does not rot per se, get eaten by termites or get broken down by fungus. It weathers much in the same way as rock. I had grown up knowing that it is a very hard durable wood but had never given any thought to why.

The fig is not actually a fruit but consists of very small flowers in a fleshy case which we call the fruit. An insect will lay its eggs in it then die. The young ones hatch and escape by eating their way out!

Banana trees aren’t actually trees. Their trunks are actually multi-layered leafs.

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I had dinner in the park cafe which was a great place to socialise with other travellers. It would also become my regular haunt over the five days with excellent food and wine (which is hard to find even in Malaysian cities and priced reasonably at MYR10; it is good Australian boxed stuff). Beer was also available at MYR12 which is perhaps a tad cheaper than in city pubs but more expensive than outside the park where locals sell it for MYR9.

Because almost everything is flown in, water is bad value at MYR6.60. I had been warned and had brought 4 bottles (6 litres) along. Pricing of meals is similar to a restaurant in Malaysia and they try to give you restaurant quality food with good portion size. At least it wasn’t expensive, bad and stingy.

I did the nightwalk after dinner. The Berawan-Irish guide took us on largely the same route which I did in the afternoon. In the dark (with our torches), we saw heaps more than in the afternoon. There were spiders, lizards, frogs and birds asleep with their heads tucked under their wings.

What surprised me was the noise made by this tiny little frog. I had thought that loud whooping noise came from a large ape! The rainforest is rather noisy with the usual cicada noises but there were others that I hadn’t noticed before. There’s a very techno noise plus something that resembled a small group of very bad kiddie violinists.

Before we turned back, our guide asked us to turn our torches off. With no full moon, thick foliage and being in the middle of nowhere, it was dark. Very dark.

I went to bed earlyish and slept well in the dormitory. Early nights (as early as 2030 on one night) would be a feature in Mulu and the nightwalk was the only form of nightlife!