Around the world

Our last two days on Borneo, what shall we do? Of course run to a national park for the last bits of nature full immersion.
Bako national park is a costal park only half an hour from Kuching but definetly remote enough, in fact

Well, we can’t really say that our trip was a cultural trip, unles you consider seeing plenty of wildlife is a cultural activity. Since we decided to cut the batan rejang side trip to go to bako national park we had lowered the quota of cultural activity to nearly 0. So we decided to go for the emergency/touristy solution: the Sarawak cultural village. This is a sort of living museum (like Ballenberg in Switzerland) depicting all the indigenous etnies traditional houses, uses and costumes. Going there we were a bit skepitcal about the whole thing, but once there we were very pleased to see that the place was very tourisy but actually very interesting. we got plenty of informations about the history of Sarawak and about how people lived in the past and live nowadays in longhouses.
Further more Sarah got to see Otters for the first time!!!
So, all in all touristy but interesting

We thought that for our first day in kuching we will just spend it walking around. Since we arrived pretty late with the bus the night before, it was a late morning start! Never mind, the town isn’t so big so we will have time! The atmosphere there was unusual, different from Miri or KK! That might be because it is old… there were even a few 200 years old Chinese temples!!!! it was really pleasant (specially the chocolate waffle followed by Lebanon food).

This whole trip has been kind of not super organized, I guess that it’s because we tackled it as a long trip (as the last two we dud in the americas) but 30 days is not that much and you have to plan a bit more… Nothing drammatic of course, just that you might end up doing a lot of unforseen bus travelling instead of short (and almost at same price) flights.
On the other hand, cheap flights are very restrictive regarding last minutes changements, like our Mulu-Miri flight which we would have loved to anticipate of half day so that we would make it in one day to Belaga the following day. It didn’t happen, a change would have cost more than the actual flight, so we flew to Miri as planned, spent some time at the airport and then took a bus to Bintulu. By the time we arrived, Sarah was very sick for she ate something wrong in Mulu. The day After Sarah was feeling better and we had a very though task ahead of us: plan the last 10 days of our trip. The original plan was to go to Belaga, a small comunity 150km upstream the Batang Rejang (a very large river) and then boat down to Kapit, Sibu and finally Kuching. From there fly to Singapore, then Melakka and finally Kuala Lumpur. But as I said only 10 days left and we don’t like to rush too much so we decided (after a very very mathematically complex analysis involving some 5th degree differential equations) to skip the Batang Rejang part and to leave by bus to Kuching and stay there 4 days and then fly to Singapore.
Moral of the story, sometimes if you don’t plan you end up doing 15 h of bus over 2 days instead of a 45 minutes fly
Cheers!

The night shift!

That was definitely one of the 10 RM we spent! Apart from the 3 Germans guys that kept speaking very loud ( the key point when you try to see the wildlife at night is to SHUT UP!)

We saw snakes (yes with an s and one of them felt on our guide head…), a moon rat which was pretty cool (all white with fur), walking sticks, frog, cockroaches (beuh) and lots a insects!

The next morning we went for a canopy walk at 7 am, supposedly the best time to see some mammals! The canopy are actually bridges at 20-30 ms high between trees. . And that was really nice. We weren’t that lucky regarding the animal side…that all right, once again this is part of the game. In the late morning, we went for a self guided walk to another cave! On the way we saw quite a lot of crazy insects! Mantis, dragon flies and lots of colourful macro things..

The Pinnacles, the one sight I remember most (maybe the paradise bird dance – but that was in Papua New Guinea) from Planet Earth when David Attenbourgh is narrating about Borneo! What he does not tell is that they got there by helicopter and that getting there on foot involves quite a lot sweating and a 3 days trip (well it could be done in 2). The First day we left Mulu HQ by boat and stopped to visit Wind Cave and Clearwater cave 170km

If you have ever seen the best documentaries series ever made (BBC’s Planet Earth, which we super highly recomend) you will feel confortable with this and the next posts since we are starting the main course of our trip. Niah Caves and the Gunung Mulu national park.
But first things first, today we took a small van to the UNESCO world heritage site of the Niah Caves. As the name says the main attraction here are the limestone caves, what the name does not say its the grandeur of theese…
After walking for about an hour from the park entrance we arrived to the Traders Cave (which is actually a cavern – meening that it is very wide open on one side. A bit like the difference between a tunnel and a bus shelter), where we coud see the rests of an early bird’s nest and guano collectors settlement used as a trading post with the costal traders, hence the name.
Few minutes further we got to west mouth of the great cave. 60m high and 250m wide, it definetly deserves the name!!! And it is only the entrance… Moving into the cave we got the feeling of being in a huge place, althoug dark, you could feel how big these chambers where, foremost when the powerfull torch would’t make it to the opposite wall or ceiling. Even more spectacular are the bamboo and ironwood (belian) poles used by the local birds’ nest collectors. I have no idea how they hang them on the ceilings to later climb on them to collect the saliva-made swiftlets’ nests highly regarded in Chinese cuisine (birds’ nest soup is a very exxclusive plate as caviar is in Europe). Fortunately, the park constantly monitors the harvesting to keep the swiftlets population healty and avoid yet another ecological catastrophy caused by Chinese beliefs (see turtle eggs poaching and most remarkably shark finning).
After walking for about an hour in the dark we emerged on the other side of the cave where we walked through the forest to the Painted cave, a very quiet and relaxing place where old cave paintings and death-ships (boat shaped coffins) illustrate the burial beliefs of early Niah settlers.
On the way back after going through the great cave we decided to have a look at the longhouse nearby and of course to take the other branch of the plankwalk… Well lets say it would have been easier to listen to the kiosk ladies saying “tida bagus, tida bagus (not good, not good)” but then what explorers would we be ? So we took it and had to crawl under, jump over, climb around fallen trees that where blocking the way… Well it was hot but fun!
Cheers