Miri & Mulu

Another Air-Asia flight got me to Miri where I relaxed for a couple of night, ate entirely seafood and organized the rest of my trip before flying to Mulu National Park. 

The only world heritage listed National Park in Borneo, Mulu is completely surrounded by jungle although a short runway carved into the trees saved me a multi-day boat trip. The park is famous for limestone caves, spectacular rock formations and is the worlds number one destination if you're looking to wade neck deep in Guano (Aka batshit).

 The park management was magnificently incompetent. First they 'unbooked' my planned 3-day Pinnacles trek and then the accomodation bookings of several people mysteriously disappeared just in time to make room for a large organised tour group. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because there was cheaper accomodation just outside the park and more than enough activities to keep me busy for five days.

Many kilometers of wooden boardwalk provided access to the worlds longest canopy Walk and several impressive caves, the largest of which is home to about ten million bats. The bats hibernate during the day and then fly out together in huge waves around sunset. The atmosphere inside the cave was straight out of Jurassic Park - just don't look up!

A variety of adventure caving trips were also on offer and although my trip was only rated 'intermediate', 2.5 hours of rope-assisted scrambling and squeezing through a pitch black cave full of scorpions, snakes and spiders as big as your head was enough for me. For serious spelunkers, one of the expert level caves takes 12 hours and even involves several hours swimming along an underground river.

However the highlight of my visit was heading out to experience the jungle at night - I've never been in a place that was so alive. Athough our small torches barely pierced the blackness every small patch of light revealed countless bugs, beetles, spiders, lizards and more stick insects than you could poke a stick at. 

The atmosphere got even more impressive when we switched off our torches. At first the thick overhead canopy left us in total darkness but after a couple of minutes of pupil dilation the ground in every direction started to glow an eerie green as fields of luminescent fungus became visible. And then there was the sound - bizarre noises at a deafening volume from every direction.

My trip to Mulu ended with a few beers, some Beer Can Jenga and more farewells to the cool people that I had only just met. Such is the fun and frustration of travelling alone.