Taman Negara GUNUNG MULU!

When we told the kids that we were moving to Malaysia last year, Violet immediately asked if we could go to Mulu caves. The kids absolutely love the BBC Planet Earth series and there is an episode devoted to caves. Deer Cave in Mulu National Park is one of the highlights of the show and Violet remembered that it was located in Malaysian Borneo. Since our time in Malaysia is rapidly coming to an end we decided to take a last minute trip to Gunung Mulu National Park to see the caves firsthand.

Mulu National Park is on the northwest coast of Sarawak, Borneo, very close to the country of Brunei. To get there, we had to take a flight to the small city of Miri, followed by a puddle-jumper to Mulu airport, which is essentially a small runway in the middle of the rainforest. Since we booked last minute, the only accommodations available were at the higher end Royal Mulu Resort, about a kilometer outside of the park, so we decided to splurge for the long weekend.

As soon as we arrived, we set out on a 3 kilometer hike to the entrance of Deer Cave. Deer Cave is the largest single cavern in the world and is home to approximately 3 million bats. There are 12 species of bats in the cave which makes it the most diverse bat population in the world. Every night before sunset, all of the bats head out to the forest to hunt insects. The "bat exodus" is one of the most spectacular natural phenomena that we have ever witnessed. In order to avoid predators like bat-hawks, falcons and eagles, the bats exit the cave in a tight spiral formation and proceed to rotate in a helical pattern to make it difficult to target any one individual. From far away it almost looks like a plume of smoke exiting the limestone cliff. The show lasted for a full half hour! I hope you can view the video below.

After the exodus, we grabbed a quick bite at the park canteen (which turned out to be our go-to restaurant) and set out on a guided night hike. To be honest, the night hike was probably the lowlight of the trip. We were in a large group on a gravel path. Combined with Tyler's newly developed whistling talent/obsession, we scared everything away except for a few "walking-stick" insects and one pit viper that according to the guide hadn't moved in almost two weeks! The best part of the hike might have been the lack of the mosquitos which as Vi correctly reasoned was due to the millions of bats on the prowl.

On day 2, we decided to do a guided canopy walk in the morning. The canopy at Mulu is one of the longest in the world at nearly 500 meters. It was a much different experience than the canopy at Taman Negara. We went first thing in the morning and did not see another soul either on the canopy or down on the trail below. We got to see a number of birds and even saw a gliding gecko jump from the canopy down to the trees below.

After the canopy walk we did a short hike to Paku waterfall. The river was running a little low so the falls were not as impressive as their photo but Ty got to go for a swim in the freezing water. We spent the rest of the morning lounging by the pool (well, Mary lounged while I wrestled with Tyler and Violet), grabbed some lunch at a local roadside restaurant and then went back to park headquarters for a guided hike through Deer and Lang Caves. Lang cave is a much smaller cave than Deer Cave but had some really interesting biology. We saw tube worms that basically "fish" for insects by lowering a long strand of saliva down from the cave ceiling. When an insect gets caught, the worm reels it in directly into its mouth. In completely dark caves (Lang Cave is unfortunately not one of these) some worms actually have glowing tail sections that attract their prey.

Deer Cave was again the highlight of the day. The grand cavern is simply amazing. When looking out from the inside, there is actually a formation that looks like Abraham Lincoln in profile (unfortunately, Nicole was not with us to get a real photo of it - mine is all glare from the sun). Tyler hates to wear hats but when he looked up and saw large areas of black made up of thousands of bats on the ceiling far above, he finally relented. We were all careful to make sure our mouths were closed when looking up! Yes, there were massive piles of bat guano in the cave that support an entire cave-dwelling ecosystem. It also turned out that our guide for Deer Cave assisted the film crew for Planet Earth. Upon hearing that the kids were big fans, he told us all about how the crew managed to collect such amazing images of the caves and the bat exodus.

After about a 1.5 kilometer hike through the cave, we stayed at the bat observatory by the entrance to see "bat exodus" part II. The day was less overcast so the encore performance was even better than the first show. Up to that point, we had already hiked about 10 kilometers over the course of the day and we were pretty exhausted.  

Even the local restaurants had interesting fauna.

Homemade rice wine is a great way to unwind after a busy day of hiking!

On day 3 we decided to have a leisurely morning at the hotel since the kids were clearly fried from a good day of hiking. After lunch we signed up for one final cave tour. A family of 7 cancelled so we had a private tour through Lagang cave. Lagang cave is about a 6 kilometer walk from the park office so we took a longboat and travelled about 4 kilometers upriver before beginning our hike. Lagang cave is one of the lesser touristed caves so it has a lot more wildlife close to the path. We saw swiftlet nests with baby chicks (these birds make their nest out of their own saliva), bats hanging from the ceiling by 1 leg, gigantic cave crickets, blind white crabs and a really scaring looking centipede that was too fast to capture on film. At one point Violet asked our guide to turn off his light so that we could listen to the cave in complete darkness. Swiftlets navigate using a primitive form of echolocation. It was interesting to listen to their clicks and chirps followed by a rush of air as they flew overhead (also a little creepy so we didn't have the lights off for long...). 

We spent our final day in Mulu relaxing at the resort and visiting a local village and craft market. We did have one of our most amazing customer service experiences in Malaysia on the way home that afternoon. Our flight from Mulu to Miri was delayed and actually landed right at the scheduled departure time of our flight back to KL. For some reason you have to clear immigration to go from Malaysian Borneo to Peninsular Malaysia, so we had to exit the arrival lounge, clear security, go through immigration and get to our gate. We decided that I would make a break for it and try to hold the plane for the rest of the family. An Air Asia rep saw me sprinting across the tarmac and asked me where I was headed. She was about to tell me that we had missed our flight but when she saw Tyler running with Pooh bear about 20 meters behind me, she called ahead to the gate and asked them to hold the plane! She opened a side door for us, bypassed the security line and had the immigration officer stamp our passports while Mary and the kids ran ahead to the gate. They had already pulled back the jetway so the ground crew rolled a stairway to the plane and let us board from the runway. We were in our seats and took off only five minutes after our scheduled departure time. The best part - Mary pre-ordered online a fresh coconut which arrived at my seat just as we reached 10,000 feet! Just one of the little things I will dearly miss about traveling in Southeast Asia.

We are now back in KL and preparing for the arrival of Mary's parents. We have one more trip planned with them to Vietnam before moving back to Baltimore in a few weeks.