Mulu Caves, Borneo

Deer Cave

Deer cave, located in Mulu, Malaysia on the island of Borneo, has the largest cave passage in the world.  You can fit a Boeing 747 in there (no lie).  We first learned about it on the Planet Earth series when Jake was little more than 3 years old.  Back then, even with the plans of cruising so clearly laid out in our heads, Borneo seemed so far away and so exotic.  It wasn’t even on our radar.  We’ve seen that documentary more times than I can count, but over the past few years, Borneo didn’t seem so far away.  In fact, it was only a few hundred miles.

Once we arrived in Malaysia, it was a no brainer making a decision on what land travel to do here.  We headed to Mulu Caves.  The first bit of excitement was Jake’s first ride on a “propeller plane.”  The only way to get to Mulu is by plane, so we took the short hop from Kuching to Mulu Saturday morning.  We were immediately wisked away to our hotel for a quick check in.  We were pleasantly surprised as the hotel is in the process of being upgraded to a Marriott, so all of the rooms and facilities have been recently renovated, to include air conditioning, satellite TV, marble tile in the bathroom and down comforters on the king size bed!!!  Woo hoo!

Our greeter person (no idea what her official title was but her job was to get us from one place to another), caught us a ride to the National Park for a VERY quick tour of the headquarters and some lunch.  From there, we met our guide Lucas (and were fortunate enough to have him all to ourselves, not mixed in with hoards of other people) and our adventure began.  We figured out we walked about 4 miles that first afternoon.  It included a long jungle walk and touring of two caves, Lang Cave and Deer Cave.  Both were spectacular.  I thought Lang Cave had better formations, but the massive size of Deer Cave impressed everyone.  Jake’s favorite part was the huge amounts of roaches eating the guana mountains (aka bat poop) that covered the cave floors.  He insisted we take pictures so he could send them back to Gigi (his grandmother) to freak her out.  The downside to the day was the long bout of rain we had in the afternoon.  Apparently, bats don’t like to go out and eat in the rain, so we weren’t able to see the mass exodus of bats at sunset like we had hoped.   And we had to walk the mile and a half back to the main headquarters soaking wet.

View from the trail we took back to Deer Cave

There was a nice walk way the whole way through the park.

Critters...

more critters.....

Jake says they called these "smelly worms" but I'm not too sure
about that.  The strings you see hanging are long strands of mucus
used to catch flying insects for the worms to eat.

Inside one of the caves.

The second day started early with a half hour long boat ride to the Wind Cave and Clearwater cave.  The Wind cave was by far my favorite as it had the intricate formations and just looked more like the images I had in my head (only better).  Clearwater cave was cool in as much as it had a river flowing through it.  Not so cool was the 900-1000 steps we had to climb – I’m not exaggerating AT ALL.

We were done with our tours by noon and headed back to the hotel.  All of our legs were shaking from all the walking and stair climbing we did so we just vegged out the rest of the afternoon.  We booked an extra day at the hotel just to relax, so Monday was spent by the pool and in the room soaking up the air conditioning and catching up on the news.

It was a cozy ride up the river.

The underground river in Clearwater Cave.

Note the satellite dish on the left side of the porch...

We arrived back to Savannah yesterday all relaxed.  Now we have to restock our fridge and get some of this stinky laundry taken care of.  It’s nice to be home, but oh was that a great vacation.  Borneo still seems exotic and I know it really is far away, but now we’re lucky enough to have checked that box.