Departing the riverside menagerie of Kinabantangan, we flew to Sarawak, the western state of Malaysian Borneo. We landed in even denser jungle in the small town of Mulu, known best for its national park, home to the impressive Pinnacles, and its karst mountains which open into surreal underground worlds. Ever seen the BBC show Planet Earth’s “Caves” episode? (If you’ve never seen Planet Earth, I highly recommend it). If so, perhaps you’ll remember the seething mounds of guano that make their own ecosystem, or the 3 million chirping bat residents, or the glistening tendrils of cave glowworms. Welcome to Mulu.
During our visit to Mulu, we visited five different caves (mostly the park’s most famous “show caves” along with one more recently opened cave), and by far the most impressive was Deer Cave, the second largest cave passage in the world (the largest open to visitors), which we visited on our first day. The yawning maw of Deer Cave opens itself from the side of a granite mountain facing the lush rainforest. Inside, small waterfalls perpetually shower from the roof, and as you enter the squeaking of some 3 million bats becomes a loudening drone. Below them–“they” appearing as a quivering black shape on the ceiling above–is a heap of guano, the small of which is so acrid and noxious, it is like a sharp chemical singeing the inside of your nostrils if you breathe too deeply.
The immensity of the inside of the cave is impressive, almost paradoxical in that it is the type of massive expanse that makes you feel insignificant, yet at the same time you are in an enclosed space. We walked along a manmade boardwalk for the first portion of the visit, in awe of the constantly widening cave walls around every bend. Finally, to reach our destination–a “garden of Eden” swimming hole in the depths of the cave–we took a detour off the “safe” pathway, scrambling over guano-dusted rocks. Bat waste rained down on us from the chirping mass above–more like a light snowfall really, some bat “flurries”. While scrambling over bat-shit-encrusted rocks, it occurred to me how funny it was that we paid to do this. Thanks to disposable income and a comfortable lifestyle, myself, and thousands of others per year, pay to experience “adventure”–which often practically translates to the “mildly uncomfortable or unpleasant.” But instead of stopping to contemplate this, it was time to embrace the guano under my fingernails, and keep going.
After exiting the cave, as the air grew thick with the mugginess of late afternoon, we sat in wait of the “bat exodus,” the time when, each day, the furry residents of the cave’s ceiling parade out into the dusk in search of food. Each bat eats 2/3 of its own body weight in insects each night, and as I waved off hovering mosquitoes down below, I found myself wishing for more bats. Finally–this is what 3 million bats going out to dinner looks like: a 10 minute long stream of unified motion. They exit like hive animals, like bees or ants. It looks like a plume of smoke, as they don’t disperse as they exit (too vulnerable to predators, like hawks, that way), instead just forming a gyrating line. This plume is constantly expanding, contracting, condensing, changing directions, wiggling like a ribbon. Strangely-shaped “clouds” of bats float past, like massive spirocilla or other bacteria, foreign shapes rotating as they glide. And the sound of millions of pairs of bat wings softly resonates, like far-off running water.
In the subsequent days in Mulu, we visited a number of other, smaller caves–Lang, Lagang, Clearwater, and Cave of the Winds. Though these caves didn’t boast the cavernous interiors of Deer Cave, they were home to impressive stalactites and stalagmites, and a surprising number of creatures. It seems improbable to see wildlife in the cold, dark depths of a cave, but there was plenty. Disconcertingly large huntsman spiders stared back into our headlamps with their many glittery eyes, cave swiftlets flew using echolocation in the blackness, blind ghost crabs scuttled through tiny pools of water, and cave glow worms oozed from the rocks, awaiting prey to become ensnared in their mucousy webs. We even saw a slumbering wrinkle-lipped bat up close, with its little face twitching in its sleep to unknown bat dreams.
The creatures were prevalent outside the caves as well. If Kinabantangan was the place for megafauna, then in Mulu the small beasts reigned. Just a walk on the manmade boardwalk on the way to the caves revealed creatures and intriguing plants clambering over one another and choking each other for survival in the dense forest, which is so thick that even a 100-meter walk through the brush off of the path would be nearly impossible. Stick insects, tree shrews, bizarre-looking beetles and caterpillars made their way beside us. And as night began to fall, a walk through the jungle was a guarantee that millions of little eyes were watching. The wildlife was, unfortunately, not limited to the forest either. On one night I was kept up from 1:30-3:30am by the pitter-patter of little feet…across my pillow. I never caught the culprit, (which is probably for the best…I don’t really need to know if it was reptilian or rodent), but it was still hard to sleep after.
On our last day in Mulu, the calendar rolled over to 2012 (and I didn’t stay up until midnight for the first time in 15+ years…but what is there to do in the forest after nightfall?), and, after fourteen days in the wilds of Borneo, it was time for my dad to head back to the States and for me to head back to Vientiane for the start of a new term.
2011 took me far: I began by going from India to Singapore to Thailand to Hanoi, experienced many lessons in teaching, motorcycled 370 kilometers through Laos, fought off mosquitoes and leeches in more than one jungle, journeyed through Burma, petted tigers and elephants, partied in Bangkok, climbed up ancient temples at Angkor Wat with my mom, got a taste of the southern hemisphere in Australia, and finally, discovered the mountains and undergrounds of Borneo with my dad. I traveled far this past year but ultimately returned to where I started–back in Vientiane. Though my adventures have been the most fun to write about, the greatest adventure of 2011 was learning to really live here, where I am, an adventure that I am still experiencing everyday. And so, with sore muscles, bug-bitten legs, and hundreds of photos to tell the tale, I was excited to return from Borneo, back to Laos.
Hannah, these pictures are awesome! You should sell them to a biology textbook company!