Our last couple of weeks in Borneo have been spent doing what we came here to do; explore the incredible, yet sadly rapidly disappearing wonders of the island’s rainforests.
Remarkably, flying about is much cheaper than any other mode of transport, so we’ve been able to get to the parts that we wanted to see much easier and quickly than we’d thought. From Kuching, we flew to the Mulu National Park to see the amazing caves and pristine rainforest, before flying to the coastal oil rich town of Miri for a couple of days where we waited to catch a flight to the super relaxing Kelabit Highlands…
Aaron from our hostel in Kuching surprised us all by buying Sofia a cake for her seventh birthday
Sofia’s birthday fell on the first day of Chinese New Year and we were lucky enough to be invited by Maylin, who had driven us to Bako National Park, to her house to join in the festivities. These were the remnants of some fireworks the night before, tradionally used to frighten bad spirits from the house for the coming year…
Sofia and Liam profited handsomely from ‘ang pow’ given to them by various members of Maylin’s family
Later that morning it was off to the amazing Mulu National Park. The Deer Cave is the largest passage in the world and it was certainly impressive. This silhouette at the cave entrance is uncanny.
It was hard to capture the scale of the place on any one photograph, but it was BIG!
The cave itself though was a sideshow for what came after; millions of bats twisting in corkscrew formation as they flew from Deer Cave
We were mesmorised by them for over an hour until it was time to say farewell…
The next day we went on a beautiful walk to the Paku Waterfall
Playing shopkeeper in this hole in a route
‘Mutch gutch’!
We had the waterfalls all to ourselves. In fact, we barely saw anybody the whole walk.
Hitching a ride…
The next day we went on a long boat to the Clearwater cave system
…which extends over 200km(!!), making it the biggest in the world. Only a fraction of it is open to the public as show caves.
The diversity of the flora and fauna was amazing. This is just a small selection of what we saw…
Sadly though, it is all disappearing at an alarming rate as was evident on our flight to Miri. Huge sections of it have been logged over the past few decades.
And closer to the coast is mile upon mile of environmentally disastorous palm plantations. Since the beginning of this century, Malaysia has destroyed a whopping 14% of its remaining rainforests – more than any other country. People that we’ve talked to believe there is a lot of corruption going on with logging consents being granted to companies headed by friends and family of politicians.
All very sad.
Then it was back to civilisation for a few days while we waited for our onward flights. Miri proved to be a very pleasant place to hang around. We played a LOT of ten pin bowling…
And ate fantastically well
We also took a day trip to the close by Lambir Hills National Park. Again, we were amazed to have the place practically to ourselves!
Finally it was time to take off to Bario in the Kelabit highlands. The small twin prop planes are loaded up with cargo, so it was important to weigh all passengers to get the weight right.
Unloading at Bario
Where we were met by our hosts Steven and Tine. Sofia is doing her Olaf impression (from the movie Frozen), with her front tooth practically dangling from a thread over the past few days…
No playground, no problem
Beautifully tranquil Bario
Finally(!!)
Rice drying in front of the rice fields
We visited a Panan settlement close to Bario. Penan are nomads who live off the forest. Unfortunately, the Government is trying to shift them into settlements such as this so as to not interfere with logging operations.
The next day we went on an overnight trek to the nearby village of Pa’ Lungan
We trekked for almost five hours – this kind of stamina would have almost been unthinkable a year ago at the beginning of our travels.
Along the way we saw this water buffalo collecting supplies from the longboat at a nearby river
The ‘racing car’ boys arrived ahead of the ‘slow tortoises’
We saw these guys earlier and were a little unnerved by their hunting dogs which past close by us first. They had some success with a wild boar chopped up in their carrying baskets upon their return.
Pa’ Lungan was beautiful
The kids fattening the fish that we would later have for dinner. The food in the Kelabit highlands was some of the best we’ve had this trip.
The next day we had to walk for an hour to catch a longboat back to Bario. We thought this guy that we met along the way may be after an unsolicited guiding fee.
It turned out he was our boat captain
The view from Jungleblues Guest house after the rain
Our host Steven gave a great performance on the ‘sape’, a traditional Kelibat instrument
Our four days in Bario seemed a lot longer, but still passed much too soon.
