The airport was a breeze and we had about an hour to kill so we got some food in us and coffee. Called the folks again to wish them a Merry Christmas (I am going to miss living in the future). Our gate was all the way at the end of the terminal.
There were only a handful of people waiting at the gate, something like six or seven including us. We joked with each other about a plane ride with so few people. Turns out all the other people were on a different flight. So the gate cleared out and Jennifer and I were the only two left.
Boarding time came and still it was only us. Everyone was laughing as we made our way outside to the plane. It was such a small plane and short flight that we walked outside. One guy even joked with us
“You charted the plane for yourselves yes?”
We then realized that we were the only passengers on the plane. Literally it was just Jennifer, me, two cabin attendants and the pilots. The flight attendant stood right in front of us and gave the safety briefing as if having a casual conversation with a friend.
If you ever get the chance to be the only person on a commercial flight let me know because I am sure the club is pretty small. The flight into Mulu took about 90 min and you are flying over the rainforest the whole time. It was fun to watch all the green crisscrossed with the rivers below.
We landed on the one runway at Mulu and had no trouble getting our luggage as the guy just carried our two bags over from the plane. We had to wait about 10 minutes for the shuttle from the hotel. We spoiled ourselves a little bit on this leg of our journey.
Jennifer used her points to book us a room at the Marriott. This place felt like a palace compared to our hotel in Kuching. The hotel is all on stilts, apparently the whole place can flood during the wet season and is built right into the rainforest. The bed was fabulously comfortable but we had no time to enjoy it as we had a tour of the famous deer cave that afternoon.
We were the last ones to get to the park so we left on the hike almost immediately. Gunung Mulu National Park is an amazing place. It is a World Heritage Site and has serval amazing world renowned cave systems, hikes and other natural wonders.
It is best known for the bats that live there. Made famous by the “Planet Earth’ series there is a segment on caves. If you haven’t seen it yet, go rent it and watch it. It is what inspired us to visit. The park has some great trails, all of which are easily accessible and are all on wooden platforms so the walking is easy as. It took about 1.5 hours for the group to get to the cave entrance.
From there we hiked into the first cave, The Lang Cave. This one was small compared to Deer cave but still had some amazing formations and was very easy to get through. Carlsbad caverns and it have virtually the same trail set up.
From Lang cave it was another short walk through the forest to reach our main destination of Deer cave. The famous cave that has huge mounds of Bat guano and lots of bugs.
The size of this cave is staggering. It is over 2k in length and 174m high at the entrance, it is the largest cave in the world that is accessible to the public. Other than the smell (it was pretty horrendous at times) the cave was amazing and Jennifer and I both got some great photos.
At the very end of the tour you come to a crest in the hill, surrounded by bat shit and there are tons of these little creepy insects like earwigs everywhere. Me being the wise ass that I am decided to play a trick on Jennifer.
Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: Cklebold: Borneo Borneo wherefore art thou Borneo
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