Niah National Park and Caves

To get to Niah National Park, we got up at 5:30am and were at the express bus station by 6:45. The bus positively flew the one and a half hours west back to Niah Junction and after a quick negotiation with an opportunistic Chinese van driver we were at the park headquarters by 8:30.

After paying our park fees, we hopped on the boat that was used to ferry us across the river that separates park headquarters from the museum and park itself. We handed over another Ringit each for the pleasure, and Clairy snapped this pic on the twenty second journey.


We wanted to get stuck into the caves before crowds of other people turned up, so we left the museum till later and headed off on the pretty darn slippery plank and concrete boardwalk. Soon enough we spotted this beautiful snail. Clairy's got a bit of a thing about them, so we had to get a few piccies.


The lady's finger for scale.


As an example of just how treacherous the walkway was, shortly after we photo'd the snail, Clairy who was being her usual exceptionally cautious self on the slippery concrete, managed to come a cropper and end up on her bum, poor thing.

A little while later whilst stopping to appreciate the lively noises of our surroundings, we noticed some movement in a big tree in front of us. It turned out to be another of the strange native squirrels who seemed to have baggy white trousers.




We can see you!


There were some beautiful trees along the boardwalk. The buttress on this beast was enormous.


Shortly afterwards we came across various bizarre limestone formations. The ones that this tree was growing straight out of looked very like a man-made stone wall.


Oh hi! For some reason these gorgeous centipedes had really taken a liking to the boardwalk, particularly the handrails, so we had to be a bit careful. Later we found out they are called the common centipede. We thought this was a rather unfair name for such handsome little things




Clairy recorded this little vid to capture the quality Mexican wave effect of the legs when moving.


Another common sight along the handrail were these amazing looking fellas. We believe they are tiger leeches, the ones that would normally be slithering about on leaves about head height ready to grab on to anything that walks past and get themselves a tasty blood dinner.


A butterfly and friend feeding on a fallen fruit on the handrail.


After a little while we reached this huge limestone cliff-face. I loved the look of the curly vines in the canopy above.


A gnarly limestone overhang.


More snails! The orangey one in front had spectacularly long antenna and a lovely curly shell.


You can't really see bugger all from this piccy, but their was a pair of tiny furry things chasing each other round and around the tree in front. We were desperate to see a tarsier or a slow loris, but we think this was just a couple of baby squirrels.


After about three and half kilometres we reached the first cave. This is known as trader's cave but is actually just a large limestone overhang.


Inside were the belian (or Borneo ironwood) remains of huts used by people involved in the swiftlet bird nest collecting industry that worked in the caves full time up until the 1970's when it was decided that the dwindling numbers of swiftlets needed to be protected. The nests are worth huge amounts of money. In China, the swiftlet nests are apparently thought of as caviare is in the west.


The lads camping out in their tiny open huts.




As we headed through trader's cave, we took some pics of the dense green vegetation outside.


And the limestone formations hanging down within.


Clairy looking good in her quick dry plastic trousers. We're total converts to them now, so much more practical than the big heavy things that I bought away with me.








We headed out the other end of the traders cave and reached the appropriately named great cave. It was bloody enormous, 250m across and up to 60m at its highest point. This is the left side of the mouth, where in the 60's archaeologists found human remains that were dated as being from 40,000BC. The findings were seriously doubted originally, but subsequent tests have confirmed that as the correct age, and the result meant a complete rethink of early man's movements across Asia.


The contrast of light was very extreme near the entrance, and just too much for our poor little camera to cope with, resulting in these rather strange shots. You can see here our first sight of the bamboo and ironwood poles and ropes used to reach the nests at the very top of the cave. Understandably, collecting the nests is a hugely dangerous occupation and deaths from falling are not uncommon.


The right side of the great cave's mouth.


More of the excavations on the left side of the cave mouth and the covered walkway that protected us from the small waterfall that dropped down from above.


Me stomping off into the darkness.


It was absolutely colossal. All the time swifts and bats could be heard twittering overhead. Every surface was covered with their stinky droppings.


There was also a green tinge to everything near the cave mouth. Partly from the green light reflecting off the vegetation outside, but also because of the green algae.


Check that out for a lethal looking contraption, the workers don't use harnesses or any other safety equipment. They just head up the bamboo with a rag tied between their feet and carry a massive cane with a hook and basket on the end for poking off the nests.




The cave mouth. It was a stunning sight, looking out over all that greenery.




More freaky bird nest poles.


We were surrounded by beautiful limestone textures.


Me standing on the biggest pile of poo I probably ever have.


The stairs headed up over a ridge and then carried on down into the darkness the other side.


Nice huge anvil shaped rock on the way up.


As we reached the top of the steps we could finally get a single shot of the whole cave mouth.


If you turn your brightness right up, you might be able to make out some of the birds nests we were closest to. They are actually made from the saliva of the tiny birds. Its an awful lot of gob for such a small thing.




The torches came out as we headed down. We had our head torches, and I had hired one from headquarters just in case. They claimed it had new batteries, but I think that was new in a very cheap battery sense, and it was therefore totally rubbish from the start.

It was so incredibly slippery on every step of the boardwalk and stairs, and the darkness made it that much more difficult.


After climbing back up some lethal stairs, we found ourselves in the region known as lubang padang. Here the light streamed down in various holes from the cave roof. it was quite impressive, but pretty difficult to take decent pictures of.


I like this one though the greenery above.


More interesting formations. These ones looked particularly sharp.




This is the burnt cave, leading to another cave mouth.


It looked beautiful, but was off limits to all but the birds nest collectors.


From here we went past various huge rounded rocks down and down until we reached the moon cave.


The moon cave was a narrow, low passage that was about 500m long. It was totally dark, but being full of guano we found that our headtorches attracted hundreds of flying bugs that seemed desperate to get into our noses and mouths. I therefore used the rubbishy rental torch to navigate our way along the boardwalk. Again, it was insanely slippy and we nearly came a cropper numerous times. Clairy really didn't like this part and it nearly put her off the whole thing. I held on to her though, and insisted is wasn't much further to go. I neglected to tell her we had to come all the way back this way, as I thought she might want to turn around there and then, and she later admitted she totally would have done.


We could hear bats around us in the darkness, but it was quite tricky trying to get a piccy of the sleeping beasties.


Poor little buggers. Hope we didn't wake you up with our bright flash.


It looked like a river had run through the moon cave at some point smoothly wearing the sides down.


We just kept heading down and down into the darkness. We came across a number of really quite huge insects scuttling along the boardwalk in the darkness. They looked quite like the weka we read about in New Zealand, but I'm not certain if they were.


This picture made me think very childish thoughts. Sorry.


But finally, the end was in sight.


We had a little rest down at the shelter. Clairy was quite sore after tensing herself so much in an attempt to not slip over. She also said she was starting to feel a little poorly. We were quite near the last cave of the day, the painted cave, so I suggested we have a quick look at it and then head back.


The painted cave was 300m away along an elevated (and rather knackered) boardwalk.


After trekking up another set of steps we reached the painted cave, which was protected by a huge chain-link fence. Here were the 'death-ships', pictured below. These are believed to be burial artefacts of an ancient civilisation, who filled them with objects that the deceased would need for the afterlife. The objects themselves are now in the Sarawak Museum that we visited in Kuching.


Surrounding the death ships was some intriguing cave art. Due to the tropical conditions though, it was quite difficult to make out. The pictures are believed to be painted in red haematite and they portray spread eagled human figures, probably representing warriors and hunters, some of the animals of the surrounding forest and most importantly long boats carrying the souls of the deceased on the dangerous journey to the land of the dead.


There were some photographs that captured the cave painting a little better than my wobbly effort above displayed in front of them.




The ceiling of the painted cave had some interesting formations.




More violent green algae at the cave entrance.




The lady, not looking forward to the slippery walk home.


Check out the size of my fig leaf.


Heading back to the moon cave.


The walk back through the moon cave was just as slippery and bug filled but mercifully felt considerably shorter. We followed the right hand boardwalk this time back to the mouth of the great cave.


There were thousands of bats noisily clinging to the roof on this side.


Clairy exclaimed 'Have you noticed how blue the floor looks here?' before realising she still had her head torch on.


Lovely scalloping, where running water leaves this pattern. Apparently the smaller it is the faster the water has flowed. This therefore must have been extremely slow flowing.




The view of the huge pile of poo was pretty stunning from the cave mouth.




God knows what was going with this rock, but it was oozing black slime in a pretty gross manner.


Some clever swiftlets had decided to use these handy holes for their nests.




I tried out my Tarzan impression on the way back.


We also found these two at it by the time we returned, and their were quite a few with the same intent chasing each other all along the handrail. Get a room!


When you come across trees as vast and straight as their, with there first knots and branches way up in the canopy, you realise why they are so desirable to the timber industry. Its really sad. They are incredible specimens.


We had a quick look around the rather sad little museum when we got back, but by this point Clairy was feeling quite unwell poor thing. We weren't sure what had caused it, but figured it had to be food or drink related.

We were both glad to return to the comfort of the lovely Somerset Hotel in Miri, it had really been a quite a knackering day.