Kota Kinabalu to Mulu

We caught a flight to Mulu in Sarawak after dropping our hire car off at Kota Kinabalu airport.
Driving in Sabah was pretty straightforward.
Our flight to Mulu was 50 minutes on a 70 seater plane with only 8 passengers.
When travelling to Sabah or Sarawak you have to go through immigration even though these are all states of Malaysia. This was an agreement struck at independence and applies to peninsula Malaysians as well. It is to protect jobs for Borneo residents.
We were met at the airport by our “executive” bus to take us to the Marriott where we were staying!
In the afternoon we reboarded our bus and took a tour to Lang and Deer caves with our guide.
You walk along a 3km boardwalk through the jungle past many large trees including Meranti and trees whose sap is used to tip poison darts used by locals for hunting wildlife.
Lang cave has a lot of impressive stalactite and stalagmite formations. There was one stalactite that had 2 fine water columns flowing down from it.
Deer cave is home to about 3 millions bats. This cave has great banks of bat guano which has a VERY strong ammonia smell. The cave is named after deer who came in search of the guano and the salt that it contains. The entrance to the cave has a lot of tall fish tail palms, so called as the leaves resemble fish tails. The cave is massive and is over 150m high. We walked along a board walk for 800m and reached what is called the garden of Eden at the back of the cave where the cave opens into a sink hole.
After exiting the cave we waited for the bats to leave the cave in their “swarms” in search of insects. We could see a few small swarms but unfortunately not the massive one we hoped to see. All the while a number of Bat Hawks circled overhead in search of a feed.Read more