The Excellent Adventure: Gunung Mulu National Park, Malaysian Borneo

So for those of you who are avid Planet Earth fans, this one might make you really jealous: We have just returned from Mulu National Park, the home of the enormous Deer Cave, which was featured in the Planet Earth "Caves" episode, and is just as cool as one would imagine from watching the show. It was the largest cave passage known to man until recently (a larger one was found in Vietnam in 2009), and is big enough to fly a jumbo jet through (1.2 miles long, and never less than 270 feet high and wide). In other words, this thing is MASSIVE. Planet Earth fame aside, the entirety of Mulu National Park is awesome. We stayed at a "homestay" just outside of the park entrance, and spent 3 days and 2 nights exploring the park.

(Note: Anyone thinking of going to Mulu will be interested to know that the accommodation provided by the park (i.e. headquarters and the Royal Mulu Resort) is NOT the only place to stay, despite what they tell you. There are plenty of homestays (hostels) outside the park, but because of some stupid political issue they aren't allowed to advertise the fact that they exist. We were among those who almost decided not to go to Mulu because the park HQ rooms were booked up, but through word of mouth we found out about these homestays, and everything turned out fine. Mulu Park politics: 0, Preston and Jessica: 1.)

The suspension bridge leading to the park HQ.

Yep, we're in the jungle.

The entrance to Deer Cave. This is a really hard thing to take a picture of, considering how huge it is, but rest assured that it looks much more impressive than this photo of ours.

Inside Deer Cave. We actually didn't take this picture (because our camera is terrible), but this really is what it looks like. As a reference, if there was a person standing in this picture you wouldn't even be able to see them they'd be so small.

Abe Lincoln!

We swear this is not a product of photoshop, it is a natural stone formation inside Deer Cave. Crazy, huh?

As Planet Earth-ers will also recall, Mulu is also the place where each night literally MILLIONS of bats make a mass exodus from Deer Cave to go hunting. Besides being a sight to see, we ended up adoring these bats for the simple fact that they eat 15 tons of insects every night, mosquitos included; we were in a rainforest for 3 days and got maybe 4 mosquito bites between us! Hallelujiah!

3 MILLION (yes, million) bats exit Deer Cave every night to hunt. The stream seems to go on forever... When we get back, ask to see a video we took, it's awesome.

Sunset on the river on our walk back from seeing the bats.

The hills of Mulu Park at sunset.

The street just outside our hostel.

Before we got to Mulu, Preston did some research on the park and decided that we had to do some "adventure caving" while we were there. Upon arrival, we found out three things: 1) in order to do any adventure caving you have to do the intermediate Racer Cave first to prove that you can handle it, 2) there are only 8 spots per day for Racer Cave and it had been booked for months, and 3) if you beg the staff profusely and tell them how far you came to get to Mulu, they will squeeze you into the group anyway. Mulu Park politics: 0, Preston and Jessica: 2. And it was all worth it! We went to a remote cave with a small group of people, squeezeed, climbed, and crawled our way into the heart of the cave with only our Adidas Kampung (rubber Malaysian trekking shoes) and our headlamps to guide us.

Jessica's ready to do some spelunking.

Heading down the river to Racer Cave.

Cool tree on the bank of the river.

Just inside the entrance of Racer Cave.

The namesake of this cave, a Racer Snake.

Jessica rappelling (well, at least the less-safe Borneo version of rappelling) down the cave wall.

What our guide called "Adam and Eve's Shower".

Huntsman spider.... holy cow. This thing was easily 6 inches in diameter. According to our guide they are "maybe poisonous, it depends on your antibodies"... uh, what?

Preston scaling another wall.

Besides Deer Cave and Racer Cave, we also visited Lang's Cave (small, but beautiful), Clearwater Cave (one of the longest caves in the world), and Wind Cave. We loved all of them, but we could see why Deer Cave gets the most press. We also hiked out to Paku Waterfall (great place to swim), and did a Canopy Walk through the forest.

The river on a misty morning. We were on our way to Clearwater and Wind Caves.

Cool tree(s?) on our hike to Paku Waterfall.

Preston swimming beneath the falls. (The falls themselves weren't as impressive as we had hoped, but it was still a great place to swim.)

Weirdest caterpillar we've ever seen.

On the canopy skywalk.

The little prop plane that took us to and from Mulu from Miri. (You can also get to the park by boat, but for whatever reason, this mode of transport is about $75 more expensive than just flying.)