Release the bats Part 3: Mulu

The next day we hightailed it to the Mulu National Park where we spent a few days surrounded by all manner of crazy animals, insects and tourists. If you don't believe me, put long legged centipede into google and see what you get. That thing should be 2 kilometres underwater it looks so alien. Sadly, I saw that on a night hike so no pictures of that particular creature as my camera sucks. There are also cicadas that make a sound like a drunk trying to play an out of tune violin so as you walked through the forest you were accompanied by this strange insect symphony.


The next day we headed up river to check out more caves so here's the obligatory shot of one of us in a life jacket.


On the way up, we stopped at a local village which has probably the most scenic football fields I've ever seen even though it needed a good whipper snip.


That being said, the locals have shit taste in football teams.


The underwater theme exhibited by the insects previously was pretty prevalent amongst the caves as well as a lot of them looked strangely jellyfish like.


However, regardless of what country it is, (Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand), there always has to be at least one penis rock.


We also signed up for a canopy walk, one of the longest in the world. After three steps on the swinging, unsteady walk, I chickened out and was then the ridicule of some Swiss tourists for the rest of the trip. Brilliant, even the Swiss think I'm a joke.



The highlight of the Mulu Park visit was the MFBC. Technically, it is called the Deer Cave but I called it the Muthafucking Bat Cave because it contained several million bats and was frickin' huge.


Again, to give you an idea of the scale, check out the people in this picture. The roof of the cave shimmered with bats and their screeching sounds (oddly, sounding like sizzling bacon) echoed through the cave. There were also mountains of guano everywhere and our guide astutely told us not to look up with our mouths open. This was particularly exciting for Ruth who not-so-secretly wants to be adopted by David Attenborough and he had filmed some wildlife in these caves. As such she was following the footsteps of her beloved adopted father.


As the sun set, the mass of tourists (mainly Russians who had trekked for hours through the jungle but still seemed to have vodka on them) assembled for one of nature's most dazzling displays. Millions of bats fly out of the MFBC at the same time every night in a strange twisty plume of bat smoke.


It goes for about an hour but as wave after wave of bats flies out you can't help but be in awe of nature - even if you have to keep your mouth shut in the process.

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