Miri to Kuching

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  Miri, Sarawak, Malaysia
Thursday, July 16, 2009

Since I've been in Borneo I've been fairly unlucky when i comes to airplanes, firstly with the turbulence flying from Tawau and then more problems at KK airport. I was trying to fly from KK to Miri in Sarawak but as soon as i arrived at the airport the most mental storm kicked in and it poured with rain for about 2 hours, not just normal rain either, it was the heaviest rain that I've even seen. I was looking out onto the airfield and i couldn't see more than 15 metres in front of me. Obviously there was no way we could fly in those conditions so i had to wait in this tiny little airport for about 4 hours until the weather cleared up.

Eventually i did get to Miri and checked into the most amazing hostel called Dillenia, it was a really small place and it really felt like i was living in the owners house. When it was time to leave Miri i was more disappointed that i had to check out of that place. Anyway, I was in Miri so that i could head down to the gunung Mulu national park but i soon found out that to get there would be really difficult and expensive and it really didn't seem worth doing it. Instead i went to a nearly park called  Lambur hills, it was a really nice place with some amazing waterfalls and lots of wildlife that i could hear but unfortunately not see. I swear i was being stalked by something for about 20 minutes. I went on my own and did a 5 kilometer trail that looped around from the park HQ. On the whole route i didn't see one other person! I was going to go a bit further but i was absolutely exhausted already. I think that I've been over doing things a bit to much, Mountain climbing, jungle trekking and whitewater rafting really takes it out of you. So i decided to head back early and just chill out for the afternoon.

When i was back at the hostel I met these 2 girls from Germany and the next day the 3 of us went down to a place called the Niah caves. There are a few different caves all in the same area of Niah, the first one is called the great cave, it is absolutely massive, 60 metres high and 250 wide. Swiflet birds nest in the cave and local people collect their next using really unstable bamboo ladders. The nests are considered a delicacy in south east Asia and are worth huge amounts of money. Further into the caves it gets a lot smaller and darker. The path through the cave is about 3 kilometers long and if we turned our flashlights off we literally couldn't see anything at all. We could hear loads of bats nesting in the darker parts of the caves and there were loads of really strange bugs clinging to the walls, even a few scorpions! At the other end of the caves we had to trek through a bit more jungle until we reached the painted cave. On the walls of the caves are some paintings that have been worked out to be over 40 thousand years old! They weren't particularly good pictures though (I could probably do a lot better) they were mainly off animals and people hunting. When the caves were first found coffins were also discovered next to the paintings but have since been removed and put in a museum somewhere.

The next day I left Miri and headed down to a place called Sibu in hope off catching a boat to kuching. The bus took forever so i missed the boat and had to spend a night in the city. At first it didn't seem like a very nice place, It took me a while to find somewhere to stay because most of the hotels actually seemed to be more like brothels but eventually i found somewhere that seemed Ok. I did take a wander around the town and it wasn't as bad as first appeared, all the loacls were really surprised to see a foreigner walking about the place and the ones that spoke english all asked me what i was doing in Sibu. There wasn't to much to see in the town, it was a kind of industrial place with lots of shipping and timber places dotted along the waterfront. I did find a place to grab a beer but didn't stay for to long as people kept staring at me (but not in a way that i would like). I've been staying in dorm rooms for my whole time in Borneo so it was nice to have a room all to myself for one night, i had a really good sleep and then got the 11am boat the next day. Most people fly from Miri to Kuching as it works out as pretty much the same price and only takes two hours but i like travelling on boats and you get to see a lot more of the country. I've really had enough of airplanes by now as well. The boat was really good fun, it was different to any boat i've been on before, really long and tall, extremely powerful also. As soon as we were out of the port the captain gunned it and we motored along at a high speed. I sat up on the deck for most off the trip, the route followed the Batang Rejang river from Sibu until it reaches the sea. All along the river banks were huge logging companies loading loads of timber onto boats. There were thousands of trees all just lying on the bank waiting to be collected. Malaysia has a real problem with deforestation at the moment and this was the first example that i had seen of it. The trip got a bit boring once we got out to sea but it only took an hour from there until we reached land again and i arrived i Kuching at about 5ish. We pulled up in another industrial looking place, it looked like Portbury actually and i was a bit worried the town would be another Sibu but once we got out of there i decided that Kuching looks really nice. I'm here for a few days and then back to Thailand

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