Niah Caves NP

After a short flight from Mulu back to Miri, I headed for the taxi stand to catch a bus at the city's long distance bus station.
Apparently the taxi coupon sales person mistakenly wrote down the price for the inner city bus station, so I was angry when the taxi driver taking me in the direction of the city center, this is after he told me there are no bus to Niah Caves, which I know it is not true. He want me go with him to his friend who operates a share taxi.

So I started yelling at him and telling him that he is try to cheat me, and he got angry as well, so we headed back to airport and shouted our way back to the taxi coupon counter. After correct the bus station mess up, I headed for another taxi, but the place is run by taxi monopoly, and the original driver insist I get back into his cab, so we shouted all the way to his cab again. We both finally shut up and I arrived the long distance bus station, and I was on my way to Niah Caves.

I arrived in the park around 3:30 in the afternoon, and rain just started. So I decided to do the cave visit the following day. The park was pretty quiet with few local and foreign tourists.

The following morning the rain finally stopped, so I started my quick tour of the caves. The plank walkway to the caves was so wet and with mossy slime that even walking on the flat surface, one can slip on it. So I slip and slide my way to the caves. There were many snails along the way, I guess they love the wet and slimy condition.

The cave system here wasn't as impressive as the ones in Mulu, but there are couple things worthy a visit: one the guano harvesting and bird nest soup (swiflets) harvesting, and the painted cave where ancient human inhabitant made their marks.

The bird nest harvester, use long multi-segmented bamboo sticks with flashlight attached to the end to break the nest high in the cave ceiling. Some use single thicker bamboo to climb to reach the nest.

One the way back, my flashlight's battery went dead and I was in the middle of a dark cave, luckily there are other visiting coming in, and one of them let me have her batteries!

At park headquarter, I found a group of Malaysian soldiers on break and paid them 10 riggits to get me to the bus stop, but apparently we mis-communicated and they drop me off at the town Niah and not the bus station few more miles away. So I need to find another way to get to bus depo. I found a Chinese guy with a very old car, and he agree to take me for 10 riggits (so I over-paid by 5 combined). The ride to bus depo was very very slow in his old car.

At depo, there is already a bus there, so I grab something to eat and paid the driver a fair fare and soon I was on my way to my next park: Similajau near Bintulu.