Mulu National Park

Borneo's Mulu national park is possibly the most beautiful national park I have ever seen. To get to Mulu we left from Miri and traveled by express boat up river for about 9hrs. Along the way we saw crocodiles and spoke with locals heading back to their original home village because a fire had destroyed their parents homes and their families were now homeless and were lacking the necessary wealth to rebuild. We also passed huge logging vessels. After the express boat we boarded boats that were about 3feet wide and had a hull of about 6 inches. In these tiny vessels we traveled up the clear-water river system for 1 1/2 hours in a thunderstorm with rain so heavy we were sometimes forced to close our eyes!
The next day we again traveled up the beautiful clear-water river system by boat before trekking 8.9km through the rainforest to reach camp 5, our base camp for the next days climb of the Pinnacles. At camp 5 I had an afternoon swim in the river and laid about reading and writing before an early night.
The next morning we headed of at 6:30 to start climbing the pinnacles. The climb had us soaked in sweat, was very slow on the way down, but was also relatively easy. After navigating the various ladders and ropes to reach the top and come back down again, I returned to camp 5 about 12 o'clock. Again the afternoon was spent swimming in the river, relaxing, and watching lizards and insects run about.
The following morning we re-trekked the 8.9km back out of camp 5 to meet our boats. After arriving 20 minutes early for our pick up one of the girls and I decided we would float downriver and meet the boats on the way. The water was crystal clear and the perfect temperature for the humid rainforest. In the afternoon we headed out to do the canopy walk and then onwards to see Lang and deer cave. The canopy walk was good fun (though overpriced), but the winner of the day by far was the caves. Lang cave is quite small but has some amazing formations, while the size of deer cave simply can't be put into words of photographs. it is MASSIVE. It is also home to 3 million bats and smells terribly of bat droppings, but what an amazing thing to see. After exploring deer cave we waited outside for the bats to emerge for their night time hunt but they decided not to come up. this was both very disappointing and very uncommon...
The next morning we flew out of Mulu and from the plane windows the rainforest went as far as the eye can see. Mulu is a place I feel very privileged to have seen..