Adventure Day 4: Clear Water Cave & Wind Cave

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Another early day. We woke up at 7am and had our breakfast at cafeteria then gathered at National Park headquarter and waited for our boat drive to Penan Village , Clear Water Cave and Wind Cave.

Another early day. We woke up at 7am and had our breakfast at cafeteria then gathered at National Park headquarter and waited for our boat drive to Penan Village , Clear Water Cave and Wind Cave.

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Most of the rangers and boat men at Gunung Mulu National Park are from Penan tribe. We boarded a small modified perahu (wooden boat) with motor engine and stopped after 15-20 minutes boat ride at Penan Village. There was another young Malaysian Malay man on the same boat as us. Later we came to know him as Najib (same name as our Prime Minister), and he worked as fireman at airport.

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Penan village consisted of few small wooden houses along the river side and 2 rows of Longhouse. One of the boat-man is staying at the Longhouse at Penan Village . There are some notice board displaying the history of Long house and Penan Tribe, then there is a stretch of 3 to 5 stores selling handcrafts made by native ladies including beading, traditional weapon, music instrument made of bamboos, cane-basket etc. Generally Penan people seems to be shorter from what we observed.

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I did an embarrassing thing there. I don’t know why, may be psychology problem as my friends said, since the trip start few days ago, I kept having toilet urge in the morning before 11am. I kept needed to pee every 5 minutes, I tried to reduce water intake but still have the urge quite frequently. So at Penan Village , I had the same urge to pee and I’m not sure whether there is toilet in the cave and how long I have to wait. So I walked to the boat-man and tried to ask if I can use his house toilet. (his long house is a bit of distance from the bazaar).  The nice Penan boat-man took me to a local house, and asked to permission of the owner for me to use their toilet. The toilet is quite modern, squatting type, clean, but there is no water to flush. There is a tall big water tank but only filled with 30cm height of water. As I’m also not tall, I have a little hard time bending to pail up some water to flush the toilet. Luckily I’m not doing big business….phew!

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After the toilet, I took a pic with the local kid and the nice boat-man before we left. ML said we look like one family because of the shirt colors were all in red tone. After that we have another short river ride and proceeded to Wind Cave , Lady Cave and Clear Water Cave . The ranger, Mr. Ismail that guided us is also from Penan tribe and he is a very humorous guide. Besides working as ranger, he is also a part time pastor preaching to the villager, also an herbs doctor. ML had very good chat with him throughout the journey, like father and daughter. But towards the end of the journey when we walked out from Wind Cave , Suh mentioned something about she was well prepared with all kinds of tools (torch, gloves, head lamps) because scare to die. So from then onwards, Mr. Ismail is giving her private lecture on life from Christianity view I supposed.

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At the entrance of Wind Cave , there is a clear stream that tourists can swim and relax from strenuous walks. Water lover PW and Suh went in the water for swimming, Mr. Najib too and many Caucasian. Suh and PW are the 2 only conservative swimmer with half cover swim costume and 3-quarter pant on. The rest were on nice bikinis. ML and I were snapping photos at the rest place.

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After shower and lunch, we wanted to visit the Paku Waterfalls. ML and I thought the track will be short and easily walkable. So ML and I set out with short and sandals. This was a bad choice! Before we left the long house, it started raining. We wore rain coat and umbrella thinking the rain might stop soon. But it rained, stopped and rained again. Thus, the jungle trail was wet and a little muddy in some part. It made the walk more difficult what more with Sandal! We didn't make it to the fall as we walked for 45 minutes and didn't see any sign for waterfall. We were a bit worry as it was raining heavier and the Ranger warned us that there might be branches fall from tree (ranger didn't follow us, we are on our own). So we turned back after 45 mins walk and on the way out a leech sucked on Suh's calf. Luckily she discovered it fast before the leech get fat with all her precious blood.

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Before return to cobra cave, we decided to take a picture at the sign board to the waterfall and ask the ranger later if we have taken the right route. So, snap 1, snap 2.... and there was a big group of caucasian tourists walked past us, there are going for the Deer Cave and Langs cave exploration. One old white man seeing us taking photo, he also focus his camera on us and taking our picture. Suddenly I saw an old white man rushing to my Suh, handled her his camera and asked her to take his picture at our spot too. ML and I were ready to moved away from the sign board but the tourist say no no, and he wanted us to be in his picture. He kept asking if we are Malaysian. Of course we are but I think he wanted to take picture with native tribe girl. Haaaaa.... We are from city! Later we got to know that this group of tourists are from Italian. Si bella.......Haaaa.

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We brought few maggie cup noodles from Miri as we worried that Mulu National Park has no nice cafeteria. So in order to reduce our luggage weight, we decided to have instant noodles and cereal as our dinner for the night. We had long and loud chat till midnight, each laying on bed and off light...hahaha, gal's talks. But one thing to tell is that the electric supply at Gunung Mulu National Park is not very stable, it kept off many times even in the day. The night before, we had no air cond, no fan almost whole night. However, the air in Mulu park is not too hot and we still manage to get into sleep.

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