Niah Caves

This was the main attraction for us. We had heard a lot of good things about it and were very excited. The drive took us about 2 hours.

We arrived at 10ish because it takes about 5 hours to explore everything.

We had to cross this river (I don't understand why they don't have a bridge!) which cost us 1 ringgit (20p) each.

After this there is a very long board walk through the rainforest that takes us directly to the caves. It was very well done and perfect for Yusuf too.

It was a beautiful walk. You could hear so many different types of birds and monkeys. We also so countless of lizards and this one in particular seemed to want to pose for the camera.

Finally reaching the caves.

This was the first cave called the Traders Cave.

We didn't know what the scaffolding was for until we read this sign. Must have been incredibly hard for the workers staying here.

(You can click on the pictures to enlarge them)

After a bit more walking you come across the aptly named Great Cave. I took countless of pictures to try an capture the immense size of this cave but my camera just wasn't up to the job. It was literally awesome.

Tom Harrison discovered human remains dating 40,000 years in the 1950s. This was the oldest recoreded human settlememnt in East Malaysia.

The poles were for the workers that collect the Swiftlets nests.

We walked through the Great Cave and reached a point called the Moon Walk (or Cave I cant remember!) This was basically a long stretch in complete darkness! Even after your eyes had adjusted you just could not see anything. It was a scary experience and (like an idiot!) I couldn't help but think about the Aliens V Predator film and some alien hiding in the corner! Yusuf had the torch and found it incredibly funny every time he switched the damn thing off. Very stressful. The worst part after coming out of it was that we had to go back the same way! I wasn't looking forward to it.

After the Moon Walk/Cave/Passage there was another short walk to the Painted Cave. The paintings date 1200 years and were faded so the camera didn't pick up anything. Burial ships were also discovered near the painted caves. Again no pictures but the whole experience was beautiful even if we were essentially in a graveyard.

The walk there took us about 2 1/2 hours and we were pretty tired. After spending sometime in the Painted Cave we headed back. It is exactly the same way back. After coming out of the dark passage I got this one decent shot of the Great Cave. It was taken quite high up but still doesn't manage to show the huge cave or the vivid green rainforest beyond.

Just as we were leaving we came across this:

A snake!! It was the first time either one of us had seen one in the wild and to be honest it wasn't as scary as we thought it would be. Obviously it if was a bigger one we would have ran like crazy but this one was just cute. It also had recently eaten something as it had a slight bulge in the middle of it.

(OK after watching the video I realise I was s**t scared of the thing- how my memory deceives me (I was dancing and singing with the snake in my head!)

And that was the end of our Niah Caves trip. We felt very lucky to have had the opportunity to see it and the whole experience will forever remain in our memories of our time in Borneo. We went for dinner and I think Yusuf's face summed up our day.

(P.S-You can see the caves much better if you click on the pictures)