Fai's Art at Mulu March2011

Che-che's Birthday.
Note the long legs. The 4 knights under the table are Fai, Han, Ean and Arian.

Evolution
From left, tiny plankton-like lives in water evolving into a bigger creature with wings and appendages. Further evolving with increase in size until the highly evolved creature is formed (top right) .

A hairy giant?

Cicada @ Royal Mulu 5March2011

The boys' collection of dead cicadas after a short walk around the resort.

Arrangement by Fai
Watch out for buzzing cicadas at night. In the morning, lots of dead cicada can be seen on the floor.

The kids make it a point to visit the washroom by the restaurant nightly, just so that they can make a dash through a narrow passageway that seems to be a favourite spot for zooming, buzzing cicadas.

One, two....runnnn.....bzzzzzzttbzzzzzt
Dissection by Han
Cicada has 4 wings. The smaller wing on the left got blown away.

Close up of the wing

Millipede found on a railing

Clearwater Cave 5thMarch2011

Entrance to Clearwater Cave
Huge boulders greeted us after climbing up 200 steps. Puff, puff...it was not an easy task.
Out of the 4 caves that I visited in Mulu, this has to be my favourite.
No smelly guano, lots of scalloping, stalactites and staglamites to admire and the heart pounding sound of the river that flows through it.
I felt like one of the Famous Fives exploring a mystery in an underground cavern.
The cave was lit with dim yellow lights and the air was cool and refreshing.
'Foong Sup' (masuk angin) comes to mind though.

As in all the other caves, lots of interesting facts to read and ponder upon. I would have spent more time in here if not for Han and Ean pestering me to hurry up and get on with it. After 2 days of caves, Han and Ean had quite enough of looking at limestones.

Fai on the other hand couldn't get enough of all the information that he learnt from the guide's narration and from the signboards. I never got to hear much of what the guide had to offer as oftentimes I lagged behind the group....far, far behind.
Fai would insist on being in the thick of the action - with the guide. When I do catch up with him, he would excitedly tell me about all the interesting facts that he learnt and at times pull me to a particular signboard and have me read out and explain the details to him.

We crossed a bridge.

The view from the bridge was spectacular. Unfortunately, my camera couldn't capture its majestic beauty.

JY : Imagine this whole place was once under water!

It was a humbling experience.

Advanced adventure cavers would emerge from the far end of the cave and they would have to wade 1.5 km through the river.
This was the best part - jumping into the crystal clear water.

Millipede

Han washing his slippers.

He was observed by hundreds of fish.

After that refreshing dip, we boarded the long boat for our journey back to the resort.

Deer Cave, Mulu 4March2011

After the 3 hour walk from the Mulu Park HQ, we were greeted by this sight.

We rested for a while at the bats observatory before continuing on to the caves. Fai could spot the bats from where we were seated.

Fai: Look, those black dots that look like knives. Those are bats, Mummy. They are bats hanging upside down. Can't you see them?

Me (straining my eyes and wishing I had binoculars): Er...I am trying hard to....

First to Deer Cave then to Langs Cave.

After the caves it is back to the bats observatory to marvel at 3 million bats as they make they nightly flight out of the caves.

Entrance of Deer Cave.

Deers were frequently sighted in this cave once upon a time. Many believed it was because the deers came for the salt in the mineral-rich guano. The deers were easy targets and the last deer was killed in the 1970s.

The Garden of Eden - a jungle in the middle of the cave caused by a cave-in

It was a lengthy walk through the cave. One way in and out. The photo above shows how large the cave is.

Guano - the brown stuff on the ground

Throughout the cave we had to breathe in the strong stench of the bat's guano. At certain sections with less air movement, the concentration of guano was so high, it was overpowering.

And lastly, not-to-be-missed is Abe Lincoln's famous profile.

Langs Cave and the Bat Exodus from the observatory 4March2011

Map of Langs Cave. Han likes maps and he traced his finger along the route we followed repeatedly.
Langs Cave was touted to have spectatcular cave formations

It was easy to explain the formation of stalagmite and stalactites when the kids could witness for themselves the dripping of the mineralised solution from the stalactite above.

Lots of information was readily available. Signboards such as the one above explained the science behind what we saw and at times posted puzzling questions for us to mull over.

Jellyfish like formations. Similar to the ones we came across in Gua Tempurung.

After admiring the formations in Langs Cave, we gathered at the bats observatory to witness the nightly exodus of bats as they fly out from the caves by the thousands from 5 to 6.30pm.

The bats can be seen circling and gathering above the entrance of the cave and then leaving in a spiralling ribbon towards the forest. A moment later, another group of bats will leave the cave and this will occur continuously until nightfall.

As each colony of bats left the cave, my kids cheered and Ooohed and Aaaahed with the rest of the crowd.

We sat there and saw at least 10 colonies leave the cave. It wa

Here's a video of the bat exodus. Enjoy!

As we walked back towards the park HQ for our ride back to the resort, we could hear the bats swoosh by over head.

It was an amazing sight catching sight of them among between the trees as they flew by.

Drawing by Fai depicting the bats using echolocation to locate their prey.

The bat with Xs for its eyes hit a stalagmite.

"It forgot to use echolocation and hit its head" explains Fai.

He also drew the plankwalk we walked on.

I will need to ask him what the circle on the upper righthand corner is as well as the orange sketches on the upper left corner.