More busses and boats (Jan. 4/09 - Niah Caves National Park, Borneo, Malaysia)

So far, everywhere we stayed has included breakfast with the room, but this one didn't so we were faced with the challenge of finding it on our own. This would be easy if you wanted noodles or fried rice for breakfast, but we had seen toast on the menu at dinner last night, so we hoped to find some at the Chinese cafe down the street. None of the staff really spoke english, but one lady did understand "coffee" and "bread" - but when we received a blank look at the word "toast", we had to think of another way of describing it. Hot? Cooked? Eventually, she seemed to understand "burnt" and went off to the kitchen while we waited with fingers crossed. I was pretty sure we would either end up with deep fried or wok fried bread, or it would be charred black. But a few minutes later she came out with two plates of what turned out to be jam sandwiches toasted in a panini press! Impressive - and they were good too.

Challenge #2 for the day would be finding a ride back to the bus terminal. All the cabs seemed to be going the wrong way, so Ken walked out onto the median and knocked on the window of one stopped at a light. He pointed over at me waiting on the curb, and when the light turned green, he did a U-turn and pulled over. He also tried to con us into paying twice what the regular rate is - that seems to be a common trick taxi drivers use (playing on the naivety of visitors). The next bus to Bintulu was leaving at 9am, so we had about 6 hours on the bus again today. We actually went through Bintulu and got off at Niah, which is a small town about half way up the coast of Borneo that is home to Niah Caves National Park. The caves here are some of the largest and most accessible in the world, and they are also famous as being the site of the earliest evidence of human habitation in Southeast Asia. It was right on our way so we had to check it out!

The park has nice bungalows to stay in, so we claimed one and then took the little boat across the Sungai Niah (Niah River) to check out the Niah Caves Museum on the other side. We'll spend tomorrow checking out the caves themselves, but today we wanted to get the background info. Basically, evidence has been found in the caves that suggests human occupation almost continuously since 40,000 years ago. Artifacts include pottery, glass beads, stone tools, rock paintings, and almost 200 corpses, many of which were entombed in wooden boat-shaped "death ship" coffins. The caves' location in dense old growth rainforest makes for a unique ecosystem where lots of wildlife resides, including a few species that are endemic to these caves. Local Malaysians have collected guano (bird and bat droppings) for use as fertilizer and the nests of the Swiftlet birds for use in birds' nest soup (an Asian delicacy) for decades. They still continue both today in a controlled and regulated manner.

Ever since we landed in Singapore, we've been kind of surprised at how few travellers we've seen there and here in Malaysia. Some nights, we've been the only people at the hostel and the only non-locals in restaurants and on busses. We learned today that kids go back to school tomorrow after Christmas holidays, so there will be even fewer people traveling! Tonight we met a couple at the park's restaurant who are the only other people staying here tonight. (Side note - they are Australian and have the exact same plan for the rest of Borneo as we do!) A nice lady named Rose came out and apologized for not having much selection for dinner since there is hardly anyone to feed... but that was ok with all of us, and she whipped up some tasty noodles with bok choy and chicken. We polished it off and strolled back to our cabin just as the nightly monsoon began.