this was a trip we planned about 1/2 year ago, when airasia had one of their promo... at that time, when we bought the kl-miri flight, we had no knowledge of what miri is like or what we can do there. we just know that we wanted to go to sarawak, and miri seems like a good place (other than it being cheap!).
it was only later, after much research and reading up that we found out that we can actually "do the mulu", which is only a 1/2 hour flight from miri! but the mulu package is like 20 times more expensive than our kl-miri flight, because there's no other way to mulu from miri, other than taking the maswing.
anyway, as our flight was in the early morning (7.20am), we decided to take the first klia transit train from bandar tasik selatan (bts), with their new klia transit to lcct package. basically, with this package, we stop at the salak tinggi station and from there, their shuttle bus will bring us to lcct.
in the website, it stated that the first transit train will arrive at the bts station at 5.40am. but when we got there at 5.15am, the electronic board showed that the train will be arriving in 10 minutes time! what the... so we hurriedly went to buy our tickets, but guess what?! the ticket counter is closed! fine, we'll buy from the ticket vending machine... but guess what again?! the vending machine don't sell the klia transit to lcct tickets! what the... how come this was not stated in their website??? with only 8 minutes to go before the train is due to arrive, we quickly made the decision to buy just the train tickets to salak tinggi, and then try to find a way to get to lcct from there (coz in their website, it was stated that shuttle bus tickets will not be sold at the salak tinggi station).
and when we were buying our tickets from the vending machine, another hiccup! there were 2 vending machines there, so i took one and N took one. but when i slotted in my RM10, nothing happened! no tickets came out... and when i pressed "cancel", it went back to the main screen, but didn't return my money! what the...!! i was so pissed! and the PA system was announcing that the train will be arriving in 5 minutes time... panic, panic! the only other person at the station was a security guard, who was dozing away on a seat nearby. even if we were to wake him up, i don't think he'd be of any help. so no choice, had to fork out more money to get my ticket from the other machine. @&%%^;^#*@^(&)#*$*^)!!!
the train came at 5.25am sharp... they can't even get their schedule right! *sigh*
when we got to the salak tinggi station at 5.50am, luckily their counter was opened there. so we went to inquire about tickets for the shuttle bus. we explained that the counter at bts station was closed... so ok, we're able to buy our shuttle bus tickets, but guess what? we had to pay a higher price! but it wasn't our fault for not buying the package from bts station!!! what a "fantastic" system they have! and don't get me started on our long wait for the shuttle bus to get going! %@*#)@I#$@$&#(&;*(^!!
ok, ok *breathe* we kept reminding ourselves not to be complaint queens... (^_^)
finally, after much hiccup, we arrived at miri at 9.40am...
our connecting flight to mulu is at 2.25pm. so i called up ryuu, who's based in miri, to come bring us out for brunch. yeah, we know it's a weekday, but since ryuu is the head of his department, he can just stroll out right after doing his morning briefing and whatever else he needs to do with his staff and disappear for 1/2 the day!
so we were whisked off on a slow drive ("slow" is the only speed there is! all the mirian drivers are slowpokes!) for some tour around town and then for some authentic sarawak laksa...
eating utensils came soaked in a mug of hot water! according to mon, that's a standard practice in sarawak...
fluffy white clouds in the sky, but not directly above us... these were AWAY from the mirian sky. all these while, since being posted there, ryuu has been complaining about how hot miri is with little rain fall, but we all thought he's just being a drama queen. but here, we saw it with our own eyes. the mirian sky really has no clouds at all!
as we still had some time to kill (coz really, miri is only so big that everywhere is near the airport!), ryuu purposely made a detour to show us this crazily and jaw-droppingly humongous house own by some filthy rich mirian (according to ryuu, most prob a chinese fuzhou!).
a mere hour later, N said she's hungry again! =_='''
so we went to this place opposite the airport for some kolo mee...
don't be fooled by the colour. it's not bland at all!
only N ate. ryuu and i just had some drinks...
it's either the kolo mee is very good or N was really hungry!
back to the airport, waiting for our connecting flight...
yay, first time going on maswing!
only a 30 min flight away... the mulu airport is so small, we just walked across the tarmac to the terminal building. it's something like the kerteh airport. and they didn't have a conveyor belt for the luggage! even kerteh airport has one... they only dump our luggage on top a wooden table.
the arrival hall weren't even air-conditioned! but fret not... i have my personal hand held battery-operated fan! v(^_^)v
we were picked up by our tour operators there... and were told we'll start our cave visits immediately, coz the national park closes at 5.30pm! what the... we were in long pants! i sure as hell ain't gonna walk into some guano-filled cave in long pants and my good shoes! so we protested and insisted that we HAVE to check-in first! in the end, they had no choice but to bring us to their boss's home for us to change.
here's me trying to catch-up with our guide, anthony, who was
walking rather briskly... "have to walk faster, park closes at 5.30pm"
dunno the real name of this leaf, but we call it "totoro's umbrella". we're always very excited when we see this... hehehe... this is the biggest we've seen so far! N purposely asked me to put my hand there, to show exactly how big it is...
the first cave we visited was lang's cave, "lang" being the ang-moh who discovered it. lang's cave is known for its great rock formations...
N and i were quite disappointed to learn that the caves here are well-paved and well-lit. not very adventurous... but quite informative lar, as we've not seen some of the things before.
an imprint of a fossil on the limestone...
helictites...
cave bells on the ceiling... formed by some water swirling, difference in temperature, chemical reaction between the water, minerals in the limestone, guano etc...
it's called deer cave it seems that this is the water hole for deers in the area a long time ago...
can you see lincoln's silhouette?
deer cave is home to tens of thousands of bats, so can just imagine the stench of guano we had to endure! here, the bats are leaving the cave for their nightly forage for food...
from the observation platform, where we can sit and watch the bats leaving the cave. but seems like the bats had an early start that day, so by the time we got to this platform, they were all gone...
on the trek back to meet our van, we saw this snail with its horizontal shell!
finally, we were able to check-in at benarat lodge! simple and back to basics, but it's better than we expected... however, they will only on their generator from 6pm - 12am! so after that, no fan! it was quite stuffy and i'd say we did not sleep too well that first night...
the dinner served by benarat lodge... quite big portion. and we thought we'd starve over there, so we actually bought some KFC chicken nuggets to bring over! hehehe... so it was a very full dinner we had that night! :)
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3 comments:
singapore got sell the kolo me.. freaking sgd6.50 a bowl!
wah! freaking cut-throat! i think it was only RM4 in miri, if not mistaken...
just asked ryuu, he said it's normally RM2.50. some places even selling at RM2!
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