Niah Caves National Park (May 2-3)

All the negative stuff we have heard about Niah National Park was bullshit. The park was absolutely amazing. I have never seen a cave like this, it was huge! Some parts of the inner cave have holes in the ceiling and sunlight is shining through. This creates a really mystic atmosphere. Other parts of the cave are completely dark. Without torches you cannot even see a person standing beside you, really freaky. Unfortunately another cave called the “Painted Cave” was closed due to maintenance of the walkway. In this cave you can find paintings which are 1200 years old.

We went to the National Park together with Bernd from Germany and his Malaysian girlfriend Amelie from Kuala Lumpur. We shared a private car taking us to the park, which is more than 100 km south of Miri. The accommodations in the park were stunning – huge rooms with wooden furniture and private bathroom for 10 EUR per room. I think we were the only guest spending the night there because we didn’t see anybody around later in the evening. The small restaurant seemed to open only for us. We didn’t expect amazing food in a National Park with hardly any visitors but it was really lousy.

The next day after sleeping long in the luxurious rooms, we went to the small museum at the park entrance. On the way back, there was a guy asking us if we would like to go back to Miri with him for 30 Ringgit each. You have to know that going to the park by public transport is quite a hassle and expensive because it consists of a mix of public bus and taxi. He told us that he is waiting for a German couple to come back from the park and that this would take another 2-3 hours. It was the same for us hanging around in the park or in Miri, so we accepted. In the meantime, the man took us to the next village, so at least we could buy some decent food and drinks. There was a Chinese supermarket selling smuggled beer for a very good price, so we took advantage. We spent the waiting time drinking and listening to music (Krystyna even had some small loudspeakers). Bernd and Amelie spent another night so we could sit on the nice veranda of the bungalow. We had to wait 4 hours until the German couple came back from the park and I was already a bit drunk when we finally left. This was the first time that I drank alcohol during the day, so don’t get a wrong impression J. Anyway I had to ask the driver to stop on the road because I had to pee. Later, talking to the German couple in the bus, I found out that they come from my small village Hüttenberg, not kidding. It’s unbelievable how small the world is!!!!!! I hope that they didn’t realize that I had drunk. They would have got a totally wrong impression of me.

Back in Miri, Krystyna and I spent our last day together with a group of locals on the roof terrace. They were from Kuching and came to Miri working for a music festival which starts next week. They were drinking a lot and brought loads of very bad spirits which I didn’t touch because otherwise my hangover would have been evil! Anyway, yesterday was really fun.