From caves to waves
David Rose delights i Malaysia’s mixture of wild thrills and luxury
THE snake is harmless, but don’t touch it,’ said Veno, our local guide, pointing to the 2ft serpent slithering across the cave wall. ‘When it’s scared, its skin sends out a stinky liquid. You won’t be able to wash off the smell for a week.’
My son, Daniel, ten, and I were a mile and a half from daylight in Racer Cave, one of the many enormous underground networks in the Gunung Mulu national park in the Malaysian part of Borneo.
To reach the cavern in which we stood, a dark cathedral festooned with stalactites, had taken a little doing. The Mulu park covers more than 200 square miles: a protected enclave of rainforest, clear rivers and craggy mountains. The only ways to get there are by a day-long ride in a riverboat, or on one of the turbo-prop planes that serve its little airstrip, a grassy jungle clearing.
That part of the journey, from the coast to the park’s headquarters, we’d accomplished two days earlier. From there, we travelled to the entrance of the cave in a flatbottomed, motorised canoe. In places, the boatman had to use a pole as we navigated our way through shallows and up rapids.
The entrance was a rent at the bottom of a cliff face, half-hidden behind a screen of creepers. Then we had to squeeze through a narrow gap, climb down several vertical pits where we needed a rope, and romp along gigantic tunnels at least 100ft high. Besides the snakes, we passed hand-sized spiders, their eyes sparkling under our headlamps, and giant crickets, their antennae 10in long.
When we finally turned round – still miles from the cave’s furthest reaches – we felt remote. However, our base for this and other Mulu adventures was more than comfortable: the Royal Mulu Resort. We knew that when we emerged, we would be returning to spacious, air-conditioned rooms, marble bathrooms, a swimming pool and restaurant with a decent wine list.
Besides the cave, there was another unforgettable Mulu highlight: a walk with Veno through the noisome jungle at night. Using a laser pointer, he picked out creatures we would otherwise have missed, including big, plump tree frogs and stick insects 2ft long.
Our three days in Mulu came almost at the end of a family holiday (taking a break from caving that day were my arachnophobe wife, Carolyn, and elder son Jacob, 15). In three weeks, we visited not only Borneo but some of West Malaysia.
At the end of it all there could be only one verdict. This is a fantastic destination, endowed with diverse natural wonders. It also has a welldeveloped tourist infrastructure, with low-cost internal flights, and resort hotels to equal any in the world.
Before the trip, we were worried about the climate. But although we went in August and were almost on the Equator, the weather was never oppressively hot, usually below 30C. Britain’s summer is also Malaysia’s ‘Arab season’, when tourists from the furnaces of the Arabian peninsula come for the relative cool.
We started in Singapore, a futuristic metropolis that was the perfect place to recover from the 13-hour flight from London. Taking advantage of the ‘Singapore Stopover’ package offered by Singapore Airlines, which covers accommodation and entry to the city’s major attractions, we stayed at the original Shangri-La, the base of the hotel chain with 84 branches. across Asia and beyond.
AROUND the corner were the designer-label stores of Orchard Road But there is more to Singapore than shop ping. At the Marina on the shores of the Straits, huge transparent pavilions house Gardens on the Bay – a little like C two wall’s Eden Project, but more specta tacular. In one of the domes, thousands of orchids flourish in an artificial ‘cloud forest’, sustained by a 1000 ft indoor waterfall. The night zoo was also unmissable – we picked our way.