The Dark Cave Expedition

The start of a cave expedition in the jungles of Borneo. You’d have to get there by boat. What have we got ourselves into? Who knows what horrors lie in the cave. Will it be like The Descent?!?

This is the story of our visit to a cave in the rainforest of Borneo. It’s actually one of the caves in the Mulu National Park that we visited exactly 2 years ago, in July 2022. So, nope, there’re no horrors that we couldn’t cope with, unless… somehow, we’re trapped in there. No, I don’t want to imagine that.

But it’s easy to imagine being in one of those cave horror movie scenarios. An expedition to an unknown cave in the rainforest of Borneo. With ‘hostile’ hill tribes and who knows what lurks in the wilderness and darkness. Get ready for the unimaginable… OK, OK, that’s over-dramatic. The reality is the exact opposite actually, hehe.


The ‘hostile’ hill tribes turned out to be quite ‘docile’. This is the Penan Handicraft Centre in Batu Bungan, a Penan resettlement village near the Mulu National Park. The Penans are one of the tribes found in this area, but the predominant tribe original to this area, is actually the Berawan tribe, said one of the guides at Mulu National Park. The Penan were nomadic hunter-gatherers who gained fame in the 80’s and 90’s when their plight to challenge and stop the Malaysian and Indonesian logging companies from cutting down the rainforest came to light with the help of Bruno Manser, a Swiss environmentalist who stayed with the Penan people for a few years in the Sarawak forests.


We’ve reached the location. Now to trek thru the thick jungle. What flower is this? The lost miracle herb that could cure all sicknesses (like in The Jungle Cruise), or the deadly parasitic plant that could take over your body (like in The Ruins)?!? Heck, it’s just a flower, how would I know. Ask a botanist, or Google Lens…


The ascent…


The descent… Why is this cave locked? “This cave is locked to keep out unauthorised visitors who could easily get lost in the cave,” explained the guide. (Is it? OR is it to keep something IN??!?)


“What’s that? What’s that? I saw something run into the hole…” “Oh, it’s a long-legged centipede,” explained a ‘learned’ Singaporean visitor nonchalantly. The ‘critter-expert’ was with the only other group visiting the cave that day with us, a Singaporean family consisting of a pair of grown-up siblings, their parents and a spouse (if I remember correctly).


Swiftlets… the bats of the bird-world. Like bats, they use echolocation to fly in total darkness in the chasms and shafts of the caves, which are where they build their nests. Cool, huh? Why’s the West only hyped up over bats… Why aren’t there vampire swiftlets, or Swiftlet-Man?? The ‘click’ sounds that you hear in the caves aren’t from bats, but from swiftlets. Bat clicks are too high pitched for our human ears to hear.


The name of this cave is actually Lagang Cave, as explained by our local guide. In Mulu National Parks’ tour website and brochure, this particular cave tour is nicknamed, Fastlane. No, I have no idea why it’s called Fastlane. It isn’t faster than any of the other caves we visited in Mulu. The Fastlane Cave Tour can only be arranged directly with Mulu National Park, unlike the other ‘show caves’ in Mulu, like Deer Cave and Clearwater Cave, where external tour agents could arrange.


All visitors are advised to bring their own torches or headlamps as there’re no lights installed in this cave. Strangely, although this cave was the least popular cave of the 5 caves we visited in Mulu, both our kids said this was their favourite cave! One special thing about this cave is that because it is less visited, and more ‘hidden’, you could see more critters here than the other caves we’ve gone to – crickets, spiders, long-legged centipede, swiftlets, blind crabs… Wanted to see racer snakes, but no luck that day


Our family, Lagang Cave (aka Fastlane), Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia




Whew, we’re out. No mutants or monsters in the cave, …or is there?!?


Back at our base, the Mulu National Park!

We’ll be going for another home trip to Malaysia soon. It’ll be a shorter trip this time, than the last in 2022. So, we’ll have less time to go wandering around, sigh. Looking forward to the trip. Any trip is an adventure, woo-hoo!