My long vacation is going to end today.  Mr Tang ‘s miri friend became our tour guide in Miri Town.  We had lunch and dinner, spending our time at the beach, witnessing sunset, taking photographs of it and spending a fortune on souvenirs for friends and family.

People that I met during this trip

Mr Thong from www.mymountaingoal.com . Thanks for organizing this trip and taking care of our necessity during the trip, it makes me feel as if I have a nanny at this age. 

SF Tang

My ex-colleague and hiking buddy. We met in 2005 and has been dating each other for most of the outdoor trip

Mr Tang

He loves to take photographs and have a lot of similarity with sfTang. He even pose as a high priest at the pinnacle.

Esther

My room mate. She loves to write and read and we have similar opinion about movies that we watched. If she were to write a story on how she match make Thong and natives, I ‘ll definitely buy the book

Grace

Another friendly room mate. She’s a lawyer. I still remember her joke about Thong the COO.

Mr and Mrs Weng

The most loving couple. Thanks for giving me a lift home after the trip.

Mr and Mrs Pang

You make it to the pinnacle. I respect you for your endurance and will power to do it.

Herr

Quite and friendly video camera man

Keong

Reminds me of my hiking kaki , Alvin. Loves to venture into 4 X 4 wheel drive sports

Ah Fatt

Talkacholic

Hui Chew

Big Sister of star finder, I remember how she taught me how to read my star , CANCER.

Chui Feng

I thought she is younger than me. It turn out I’m the youngest in the group. She’s sweet and lovely.

I do not have any expectation for intermediate caving. The only thing I knew is I have to climb up and down inside the racer cave with my headlamps.

The first rope was hard; it’s a 90 degree climb without much place for me to put my leg. After the first climb, we have to squeeze into a small opening of the cave. If you have a big belly, you can’t make it thru. After that you have to ascend and descend all the way till the end of the cave and we came out from the cave the same way we went in.

At night we went for a night walk after the rain stop. I was quite reluctant to go for a night walk at first as I had assume most of the insect I’d seen before during my trip to Taman Negara Pahang and my insect preservation project that I hated the most during my secondary school biology class.

I was wrong. The insects in Borneo Island are quite unique compare to peninsular Malaysia. We saw gecko, tarantula, grasshopper, snakes and different species of spider. It was a stressful moment for me to take photograph as there are many people , i was ask to move away once i  took a photograph of the creature and was advice not to put my hand near the creature. Guess what happen, my hands starts to shake as I’m imagining the insect might leap onto my hand and start injecting poison.

The night ended with a small birthday celebration for Mrs Weng. We chit chat and exchanged photographs until midnight. One of the highlight of the conversation was , Esther tried to match make, Thong with the natives of Borneo Island.  She was telling thong about the perk of having a native of Borneo Island as his wife.

After visiting Clearwater cave and Wind Cave our journey to Pinnacles began with a long boat ride at Melinau river to Long Litut. The river is shallow and is a norm that we passengers have to get out to assists in pushing the boat. From Long Litut to camp 5 takes around 3 hours covering 8.8 k.m simple walk on flat ground. I can say it’s a trail for you to warm up before heading to the pinnacles the next morning. Camp 5 has a wooden shelter with raised sleeping floor with sleeping mats. Most of the thing you need is provided such as kitchen utensils, showers and toilets. In the evening, thong our organizer cum cook, cook for us. His cooking skill has improved tremendously since the last trip with him at Sg lepor waterfall. However we have to be careful on what we can suggest him to cook as he is a vegetarian. We got to know about this after packing food for him yesterday.

Later in evening, before our supper thong taught us some stretching technique. I can see sf tang flexibility improved a lot from the first time I saw her in JaZz class. For me, I love to stretch, it actually push myself out of my comfort zone, it that give me satisfaction upon accomplishment.

Well as usual, first night in every new place won’t make me sleep well. I ended up visiting the toilet for a few times, listening to orchestra of snorer and some guys next door peeing in front of our dorm, I guess he’s afraid to visit the toilet alone.

It was late a night after my dance class, we had supper with Jeremy (Sf Tang’s boyfriend) and at the same time I proceed to 7 Eleven to get an eye drop as I had some eye irritation in the late evening.  Back at sf tang’s place I unpack my stuff to take out unnecessary item out of my bag. SF Tang did the same too. We slept at around 1 a.m. in the morning after setting our alarm clock to ring at 4 a.m

“It’s time to get up the time now is 4. Arhhhhh that’s my alarm clock, I felt like I just fall asleep not long ago. No choice I have to get up or else I miss the plane, I went to the kitchen to reheat the cold chocolate milk and then to the bathroom to get ready for the exciting adventure.  

We board the taxi at 5.15 and reach the airport around 6 .Thong and the other group was waiting for us in front of Mc D.  We are not the early bird neither are we late.  After checking in our stuff Jeremy came to say goodbye to us.

We left KL at 7.30 and arrived in Miri at around 10 a.m. After collecting our baggage , thong make a surprise announcement, the flight by FAX from Miri to Mulu has been delay from 1.40p.m. to 3.30 p.m . Isn’t so bad aren’t we, we didn’t miss the flight. Since we have nothing better to do at the airport we decided to go to Miri town to hang around and have lunch there at the same time. Miri town was quite boring for us as you know we came from a shopping paradise city, we decided to hang around in the hotel and supermarket to shop for grocery such as fruits and instant noodles. Me and esther decided to pack our lunch and go back to Miri Airport to have lunch with thong . “Ring Ring”, It was sf tang, she said thong ask us to go back immediately as the departure time for FAX has change again from 3.30 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. wTf !!!, how can they do that, I bet a lot of people miss the flight because of that.  At that moment we hope and pray that thong manage to contact everybody to come back to the airport immediately. We really hope nobody miss the flight. Fortunately nobody in our group miss the flight, unfortunately our itinerary for first day has to be rescheduled. Luckily we have ample of time for that and we manage to visit bat exodus on the first day.

After a week of breaking away from daily routine and the hustle bustle of the city life, I’m back to work. Back to being serious with things in life after a week of letting go and freely express myself at mulu. How I felt about mulu still linger on especially my trip to the pinnacle, the adventure caving and the curiosity of getting to know 12 strangers. Still more exciting stories coming up in this blog, I’ll keep you guys update about my XPDC to MULU, National Park.