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I woke up with sore legs and a minor headache. I vaguely remembered falling into sleep the previous night to the incessant hooting of wild monkeys, the croaking of tree frogs and the rhythmic calling of crickets.

Such is the fate of being a city-dweller. Able to sleep through the blaring noise of television and bass-thumping stereo but when exposed to the natural sounds of the rainforest, I turned into an insomniac.

With our legs sore from the previous day walk to Deer Cave, we decided to pamper ourselves a bit. We hired a boat to take us up the Melinau River to Wind Cave and Clearwater Cave.

We stopped by at a Penan Village along the way.

The village laid idyllically besides the banks of the Melinau River nestled between the rolling limestone hills of Mulu.

The first thing I noticed after getting off our boat was there was this loud music emanating from one of the village building. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that it was their church. Some village folks were inside dancing to what sounded to be Christian rock music. Very odd way to celebrate Christmas indeed.

At a corner of the village, the villagers had set up stalls to trade their native handicrafts.

It surprised me that foreigners are always attracted to the local handicraft. To me, the handicrafts looked a bit tacky, but that’s just me. Nevertheless, the handicrafts provided an important source of income for the villagers. Hopefully it will help elevate their quality of living a tad.

After the short stopover at the village, we continued on to Wind Cave.

The entrance to Wind Cave was on the face of a limestone cliff. We ascended a fair amount stairs in order to get there.

If you are wondering why Wind Cave is called so, it’s because when passing through parts of the cave, you can feel a breeze blowing through. Pretty refreshing actually.

There was an big opening in the cave with rays of sunlight streaming in. Through it, you can catch a glimpse of the forest outside.

The opening has a corresponding pit that was quite deep. I wondered how many early explorers had the unfortunate fate of falling into its depth. Our guide kindly reminded us that Wind Cave is haunted.

Passing the opening and pit lead us to the King’s Chamber of Wind Cave. This is actually the showpiece of the cave.

The King’s Chamber housed tall rock columns.

And a variety of stalactites, stalagmites and strange rock formations of all size and shape.

Our guide showed us a part of the cave ceiling whereby you can vaguely see the word ‘JULY’. It was as if someone had gone up there and written it. Maybe the ghost of Wind Cave is trying to tell us something. Maybe.

Next, we got on our boat and went upstream to Clearwater Cave.

The Clearwater Cave system is actually the longest cave system in South East Asia and amongst one of the longest cave system in the world. The portion of the cave where we visited was only a tiny fraction of the whole cave system.

We had to climb more stairs to reach Clearwater Cave.

The entrance of the cave was huge. There was actually another cave right next to Clearwater Cave called Lady Cave.

Lady Cave was not very deep and was pretty boring.

It only took us around 5 minutes to reach the end of the cave, where a big empty pit can be seen.

Clearwater Cave on the other hand was more exciting. It has got a nice scenery much like Deer Cave.

And there was an underground river that runs through the cave.

A metal bridge spanned the river and crossing it brought us to a shallow part of the river. There, we took turns to try the freezing waters by dipping our legs into the river.

After visiting the show caves, we took our lunch at the resting area near Clearwater Cave.

With my stomach filled, I took the chance to take a dip in the natural pool near the resting area. The water from the pool actually flowed from the underground river of Clearwater Cave and it was freezing cold. Cold enough to shrink nuts I tell you.

I was soon joined by a foreigner and his cute son.

True to their adventurous nature, the foreigner played ‘Superman’ with his son (or rather ‘using’ his son). He raised his son on his two hands and launched the boy like a projectile into the pool. And the little boy was enjoying very minute of it.

I rarely see Asian parents do this. Most are just overprotective of their children and are afraid that silly ’stunts’ like this will hurt their precious little boy/girl.

After spending time frolicking in the pool, we were ready to head back. We had our hired boat ferry us back to the Park HQ.

I spent the whole afternoon sleeping after that. I must have overexerted myself in the pool. Maybe it has something to do with the freezing water and the subsequently shrunken nuts. Hmmmmm.

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