Malaysian Sarawak seemed to be the last frontier of the world with the images of unexplored jungles, unique animals and fascinating tribal cultures, on July 2010, I had a chance to visit Sarawak to find out that my imagination toward this land was not exactly I dreamed but with full of surprise and sometime beyond my expectation. The first view of Sarawak on the plane was endless palm oil plantation, quite amazing sight but truly a tragedy of environment that all lowland jungle had been destroyed. The leftover jungles were on the high mountain and one of the survivors was my destination of this trip, Gunung Mulu.

Visiting Gunung Mulu was expensive and bureaucratic over killed from pricy airline and limited park entry permit. Visitors were almost impossible to visit the park without park ranger and had to go in group. However Gunung Mulu was really a fascinating place with many incredible things to see. The star of Gunung Mulu was the four show caves, Wind Cave, Clearwater Cave, Lang Cave and Deer Cave. These four caves were different and had their own characteristic. Wind Cave was full of beautiful stalactites and stalagmite especially in the King Chamber. Clearwater was jaw dropping with huge underground river caverns, one of the longest cave in the world beautiful pond in front of the cave and uniquely one leaf plant that only found in Gunung Mulu. Lang Cave was the smallest but with many fantasy stalactites. The last and my favorite was Deer Cave with its gigantic cave entrance was so incredible and full of mystery feelings, Lord of the Ring's Moria cave in the real world, and in my opinion one the best thrilled I had encountered in recent year!

Not only was the cave, the jungle also amazing with many insects and trees that in my life never ever expected to see. The only down point was the much advertised bat exodus, Gunung Mulu had one of the biggest bat colony in the world, but its bat exodus was quite mediocre than I expected. Also one of my favorite surprises was the sign of this national park which made from glass, located in the lush tropical jungle, but the sign was really always shining and clean! Another surprise was the Royal Mulu Resort, a nice hotel with full of UNESCO WHS symbol, and well recommended.

In just 2 months I had opportunity to see two important karstic regions of Asia, Gunung Mulu and South China Karst. I was quite surprised to see many reports compared these two sites especially Pinnacle Rock of Gunung Mulu and Shilin, Stone Forest of China. After long climbed, Pinnacle Rock was quite disappointing since it could not be compared with the enormous size of Shilin. However both Gunumg Mulu and Shilin were equally fascinating on their own. Although seeing many karsts in just a short time, boredom had not overcome and really made me want to see them more.