AS THE FIRST crack of afternoon thunder rolls over the Sarawak rainforest, a puff of bats is coughed out of the Mulu Caves. Our guide, Ricky, looks up as they perform a circular, whisking motion, high overhead. 'Making a doughnut,' he says.
This is the prelude to a vast show, involving millions of bats, that will take place closer to sunset. First, we have to perform our own strolling spiral, through the Mulu Cave system, which is the biggest in the world. Deer Cave's passage alone, as quoted on every scrap of tourist literature, could contain St Paul's Cathedral five times over. Sarawak, on Borneo, the world's third-biggest island, seems to be all about superlatives.
And yet Mulu - which it's possible you've never heard of - is a tiny place. To get there, you fly to Kota Kinabalu, state capital of Sabah; then take a small Fokker 50 plane into Sarawak. Both states constitute Malaysian Borneo, but such is the perceived distinction that you're obliged to go through immigration to proceed from one state to another.
Kota Kinabalu airport is so quaint it still lists flights to somewhere called Canton on its departure boards. It also has a restaurant called the Mouth, and Miss Eliza Clarke English Herbal Candy is on sale for those trekking moments when the vapours threaten. But compared with Mulu airport, Kota Kinabalu is Heathrow.
At Mulu - a 40-minute flight over coffee-coloured rivers and tight curls of greenery - we have to seek out the immigration officer, who is otherwise occupied - possibly inspecting the weight-and-pulley system with which baggage is checked or smoking Memory and Era cigarettes, available at a nearby kiosk.
Not that we're in a rush. There are only 10 vehicles on Mulu, so we have to wait until one appears to take us the fve minutes to the Royal Mulu resort, where Ricky is waiting for us.
