Bako national park

This is a must visit if you are in the area or staying in Kuching. Read more about what I go up to in my post: Overnight at Bako national park, Borneo (Malaysia)

Bau and fairy cave

Getting there

The buses to Bau are advertised as running every hour or so, but of course, this is Malaysia, so most of them don't.

To get to the fairy cave it's necessary to bus it to Bau and then get another bus (no 3). The next one at the time we arrived (11am) wasn't for another three hours, so we they spent another half an hour trying to get a taxi (apparently the only one on town). 

The taxi tried to over charge us so we insisted on him using the meter, and for a change it was only a couple of ringgits that he had tried to rip us off. 

We ended up giving him what he had originally asked for anyway.

The caves

The caves are quite spectacular in size, but be warned, there's a 5 storey climb up to them before even getting inside and then a number of slippery wooden steps in the dark. 

Bring a torch, a head torch works best as then your hands are free to hold onto the rail.

The cave actually does have a fairy in it, albeit a very small one and made of stone.

We headed into the darkness in search of more bats and spiders, and were rewarded with a view out the other end of the cave. Not a spectacular view, but a nice reward nonetheless.

It was raining hard outside, causing the wooden steps to become slippery and bordering on unsafe as there were several missing rungs and a few ready to fall off... I didn't like it!

Getting back

We managed to get the bus back to town by sheer luck after sitting in the monsoon waiting for half an hour. 

The bus back to Kuching was just pulling out of the bus station as we arrived back at Bau, so Phill had to make a run for it through the puddles to try to stop it before we got stranded. Fortunately the kind driver spotted him in the mirror and stopped, so we were able to hop on.

Recommendation

It may cost quite a bit more, but if we were to venture here again, we would take private transport for the day. 

We generally prefer the adventure of getting around on public transport, but the issue of poorly connecting buses and cancelled departures just meant we wasted a lot of time, and never even made it to the nearby Wind Cave, which we had also planned to see this day.