Gomantong Caves

You may have seen the Gomantong Caves on TV before. They were featured on Planet Earth or Human Planet or one of those BBC documentaries. Actually they may have been in both, because there are a couple different phenomena going on here - one animal-related and one human-related. The cool animal-related event to see here is the bats. There are something like 2 million bats living in the cave, and every evening around sunset they leave in a mass exodus to feed in the surrounding forests. At least, we thought it was every evening. Apparently, some nights the bats decide not to come out. Not sure who is making this decision amongst 2 million bats, but they chose not to come out the night we were there. The tourists were there with cameras ready. The bat hawks were there, ready for dinner (aside from the never-ending flow of bats leaving the cave, the real attraction is supposed to be watching the hawks catch and eat the bats mid-air. Again, so we hear). But the bats never came, so we left a bit disappointed. Lazy bums.

we found one bat inside

Bat Hawk - where's my dinner?

The other big draw to the Gomantong Caves are the swiftlet birds that share the enormous limestone cave with the bats. Not actually the birds themselves, but their nests. Not actually the nests themselves, either, but the people that climb rickety ladders high up the walls to collect said nests. Those crazy Chinese think that the saliva the birds use to make their nests makes you "strong," or maybe they just think it tastes good, but either way they are willing to pay top dollar for it. High quality bird's nests can go for as much as $2,000 per kilo! Bird's nest soup is the most famous delicacy, but we've also seen a lot of bird's nest drinks in Singapore and parts of Malaysia (Malaysia has a strong Chinese population too). Now, the guys who collect these bird's nests better make good money, because their office is disgusting. It smells terrible. Bat and bird poop covers the floor. Who knows how deep it is (we walked on elevated walkways). The floor and walls are crawling with cockroaches and these nasty little bugs that visit you in your nightmares.

swiftlet in it's nest

what is that thing?

This all sounds a terrible enough place to work, but the thing we still can't wrap our heads around is that some of these guys actually live IN the cave! There were a couple little shacks we saw with makeshift beds. They didn't even make an effort to keep the bugs out, seeing as the houses only had 3 walls and open windows. Osman told us he once saw a guy sleeping in the cave and actually saw a cockroach crawl into and then out of the dude's mouth. The word gross has lost all meaning.

home, sweet home

there goes the neighborhood...

It was definitely interesting to see the caves and watch the guys climbing high up to the roof to collect nests, but let's just say we didn't linger in there for long..