That’s right. I got lost. In a cave. I suppose nobody actually wakes up one Sunday morning, gets dressed and decides to go get lost in a cave. Well, I didn’t either. But it happened anyway.
Okay, so it’s Sunday and I’m going caving with some friends. And I’m nervous. For one thing, I’ve never actually been in a cave. I have no idea if I’m claustrophobic. I’m not a big fan of mud. And bats freak me out. I won’t even touch a book, which has a page, which has a picture of a bat in it.
So anyway, I meet up with Adrian (avid photographer with grand ambitions to conquer every bukit in the state) and Cherry (sister of said avid photographer and a girl who has proven on past hiking trips that she’s way tougher than she looks) for breakfast. They wolf down their rotis and are concerned when they see me listlessly stirring my cup of coffee. They tell me I’d better eat something. “You better eat something, nanti you pengsan in the cave, nobody’s going to carry you out,” Brother and Sister warn me.
I force down half a roti canai while Sister regales me with cave-related tales of horror. That it’s pitch dark. That it stinks with all the guano. That I’d better be careful, or I might fall into a lubang. That I must NOT panic no matter what happens. Of course by telling me all this, I start to panic. “Fear is not good,” she advises. “The bat can sense fear. But aiya, don’t worry. Just replace the fear with another emotion, like happiness … or anger. So instead of panic, you just either be happy or angry.” What brilliant advice. I decide that if ever I’m on the verge of panicking, I’ll start to be pissed off instead.
We get to Batu Caves to meet Blnd (big, hairy guy from Iraq who bears a passing resemblance to Nicolas Cage, though in a less tortured way). Here we are, looking crisp and clean, walking up the steps to the Gelap Cave entrance situated at step number 205. The thing with Batu Caves steps isn’t that they’re steep but that they’re very narrow. So don’t be all hero and run up or anything. Another thing is the monkeys. There are lots of them. They eye you suspiciously while you pass and they’re known to swipe stuff from you, so don’t look like you’re carrying food (which can be hard if you’re actually carrying food).
We get to the cave entrance and meet this woman who shall be known Really Big Woman (or RBW). She’s friendly enough in a sort of mechanical way – perfectly-timed smiles, perfectly-rehearsed responses that sound like they were memorised from a brochure. I bombard her with questions: exactly how tiny are the holes? How long will we be crawling? Can stand up or not? How deep will we go? She smiles and assures us that in 30 years, they’ve never had a mishap, they’ve brought people from 2 year old toddlers to 78 year old ah peks in and out safely, so today will be fine.
RBW proceeds to tell us that our guide is inside the cave right now, herding some scientists around and will be out in half an hour. While we wait, why don’t we fork over some of our cash and put on some of these sinfully hideous coveralls and PCK-style galoshes?
We pay RM90 for the guide (supposed to be RM80 but someone ffk-ed at the last minute); an additional RM25 for rental of the coveralls, RM5 for rental of the locker and RM5 for disposable socks. In short, everything also money. Lucky for me, I wore a long-sleeved top, long pants and socks, so I decide to wear the coveralls over my own clothes. The coveralls are clean enough, I suppose, but they are PURPLE. Needless to say, I am quite traumatised by the way I look in it – kinda like a cross between a mechanic, Barney and (once the bright yellow helmet and boots were on) a member of the Village People.
By then, it’s about 10am or so. We’re supposed to wait for our guide, so we pass the time chattering aimlessly about guano with RBW …
… punching Blnd up a bit (to release anxiety and to soften him up for the cave) and of course …
… camwhoring – that’s the perk of going out on these trips with an avid photographer like Adrian. He snaps everything. He’s also got one of those waterproof casings for his camera (ooooh), so he’ll be bringing his camera into the cave (yippy!) while my camera stays safely in the locker.
And so we wait … and wait … and wait …
… the sounds of our happy chatter soon die down after the first hour. We wait some more.
I decide to go to the bathroom. I’ve been battling the urge for a while as I’m sitting there faux-sleeping. I’m already all zipped up in my clammy coveralls, pants nicely tucked into my galoshes. The thought of taking everything off and then, bungling down 205 steps to go pee and then, climbing back up 205 steps and putting on this hideous costume all over again just seems like a lot of work. That’s right, people, there are NO TOILETS at the cave. I wonder how the staff here can tahan. Every time you need to pee, you need to run down. What if you get food poisoning and need to go really bad? Omg. Maybe they have a secret elevator hidden somewhere, or a secret toilet they’re not telling us about.
So anyways, I take off my costume and go down the steps and come back up again. It’s about 12pm by noon. We’ve been waiting for two whole hours. Yawn. Then 15 minutes later, our Guide appears at the mouth of the cave. Finally.
This is our guide. He shall from now on be known as the Guy Who Got Us Lost In A Cave (or simply Guliac). So, Guliac does a quick intro and then off we go into … Gelap Cave. We enter with a few other tourists who are here for the Educational Tour (led by RBW), which costs RM35 and lasts 45 minutes (ie. the easy-peasy one). At the end of the Educational Tour, the tourists will go out with another guide, leaving us Cave Explorers (like real) inside to crawl around with the snakes.
Okay, first of all, the cave is dark. Like really really dark. We have headlights but they are not very bright (to protect the fragile ecosystem in the cave).
We walk along the footpath admiring the stalagmites, stalactites, cave pearls, etc that were formed over a course of thousands of years. The cave in fact, is believed to have been formed somewhere between 60 to 120 million years ago. That’s incredible. And to think we’re standing right in there.
The inside of the cave is crawling with life – life being the biggest cockroaches I’ve seen. I immediately think of my dear friend Sylvea who, at one time, became paralysed and broke into a cold sweat when she spotted several cockroaches scurrying wildly on a pavement somewhere. I’m glad I didn’t invite her along on this trip. She would kill me.
I haven’t eaten or drank since early this morning and I’m starting to feel hungry. Crap. I begin to wish I’d eaten more. My head starts to hurt and I don’t feel so good, so for the first part of the tour, I’m uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe all the guano is impairing my speech ability.
We walk on for about 45 minutes and then, the Educational Tour comes to an end. We come to the first of many holes we Explorers are supposed to disappear into. I take one look at the hole and I’m thinking, holy crap, are you people serious??!! We’re supposed to go through THAT?? Don’t be deceived by the pic above; the hole doesn’t look very small but trust me, IT IS … as you will soon see.
The Tourists stand around as we Explorers are shown how to slither into the hole. “You lie down totally flat on the ground, arms and legs stretched out, head turned to the side, as near to the ground as possible,” Guliac instructs us. I feel my roti canai climbing back up my esophagus.
“Um, Mr Guliac, how many holes are there? For how long we have to do this before we get out into a chamber? Is this the tightest hole or are there smaller ones? Mr Guliac? Mr Guliac?”
“There are three holes (he bluff us) … this tunnel is about 60m long … will take only a few minutes (bluff again) … this isn’t the smallest hole … inside there are smaller ones (oh %#@$# hell!!!!!!!!).”
Guliac manoeuvres his tall, skinny frame through the first hole while I get busy trying to replace my fear with anger. It doesn’t work, damn it!!! Cherry goes next and dang, it looks HARD.
Halfway, she gets stuck and we can all hear her from outside as she plunges into mini-hysterics. I turn to RBW and ask her if I can go home now. She’s firm and tells me to stay put. “I told you honey, look at my size! Even I can go through that hole, how can you say you cannot?” she booms. I look at her girth and I’m convinced she’s bluffing. How in the %@# can she possibly squeeze through a hole the size of a baby’s nostril??!!
Then it’s Adrian’s turn. Then it’s mine. I go flat down on the ground and immediately, feel the sensation of muddy brown water soaking through my coveralls and into my own clothes and into my every pore and it feels … nice. The water is cool and rather pleasant. Once I am soaked through and all muddy, I think, oh to hell with it, just shut up and do it. So I follow the instructions they’re yelling at me from inside the hole.
“Okay, put your hands out in front of you … right arm on the rock … left one straight … turn your head way to the left … face down in the mud … body angle left, push up against the rock … use your hands and pull your body through … watch your head … push with your feet … watch that rock … !!!”
I pull myself through that teensy hole with more ease than I’d expected. Hah! That’s one of the many perks of being skinny!
Once we’re all through the first hole into the little chamber, we take this picture. Cosy, huh? Now I know how the Viet Cong soldiers felt crawling through the Cu Chi tunnels.
The strange thing is, I feel oddly comfortable in there. My head is okay, I’m no longer hungry or thirsty and surprisingly, I don’t find it stuffy in there. The air is cool, almost fresh. It’s really not that bad! Maybe I was a bat in my former life.
So on and on we go … first hole … second hole … third hole … again, that’s the beauty of having an avid photographer along with you on trips like this. He’s always there to snap flattering pics of you like this.
Here’s Guliac trying to dislocate my head from my body. Sliding through holes like this makes me glad I rented the ugly coveralls. If you’re wearing your regular clothes, I tell you, you’ll be dragging your body through a hole and winding up on the other side without your pants. By the time you’re done, you’ll be buck naked. So my advice is RENT THE UGLY COVERALLS.
So anyway, we’re slithering around and generally in a good mood and happy and then it happens. We come to a chamber with three black holes and Guliac doesn’t know which one to go into. He shines his light into each one, a flash of uncertainty on his face. Nobody says anything; we act like nothing’s wrong. Then Guliac points at one hole and says, this one. “Uh, this one? You sure?” He says, yes. But his tone isn’t very convincing and then it strikes me: good lord, he doesn’t know the way!
We get onto all fours and start crawling anyway. Then it gets worse. Every time we come to a spot with two or three tunnels, he doesn’t know which one to take. There are times when he tells us to sit tight and wait while he goes check out where this or that tunnel leads. This is a pic of us waiting in one of the chambers while Guliac goes off somewhere. Good grief. At one point, we hear him shuffling through the tunnel and then, loud noises like he’s falling off a cliff or something and we’re like, omg, what happened to our guide??!!
As the minutes crawl by, we get more and more lost and we have no idea where we’re going. And true to Malaysian safety standards, Guliac isn’t even equipped with any form of communication with the people outside, so we can die in here and nobody will know. And because we were earlier told not to bring in anything, we have no food or water.
Guliac launches into a long-winded explanation about how this happened yesterday (what do you mean this happened yesterday??? $@#$#$@#!!) and how everything turned out fine and how the tunnels are blocked and how this wouldn’t have happened if we’d booked earlier and given them more notice blah blah blah blah etc, like it’s our fault he got us all lost. Then he concluded by saying, “Don’t panic. I’m here to help you.” Hello, you’re the one who got us lost in the first place!!
Despite it all, however, we’re all surprisingly calm: Blnd is resisting the urge to pulverise Guliac into a pulp; Adrian is too busy snapping pics to notice that we’re lost; Cherry is chanelling her inner angels and reminding us all to stay calm and don’t panic cos if we panic, Guliac might go crazy and we’ll all be doomed. As for me, I’m humming a song in my head. If there’s one thing I’m really good at in life, it’s Denial.
I figure, even if we don’t get out, surely someone out there like RBW will realise we’re lost in the cave if we don’t emerge by say, 10pm tonight right? I mean, they won’t just pack up and go home when one of their staff members is still inside the cave right? They won’t just leave us in there to die right? So there’s nothing to worry about. Hum hum hum hum …
We’re still crawling around and for a fraction of a second, my powers of Denial fade a little. I suddenly think of Nicolas Cage and the other firefighters stuck in the rubble in World Trade Centre. Soon, I’m seeing our passport pics being flashed on RTM. I really should’ve taken a better passport photo.
At one point, we ask our obviously confused guide what will happen if it rains. Will water fill up in here? “Don’t worry, it won’t fill up to the top one. Just to here,” he says, his hand flailing wildly around his skinny Adam’s apple. Gee thanks, we feel a lot safer now.
Finally, after god knows how long, we get to a hole which Guliac announces will bring us back the way we came. That’s right: we’re backtracking cos the other tunnels are “closed” – whatever that means. At this point, I’m like yay!! I don’t care, I just want to get out in the open again. It’s a lot tougher to squeeze through those same holes in the opposite direction but who cares! We’re about to get out of the tunnel!!
A few minutes more and finally, we’re out!! Wow. The feeling of getting out into a big open cavern after crawling and sliding and crouching and squatting for so long is indescribable. So now we’re all back out at the spot where we first crawled into the hole – where the Educational Tour and RBW left us. We’re still in the cave. By this time, I’m starting to itch all over. I’m all covered in mud. My sock-covered feet are sloshing around in my mud-filled galoshes. My fingernails are caked in dirt and my pants are about to fall off.
And then, it happens again. Guliac doesn’t know how to get out of the cave!!! I’m serious. He’s flashing his light in every direction. We’re in this giant cavern with a million openings and he doesn’t know which one to take. Good lord in heaven. We’re about to enter LOST The Sequel. We start wandering around checking out the place, which isn’t a whole lot of fun when you’re feeling all gross and dirty and there are about fifteen million flies flying right in your face. They’re attracted to our headlights and they fly right into your eyes, nose and mouth. I think I ate about three. You can turn off your headlight to get rid of the flies but you’ll also be getting rid of your ability to see and may fall into a hole, so that isn’t such a good idea.
So round and round we go. Guliac is even asking us what we remember from the trail earlier. Do you remember if there was rock or do you remember this or that? It is surreal. At one point, Cherry is leading him around to find the right exit!
After some directionless wandering, we finally stumble onto a Staircase. An actual staircase! The first sign that we’re on the right track. We follow the staircase and for a brief moment, we’re happy again. I’m not even mad at Guliac; I’m just glad that everyone is okay and not dead.
Then we come to a gradually sloping mountain of rocks and Guliac tells us he wants to show us this coral that can be found over the hilly patch. I want to go home but he says must see this coral, otherwise wasted. We clamber up the hill and over at the other side, we come to a pool of mud.
It’s like walking in quicksand … your legs sink in almost up to the knees at some parts. Yuk. I’m slushing around in the mud pool and feeling the thick slime ooze into my galoshes and wondering what the heck we’re doing here. Slosh slosh slosh … then we get through the pool to where the coral is.
This is the coral. Oh … okay. My life doesn’t feel any different now that I’ve seen it. Now can we get out of here? No wait. Not yet. He wants to bring us to see cave diamonds. You’re a girl, you’re supposed to love diamonds!
We come to a velvety wall made of some sort of mineral that causes it to sparkle in the darkness. It’s gorgeous, like a fairy flew by and sprinkled glitter all over it.
From there, we trudge through the mud pool and back over the mountain and we’re on our way out. We’re walking pretty fast now as the itching gets worse. Days before this trip, they advised me to bring an extra set of clothes along with a towel so I could shower and wash up once we’re out of the cave. My first reaction was, no way am I going to take a shower in a toilet in Batu Caves! You think I’m crazy or what? But at that point, none of that matters. You’re so dirty, you would’ve showered with apes if you had to.
We rush out and finally, ah … sunlight! By then, we’ve been in pitch darkness for over four hours. There’s nothing like deprivation to make you appreciate something. The moment I’m out, I tear myself out of the grimy coveralls and pull off the galoshes.
My own clothes are totally filthy and I’m all wet and cold … but not too cold for a photo opp – haha!
The staff at the entrance asks us how we enjoyed our little trip. We complain about our guide getting us lost, not knowing the way, he shouldn’t be allowed to bring people in if he’s not sure what he’s doing, blah blah blah. The company should buck up and take their task more seriously. They’re lucky we came out all okay but what if someone got injured or something … what would happen then? There’s no proper system, no safety measures, no nothing. It’s really dangerous.
We’re ready to go down for a shower when we realise it’s raining! Which means we have to climb back down 205 steps to the toilet in the rain. Whoopee.
If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that I have this thing about dirty toilets (as in I can’t stand them) and I always have some sort of toilet status wherever I am. The thing with Batu Caves toilets is that they’re actually rather clean. I know! I’m as shocked as you are. They’re not 5-star, but they don’t stink. You have to pay 20 sen though (RM1 if you want to shower – water very expensive, you know).
It isn’t until I’m in the Batu Caves shower that I discover all these bruises on my knees. Looks like I’m gonna have to give shorts and miniskirts a miss for a week or two. Great. Oh god, have I not been punished enough?
[All pics by Adrian Tee]
[Except that last ugly one of my knees]
