We got up, got some money out, bought my birthday present, then met our taxi driver, went to some caves (epic!) and then cruised down a river. Oh my gosh I'm exhausted just writing it!
Today we paid $500MYR for a taxi man to drive us 1.5h to the Gomantong Caves. They were stunning. Unfortunately there were a few too many cockroaches and too dark for me to use my phone and take some pics. (Oh my goodness I just realized there won't be a big picture show/story telling session when I get home....cause I'm not going home....shit!)
The caves are incredible though I highly suggest googling a pic of them. They are currently in the middle of a 2 week long harvesting season of edible bird nests. (Hold your stomachs together for this one!) The Chinese consider the dried edible birds nests to be good for their health and pay up to $3000 MYR ($1,000+ CAD) for black nests and $9000 MYR ($3,000+ CAD) for white nests. These nests are made from birds saliva and water and basically are glue that sticks to the tops of caves. Every 4 months they are harvested for 2 weeks only. People work 24h a day clearing caves of these previous nests. The work is hard and incredibly dangerous. The men climb small ladders made of grass,palm and wood up to ridiculous heights to climb across another more rigid ladder where they perch and collect the nests. The process reminds me of someone picking garbage using a prong and a big bag. If the rigid ladder needs positioning the ground men use one of the many stabilising ropes to manoeuvre the ladder to a new position. This dangerous job pays well though, for the men climbing they can collect over a tonne of nests and be paid up to $20,000 MYR ($7,000) for their work. A dangerous job yet very financially rewarding.
The cave system itself was beautiful. There were 3 main entries of light and with a light sprinkle of rain outside the contract of colors from the vibrant green ferns and still blue sky to the black bat guano and yellow stalagmites and stalactites developing within the cave. It truly is breathtaking; or maybe that was the smell! We were really lucky to visit during harvest season and to be able to speak with the workers inside. Our taxi man provided us with big sun hats to protect us from bat and bird poo and falling eggs from the nests. We didn't however have any protection from the cockroaches.
After the caves we continued for another 30m to the Kitobanoman River where we did a 3h private boat cruise down one of the protected channels of the river. We got to see macaw monkeys, herons, prosboscis monkeys, hornbill birds and some other various birds. It was really something to see the prosboscis monkeys with their long noses. These funny looking primates have kept their noses through evolution for no other reason the because the ladies think it's sexy. The monkey man is the one with the biggest, and therefore longest, nose out of the bunch. I've taken a few pictures of these guys but you aren't able to see clearly - I again suggest googling! 
We are now heading back to our hotel. Pat is sleeping on me and although it's 7pm sleep sounds so good right now! The heat and humidity is really taking it out of us. We leave tomorrow for KK at 8am so it will be an early one. Then hopefully jet off to an island for the day before we catch our flight to Bali at 5pm. After today, we both confirmed it's the best idea.
So much love of course,
Taryn
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