Three riverboats sit at the jetty near the mouth of the Batam Barang in Sarawak.
With the survey over and the equipment shipped out from kuala Belait, I had some leave accrued and decided to travel a little in the region. At high school I'd joined the school caving (spelunking) group. Every month or so a couple of the teachers would take 10 – 14 of us kids after school to explore caves in the Mendips – about an hours drive away from my school.
Given that history, I couldn't leave Borneo without making a trip to see the caves at Mulu. They were literally just over the border from brunei in Sarawak.
Today, you take a 30 minute flight from Miri, but the airport didn't open till 1991 so in 1989, the only real choice was to go up-river in a series of boats.
My trip started close to the ferry terminal on the Batam Barang that served as the river crossing back then. Like the ferry on the Sungai Belait, that ferry is history, a modern bridge a few miles upriver replacing it.
The day I set out it had rained by the coast. I took a taxi from Miri to the riverboat jetty and the photo below is of the scene that greeted me. Three riverboats were tied up at the jetty. All were due to head up-river to Marudi but at different times. The curious and mildly unsettling thing about the boats was the spare propeller each one had lashed to the deck. I understood the reason, but I wondered then (and still do now) how practical it would have been to replace the propeller mid-river.
Marudi is only 37 miles from the jetty as the crow flies but the river is mature and lazily winds it's way through the jungle. By riverboat the distance in nearly double at 66 miles.
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