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thingsasian.com
By Wah Heng
Like many Malaysians of Chinese descent, I tasted the bird nest soup at a tender age. This is a Chinese delicacy that cuts across all provincial, national, geographical and other divides separating the two billion Chinese found on Planet Earth. In the 1950s, most Chinese wedding dinners (worthy of its name) in then Malaya and Singapore come with a nine-course meal, of which bird nest soup is de rigueur. Nine, of course, is an auspicious number in Chinese numerology as it is a pun on a similarly sounding word which means longevity. In those days, demand for bird nests was not as explosive as life was a hard and bitter struggle for many overseas Chinese people in South East Asia. Hong Kong and Taiwan, too, were flooded with refugees fleeing from the Chinese Civil War.
Mainland China was much impoverished with the failure of Mao Ze-dong’s draconian collectivization of farms and setting up of communes which virtually broke up the family unit as an institution under the grandiose Great Leap Forward Policy from 1958 to 1960. This economic disaster resulted in the death of some 30 million Chinese due to starvation.
Starting from the 1970s, the price of bird nests thus rose dramatically with the new found wealth among the Chinese people from South East Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. With the burgeoning middle class in China since the early 1990s, demand for Chinese luxury food such as shark fins and bird nests shot literally through the ceiling. Nowadays, good quality processed bird nest costs US Dollars 500 to 1000 per kilogram.
As an impressionable pre-teenager, my mother told me that most of the bird nests were (and still are) harvested from limestone caves in a faraway land known as Por Law Chau (Wade-Giles for Borneo) across a mighty sea (South China Sea) from where we lived, that is, Kuala Lumpur. Indeed Borneo was, in the 1950s, a distant dreamland to me as it took a week for one to travel from Port Swettenham (renamed Port Klang) Kuala Lumpur’s port to Kuching on one of those freighters named Rajah Brooke 1, 2 or 3 operated by British owned Straits Steamship. At that time, the age of commercial passenger airliners have not yet arrived to this part of the world.
Why is Bird Nests So Popular?
Bird nests are congealed saliva (many would say “yucks”) of a few species of swiftlets which have a pair of glands below their tongue. The males regurgitate these glutinous substances in fine strands to make their nests. The saliva, upon setting, forms a cup whose external surface sticks like cement onto the ceilings and walls of caves. It has been a long held Chinese belief that bird nests promotes cell growth and tissue repair as well as strengthens the body’s systems and provide resistance to diseases. For centuries, many take bird nest soup for healing diseases connected with the respiratory system and rheumatism. Historical records showed that bird nests were first reserved for the Tang Emperors starting from about 700 AD. Initially, the bird nests were presented to the emperors by the traders who had traveled to Nanyang or South Seas their lingo for South East Asia. Despite the widely held beliefs about the Chinese that the bird nest soup is healthy, studies by scientists have not proven the health benefits of the bird nest soup.
Getting There
Therefore, when I was in Miri, Sarawak I decided that I must evoke memories of yester years by visiting the Niah Caves, which together with Sabah’s Gomantong Caves, are two of Malaysia’s most well-known source of bird nests. Getting to the Niah Caves, which is located within the 3102-hectare (7756 acres) Niah Caves National Park is a breeze. Just wait in front of Miri’s Visitor Information Center in downtown Miri for one of the regular public buses plying the Miri-Batu Niah route. At the same spot, there are many private taxis which you can either charter exclusively and shoot off without a moment of hesitation or share with others — for which you may have to wait with bated breath.
For most of the journey, you will travel southwest along the main Miri-Bintulu road until at the 102-kilometer milestone the vehicle will take the right turn-off and continue for some 12 kilometers to arrive at the small town of Batu Niah. From the bus drop-off point you need to travel another 3.5 kilometers to reach the Park Headquarters at Pangkalan Lubang (Cave Pier). Taxis from Miri will take you directly to the Park Headquarters at a turn-off just before reaching the Batu Niah town center. You can also take a longboat ride along Sungei Niah from Batu Niah town center to reach the Park Headquarters which is located on the west bank of the river. If you are traveling from Bintulu town, it is just as easy to visit the Niah Caves as you will be heading in a northeasterly direction along the Bintulu-Miri road and exiting at the same turn-off. The distance is slightly longer that is 132 kilometers and time taken is about two hours as against one and three-quarter hours from Miri.
Accommodation and Facilities
It is most convenient to stay at the Park Headquarters in view of easy access to the caves and the two trekking trails. One is known as the Bukit Kasut/Gunung Subis trail which leads through kerangkas (heath lands) to the Bukit Kasut hill and the cave-ridden Gunung Subis (elevation 394 meters), the highest mountain along the limestone massif in the Park. The Madu (Honey) trail takes a loop through peatlands close to the Park headquarters and terminates at Batu Niah town traversing along Sungei Niah and its tributary, Sungei Subis. At the Park, you will have a choice of one of the four hostels with four-bed dorms equipped with fans, or four-bed room chalets or air-conditioned two-bed VIP chalets.
There are three Chinese-run hotels in Batu Niah, namely Niah Cave Hotel, Niah Cave Inn and Park View Hotel. The advantage of staying in town is that there is a rich choice of food including fresh river prawns and fishes and locally-grown vegetables and forest ferns and plants. There are a few shops selling raw but processed bird nests. Processing bird nests means soaking the nests for a few hours before using tweezers to laboriously remove the feathers and plant and other foreign materials.
One of the things which my friend and I did was to wander around the open-air local produce market. We bought live fresh water prawns and got one of the restaurants to cook them for us. In the Park Headquarters, there is a canteen which serves good Western and Malaysian dishes. The canteen operator is an Iban lady, who pampered us with an excellent bird nest soup brewed with chicken and Chinese herbs over a slow charcoal fire. Another popular way is to boil the bird nests with rock sugar. Her other half is a local bird nest trader and he has a whole armory of interesting tales and death-defying and sometimes horrifying anecdotes on bird nest collection to tell Park visitors who bother to ask him and are patient enough to listen.
Why Visit the Niah Caves?
Many attractions are found in two of the caves, namely the Great Cave and the Painted Cave. To get to the two caves take a boat to cross over the east bank of Sungei Niah. Do not attempt to wade or swim across the shallow and narrow river no matter how tempting the crystal-clear bubbling waters are as crocodiles lurk in the waters. The jetty is behind the Park Office and the Information Center. At the opposite bank you can rent a torch from the Guano Collectors Cooperative Store which also sells light snacks and drinks. You will walk pass the Forestry staff quarters along a raised plank walkway and soon you will see a museum housed in an elegant single-storey modern building.
The boardwalk takes you all the way through undisturbed forests to the Trader’s Cave which is a little more than an overhanging of limestone. It was given this name as many years ago it was the meeting place for guano and bird nest traders to do business with the collectors. Just after leaving the Trader’s Cave, you have to climb up a steep flight of stairs to reach the West Mouth of the Great Cave which offers you a mind boggling sight of the cave. You would have walked 3.5 kilometers taking about an hour to reach your destination.
Try to wear a hat before entering the Great Cave lest natural substance of avian and chiroptera origins may add jell to your hair. The Great Cave stands at 60 meters high and its width measures some 250 meters. The first thing you would observe as you walk along the earthen trail at the cave entrance is an excavation site parallel to it but separated by a wire mesh fence. The site covered with a roof was the exact spot where Tom Harrison, then Curator of the Sarawak Museum, discovered fragments of a 40,000 year-old skull of a prehistoric man in 1958. He had to dig into some 2.4 meters of guano to unearth the homo sapien specimen. Because of the tough working conditions he and his assistants had to endure to make his epoch-making discovery which was as remarkable as the discovery of the Java Man the site was nicknamed Hell Trench.
Right behind Hell Trench and extending into the cave wall and further inside the cave is an uncovered excavation site given the name The Cemetery. This was where Tom Harrison and his wife Barbara unearthed some of the 166 burial sites of prehistoric men of which 38 had been carbon-dated to the Mesolithic (4000 to 20000 BC) period and the rest to the Neolithic (2000 to 4000 BC) era. The Harrisons had worked on the Niah Caves from 1954 to 1962. At the other end of the West Mouth is a short row of wooden houses which was the site of what was once the office and temporary home of Tom Harrison but which had been razed by a fire some time ago and rebuilt to resemble the original design.
The sun-lit part of the Great Cave looks surreal as the boulders emit a green glow which comes from fungus growth. Hanging from the ceiling of the cave are several belian or ironwood poles which reach down to my shoulder height. These poles are joined together without the use of nails. The poles are wedged to the ceiling of the cave and they enable the Penans to climb up the cave and use a long bamboo pole with a scraper at one end to dislodge the nests of the swiftlets. The collector or Tukang Juloh is assisted by helpers or Tukang Pungut who are responsible for finding and gathering the nests as they fall on the floor often in pitch darkness.
You may also make personal encounters with collectors of bird and bat guano which is of two types. Fresh guano (tahi sapu) is gathered from all parts of the cave by sweeping. Long standing guano accumulated over the years (tahi timbang) is collected by digging but this activity has been much curtailed in recent years because of the possibility of destroying archeological sites and creating holes which could endanger the lives of visitors, collectors and gatherers.
Just before the cave turns into impenetrable darkness, the plankway resumes. From here the walkway leads further into the cave and runs through passages in a loop (around a central pillar) of about one kilometer in length. The walkway leads the way to the back of the cave and you would be able to exit and enjoy a bout of fresh air and brilliant sunshine again through Right Cave Passage (Lubang Gua Kira) in the south east passing on the way two caves Burnt Cave (Lubang Hangus) and Moon Cave (Lubang Bulan). This is indeed a great relief as the ammoniac odor from the guano can over-whelm one’s nasal senses. From here you will walk gingerly in a gorge between cliffs along a rock-strewn trail taking about 20 minutes to reach the Painted Cave (Gua Kain Hitam or Black Cloth Cave).
During your walk inside the deep chambers of the Great Cave you will hear a series of short but penetrating clicks which sound like stones shaken together in the hand. These sounds are made by the swiftlets which do not use their eyes to move about in pitch darkness but echolocation similar to the radar. Bats too in the Niah Caves used echolocation to navigate. However in the brighter areas of the cave you can hear the shrill cries of swiftlets and these are their normal social communication.
The Painted Cave was so-named because Tom Harrison discovered red hematite paintings on the cave wall sprawled over some 30 meters. They depict paintings of spread-eagled humans in dance poses and apparently performing funerary rituals. There are also paintings of ships which are believed to represent boat-shaped coffins or death ships. Tom Harrison also found a few such boat-coffins in the Painted Cave with human bones. He also chanced-upon other artifacts including shell ornaments, ancient pottery and glass beads. These objects were carbon-dated to a period between 1 AD to 780 AD.
The human bones and most of the boat-coffins had been relocated to the Sarawak Museum in Kuching. You should in the Painted Cave be able to see one boat-coffin perched on an incline and it resembles a beached vessel abandoned after traveling through a journey afterlife. The paintings are hardly discernible because of age and it is difficult to see them as the part of the cave with the paintings and artifacts is protected by a few layers of razor-wire fencing. They are believed to be the only prehistoric cave paintings in the island of Borneo.
Species of Swiftlets and Bats
Out of five species of swiftlets found in Borneo three are residents of caves in the Niah National Park. The three swiftlet species are the Black-nest swiftlets (Aerodramus maximus), Mossy-nest swiftlets (Aerodramus salangus) and the White-bellied swiftlets (Collocalia esculenta) which are unable to navigate using echolocation and hence live in the brighter cave areas. Only the nests from the Black-nest swiftlets can be commercially harvested as their nests consist of a high proportion of congealed saliva. The nests of the other two species contain mainly plant and other foreign materials. There are eight species of bats in the Niah Caves and all except one are insectivorous and the remaining one feeds on fruits. The most common bats found are the Cantor’s round leaf bats (Hipposideros galeritus), Naked bats (Cheiromeles torquatus), Lesser bent-winged bats (Miniopterus australis) and the Cave nectar bats (Eonycteris spelaea).
Changing of Guards
When dusk falls over the Great Cave watch out for the “changing of guards” phenomenon. This phenomenon takes place when the hungry bats fly out of the Cave’s mouth in unison while the swiftlets stream in after a day of foraging for food. Keep your eyes glued for the bat hawks which make a meal of the bats.
Things to Do Before Visiting the Caves
It is recommended that you visit the Information Center and the Museum before visiting the caves. The Center provides information on the history of the caves, bird nest and guano collection. There are exhibits of the three different types of bird nests and the implements used in bird nest collection.. The Museum exhibits fragments of the skull of the 40,000-year-old homo sapien as well as prehistoric bones of pigs, monkeys and specie of giant pangolin which had long gone extinct. Also on display are Paleolithic shells of oysters, crabs and tortoises as well as flake stone tools, ornaments, ancient pottery, glass beads and other artifacts.
Getting In or Out by Longboat
We were told that we would miss some excitement and adventure if we do not take the longboat in or out of the Park Headquarters. We therefore left the Park by longboat after our sleepy heads were roused by the melodious singing of the magpie robins and White-rumped shamas. We enjoyed the boat trip as we saw a bit of the true face of the life in rural Sarawak shaped by rivers and forests. Our boat passed by riverine native longhouses with many ramshackle huts perched on high ground. We observed natives bathing along the river banks and washing their laundry. Their children appeared to have a whale of a time cavorting in the waters. They lead simple and uncomplicated lives eking out a hand-to-mouth subsistence living. The branches and leaves of the forest trees embrace the river banks and we enjoyed the sight of birds darting across the river. The river is still teeming with fishes and fresh water prawns but we do not know for how long. But to the natives, life goes on.
Why Visit the Niah Caves
Anyone fascinated with bird nests harvesting or with an interest in caves and cave paintings is recommended to visit the Niah Caves. The Great Cave is simply awesome in view of its size. The sight of the height to which the grove-less ironwood poles reach out to the far ceiling of the Great Cave and that of wiry but no longer loin-clothed Penans carrying out their harvesting chores nonchalantly is an unforgettable spectacle.
