Travelling Hopefully - Malodorous Cavern Edition

After taking so many monkey and orangutan pictures that we were heartily sick of them and having witnessed the laying of turtle eggs and the utterly adorable sight of scores of baby turtles charging towards the sea and almost certain doom there really was nothing left to do in this part of Sabah except wade ankle deep through bird and cockroach shit while bats pissed on us from above.  The venue for this act of bestial coprophilia was the Gomantong Cave which is surrounded by its own patch of virgin jungle.  Surrounding the virgin jungle are palm oil plantations that are distinctly slutty at best.

The first thing that hits you as you approach the cave is the smell.  It's also the second, third and fourth thing to hit you as well.  And by "hits you" I mean "beats you half to death and leaves you bleeding in the gutter".  Inside the cave are innumerable bats, cockroaches and small birds.  Outside the cave are a large number of eagles for reasons not entirely unconnected with the previous sentence.

The bats, it is fair to say, serve no other purpose except to feed the eagles and the cockroaches are there because there just isn't enough Mortein in the world to deal with the issue.  The birds however happen to be the type of birds that paste their nests together with their own saliva.  As such they provide a vital ingredient in birds nest soup or, more accurately, bird spit soup.  Yum yum.

Bizarrely birdsnest soup isn't considered to be an aphrodisiac which is odd as it certainly ticks the  "inaccessible and birdspit crazy" criteria normally applied to such things.  However the soup is supposed to be very good for your health and particularly helpful for smooth skin and generally warding off the ageing process.  Which goes to show that Chinese traditional medicine is rather like traditional medicine everywhere; a couple of lucky guesses cemented together with an unholy collection of demented rubbish.

The nests are gathered twice a year and the pricier nests (because of course there is a grading system for swallowing birdspit) can fetch up to several thousand dollars per kilogram.  During the gathering the workers actually live in little huts in the cave which I wouldn't do for the salvation of mankind.

Having appreciated (for want of a better word) the atmosphere (for want of a better word) of the cave (nope we're good with the word "cave") we left for somewhere our nasal passages could recuperate.  On the way back through the jungle there were about half a dozen orangutans frolicking in the trees because of course there were.  The damn things are everywhere. 

With the collected excrement of three different species washed from our shoes (but never from our brains) there was nothing left to do except catch the last minibus out of Dodge.  While waiting for our flight at Sandakan airport we noticed a man wandering around.  He was wearing what might be termed a uniform (if you wanted to stretch the definition to its very limit) and was carrying a pump action shotgun.  He wasn't screaming demands and people weren't fleeing in panic so I'm going to go right ahead and assume he was airport security.