Sabah Borneo Explorer

Agop Batu Tulug (ancient burial cave)

2012-07-30T20:08:00.004-07:00

Agop Batu Tulug(ancient burial cave)

Old coffins in a cave at Batu Puteh, Kinabatangan District, Sabah.

Agop Batu Tulug is a steep limestone cliff that stands 39 meters high and is part of the 20-25 million- year old Labang limestone formation.
Located just before Batu Puteh village and the only bridge that crosses Kinabatangan River,
Agop means “cave” in the local Orang Sungei language, and Tulug means “to sleep” in the Visayan language.

The visitors might wonder how the coffin can be carried all the way up as the climbing up the stairs is tough.
Batu Putih village can be viewed from here as well.

There are three main caves in Agop Batu Tulug namely Agop Suriba (Lower Cave), Agop Lintanga (Middle Cave) and Agop Sawat (Uppermost Cave) betweeen 12-15m high.
Another smaller cave, Agop Dimunduk is located near the summit of a cliff along the slope of the limestone hill. Agop Batu Tulug was used as an ancient log coffin burial site from about 500 to 690 years ago.
This practice of log coffin burial is prevalent in this part of Sabah Borneo.
The caves here (Agop Sawat, Lintanga & Dimunduk) contain more than 125 log carved coffins.
Inside the middle and upper caves are more than a hundred carved wooden coffins dating back 200-250 years, watched over by bats and swallows.

These coffins were made from 'belian' hardwood, Eusideroxylon zwager and decorated with carvings of buffalo head, crocodile, house lizard and snake.
The carvings on the coffins reflect the myths and legends of the Kinabatangan people, e.g., a crocodile is related to death and the power darkness while the bugang bird, dog, rooster and deer were friends of their heroes. The coffins resemble different animals associated to the beliefs of the Orang Sungai but it has also been said that they are the coffins of the Chinese who once settled in the area as Chinese artifacts were found among the remains.
It is said that the first Chinese seaman, Admiral Cheng Ho visited the area (Kinabatangan) in 1421. It is believed that wooden coffins found in burial complexes at limestones caves such as those at Batu Tulug, which is preserved as a museum, are linked to earlyChinese settlements.

A site Museum since 1996, it has facilities such as an information center, stairs leading to the caves, toilets and resting huts.

It is certainly an archaeological sites, making it a unique cultural heritage of Sabah Borneo, Malaysia.

The Gomantong Caves, Sandakan

2012-07-20T19:51:00.003-07:00

The Gomantong Caves, Sandakan

The Gomantong Caves, the largest cave system in Sabah, are about 110 km by road south of Sandakan, are an intricate limestone cave system of Gomantong Hill. Situated in the eastern lowlands of Sabah, in the district of Sandakan. The Gomantong Caves are well known for their birds' nest industry. The local people are collecting these nests using bamboo ladders and poles.

The caves are open all year daily. The Gomantong Cave (southwest of Sandakan) is divided into two caves: the Simud Hitam and the Simud Putih. The Simud Hitam (Black Nest Cave) is the more accessible.
It has a huge grotto-like opening with a circular boardwalk to keep you off the guano-covered ground crawling with bugs and cockroaches. This cave is just a 5 minutes walk from the Registration Centre. It has a large chamber 30 m wide and 100 m high.

The Gomantong Caves are home to over one million swiftlets. Swiftlets, who make the valuable nests, and bats share the caves with thousands of insects which live in the rich guano on the floor.The swiftlets' nest are collected for the famous Chinese Delicacy, bird's nest soup, and fetch a good price locally and abroad.
Twice a year, in the caves men can be seen scaling bamboo ladders to heights of about 90m to collect this delicacy off the cave walls. The swiftlets’ neighbours are bats, more than a million of them, living above an enormous guano pile. The sighting of bats, swiftlets, birds and butterflies is virtually guaranteed, with the occasional bonus of small mammals, including orang utan. Harvesting of the nests is a spectacular and dangerous operations which is only carried out twice per year, usually around March to April and August to September.

Two varieties of swiftlets make edible birth nests. Good quality birds nests can fetch more than US$ 400 per kilo! Although the visit is more spectacular during nest collection seasons, the lime stone cave is most impressive all year round with sightings of animals and insects.

The WWF described the Gomantong Cave as "the best managed edible birds' nest cave in the world"
The locals recover the bird nests and made it a local delicacy: the bird nest soup.

Danum Valley Rainforest Experience, Lahad Datu

2012-07-20T19:48:00.005-07:00

Danum Valley Rainforest Experience, Lahad Datu

Covering 43,800 hectares (438 km2), the Danum Valley Conservation Area is one of the largest, most important and best-protected expanses of pristine lowland forest remaining in SE Asia. On its eastern border is the Danum Valley Field Centre - probably the leading rainforest research centre in the Old World tropics.

Danum Valley, and several other large primary forest protected areas, including the Maliau Basin and Imbak Canyon Conservation Areas, are embedded within an exceptionally large (>10,000 km2) forest concession operated by Yayasan Sabah (the Sabah Foundation). The bulk of the of the Yayasan Sabah area is under a regime of natural forest management, but also includes extensive timber and oil palm plantations, community forestry programmes, eco-tourism sites and two of the region's largest forest rehabilitation projects. Income from the Foundation's natural forest and plantation resource base is used to fund welfare, education and conservation initiatives in Sabah.

Visitors are welcome to come and stay in Danum Valley at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge, located adjacent to the research centre, from where they can make wildlife-spotting walks into the forest, following marked trails by themselves or with knowledgeable wildlife guides.

There is also a canopy walkway - a series of suspended rope bridges high up in the tops of the trees - from where to get a closer look at the species that seldom, if even, veture to the ground.

It is highly adviseable to take a guide - wildlife can be very difficult to sopt in rainforest without the help of highly experienced eyes. Bring binoculars and a bird book.