Goa Lalay, Pelabuhan Ratu, Java

Goa Lalay or Bat Cave, is a small cave, about 4.5 km south of Pelabuhan Ratu, on the south coast of West Java, Indonesia.

It is a small cave with a large colony of bats, famous for the evening bat flight. The main bat cave is fenced off, this is from where the bats emerge each night. Entrance fee to watch was Rp1000 in 2002.

I went in a small neighbouring cave which seemed to be just one chamber with some tunnels leading off, but I had no torch. There was lava like sand on the floor.

There are 4 caves here, one is used as a meditation cave. Seems to be an old sea cave complex.

Lalay is bat in Sundanese language.

© Liz Price
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Gua Boni Ayu, Sukabumi, Java

I've only been to one cave in the Sukabumi area of West Java, Indonesia. That is Gua Boni Ayu (Buniayu). Ayu means beautiful in Sundanese. My visit was in 2002.

From Sukabumi we drove south towards Sagaranten and up and over a mountain range before reaching Gua Boni Ayu. This karst area is riddled with dolines and covered by pine and damar trees.

The Forest Dept. looks after the cave and runs it as a show cave. They even had about 7 sets of Petzl carbides.

Lots of steps down to the cave entrance, then steps down in the cave. We came to the streamway and followed it. It was very muddy. There were lots of straws and some nice gours and a few stal.

The streamway is quite small and you have to stoop in places. We stopped at a place and I was told that in 2000 an earthquake had caused a collapse. It's now a squeeze.

Cave has lots of insect bats, a few large crickets, small whip spiders.

We went back out and at the entrance followed a high level passage where there were bats and swiflets. We did a muddy route out to another entrance at high level. We were in the cave for about 75 mins.

After the trip we had a quick look at a shaft nearby.

© Liz Price
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Gua Kelawar, Batu Kurau, Perak

Batu Kurau is an isolated limestone outcrop, near Anak Kurau in Perak.

My first visit to Batu Kurau was in August 1998. On that trip we surveyed Gua Kelawar, which is the biggest cave. It is 157 m long. To reach the cave you have to walk through the river

This entrance is quite small and hidden by vegetation in 1998

We used this entrance in 2007

The main feature of the cave is the bats. Lots of them.

The eye shine of the fruit bats can be seen on the bats

The main chamber was amazing. It was packed full of bats. The floor had a semi-solid lake of liquid guano. It was brown when stirred.

There was an incredible heat given off - I've never experienced this before. The noise of the bats was also new to me, as noisy as a steam train whistling. The bats were packed solidly on the roof. Their eyes were quite bright. They are probably all fruit bats. Even the Bat Cave at Gunung Tempurung doesn't seem to have the heat of this chamber. Needless to say we couldn't survey very accurately here due to the stench and the fact we weren't going to cross the guano lake! There were cockroaches on the walls.

There is a nice shaped 'window' leading to the main chamber

Looking out from the main chamber

Bats in the smaller passage

Evans wrote about the Batu Kurau caves in 1920 but doesn't seem to mention this particular cave.

Gua Kelawar register number Prk 59/11.

See more on Batu Kurau barber shop.

© Liz Price No reproduction without permission

Batu Kurau barber, Perak

Batu Kurau is an isolated limestone outcrop, near Anak Kurau in Perak.

The village road passes the northern end of the hill.

An enterprising barber has built his shop against the cliff.

Entrance to the shop

When we visited in 2007 my friend Jan couldn't resist having a hair cut. It cost just RM4.

Batu Kurau register number Prk 59/01.

See Gua Kelawar at Batu Kurau

See 2014 update.

© Liz Price
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Kota Tampan, Lenggong, Malaysia

Kota Tampan, although not a cave site, is an important archaeological site in Malaysia. It is located in the Lenggong Valley in Perak, Malaysia. The Lenggong Valley was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in June 2012.

Archaeologists digging at Kota Tampan unearthed evidence of a 34,000-year-old pre-historic workshop for making stone tools. Excavations revealed an undisturbed stone tool production area, where pebble tools were made. Some 50,000 pieces of stone were found. The age of the site was redated at 75,000 years. In 1992 Kota Tampan was was considered the earliest known site of human inhabitation in Malaysia.

Kota Tampan is located about 5 km south of Lenggong. I visited the site in January 1994. There was not much to see, apart from a small dig covered by a roof in the middle of an oil palm plantation.
Entrance to the site

The information sign was rather battered and just propped up at the back of the hut

It looked like nothing was being done to preserve the site. And apparently when the Lenggong Musuem was constructed, it was built over the Kota Tampan site!!!!

© Liz Price No reproduction without permission

Lenggong Valley World Heritage site

On 30 June 2012 UNESCO announced that Lenggong Valley had been listed as a World Heritage site.

Lenggong is Malaysia's oldest archaeological site and is partly cave related. It is located in Hulu Perak, between Kuala Kangsar and Grik.

The first news reports came out on 1 July 2012, with a statement from the Information Communication and Culture minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim : UNESCO Declares Lenggong Valley World Heritage Site
July 1 (Bernama) -- The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) declared Lenggong Valley in Hulu Perak as a world heritage site, at its conference Saturday night.
Information Communication and Culture minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said the discovery of ancient artifacts more than 11,000 years old from excavations at the valley by national archaeologists for the past 20 years led to the declaration.
"So now, we can add the Lenggong Valley to Penang, Melaka, Mount Kinabalu and the Niah Caves as heritage sites under UNESCO.
"This is a very meaningful achievement by the government and people which we can be proud of," he told reporters.
He said the ministry would collate and record all the data related to the discoveries to provide more information to the public.
Rais also said the ministry and Perak government would look into a joint study on the Lenggong Valley's socio, cultural and heritage development.

Unfortunately there were 2 big errors in this, as Niah is not a WH site - it should be Gunung Mulu National Park - and Penang and Melaka are counted as one site, not two. By the evening of the 2nd, most papers had published a new, corrected article.

Lenggong is Malaysia's oldest archaeological site and is partly cave related. Perak Man is the oldest complete and intact human skeleton to be found in Malaysia, dated at about 11,000 years old, it was found in 1991 in Gua Gunung Runtuh.

However the Perak Man skeleton is housed in the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur. Now there are calls to take him home to Perak, and an updated version.

The Lenggong Musuem was opened in 2003.

Other caves in the Lenggong area have revealed items such as pottery, stone tools, jewellery and food remains. There are also cave paintings at Gua Badak, although these were made by modern' aborigines.

Kota Tampan, a non cave site, was considered the earliest known site of human inhabitation in Malaysia. Excavations revealed an undisturbed stone tool production area, where pebble tools were made. Some 50,000 pieces of stone were found and dated at 75,000 years. Then archaeologists turned to Bukit Jawa, just 6km away and this has been dated at 200-300,000 years old, which is therefore far older than the Kota Tampan workshop. Additional nearby sites at Kampung Temelong and Lawin are also thought to be 200-300,000 years old.

Bukit Bunuh, again not a cave site, was discovered in 2002. Initially finds were dated at around 40K years old. But now the area is said to be more than 1.86 million years old and considered the oldest Palaeolithic site in Southeast Asia. A hand axe made of quartzite rock was found embedded in layers of suevite caused by meteorite impact. This suevite rock was dated to 1.83 million years. According to UNESCO, Lenggong "spans close to two million years, one of the longest records of early man in a single locality, and the oldest outside the African continent".

© Liz Price No reproduction without permission

Bewah & Taat caves, Kenyir, Terengganu

In November 1999 I went to Tasik Kenyir in Terengganu to survey some caves. I went with cavers from the Malaysian Nature Society. We had been invited by Ketengah to look at the caves with a view to them being developed for tourism.

Since our visit, Ketengah (Terengganu Tengah Development Authority) has come up with various ideas to improve tourism and develop Kenyir Lake.

Tasik Kenyir is the largest man-made lake in Southeast Asia. The area was flooded between 1978 and 1985 as part of a hydro electric scheme.

After flooding many of the hilltops and highlands remained above water level, creating about 340 man-made islands.

Before the creation of the lake there were several caves and some of archaeological importance. However after flooding most were lost underwater.

There are 2 caves still accessible and these have been developed for tourism. Gua Bewah is the largest and is located in Bukit Bewah. Gua Taat is nearby. Both are located at the southern end of the lake.

Our visit started at Pengkalan Gawai (Gawai jetty) which is the main gateway to Tasik Kenyir.

We loaded our equipment and supplies onto a houseboat,

but we travelled by speedboat for a fast ride of 70 minutes to Bukit Bewah.

Bukit Bewah and the area to the south is actually within Taman Negara, the national park. We went to have a look at the back (west side) of the hill before going back around to Gua Bewah on the east side.

The floating jetty at Gua Bewah was sitting on top of a large rock, presumably left there are some high water levels. From the boat we could smell the guano in the cave. It was quite a hike up all the steps to the entrance about 40 m up the hill.

Old sacks of guano showed that people used to enter the cave to collect guano, and the sacks on the floor made a convenient staircase. The cave is basically one huge chamber. At the back is another big chamber and a pitch down but would need bolting. There was the remains of electric lighting. We surveyed the cave, it is only about 150 m long.

The archaeological digs are in the left corner of the entrance.

We could hear the bats but they were too high to see. Other fauna included lots of crickets, large huntsman spiders, large cockroaches with a blue end and some large crabs.

Gua Taat is in the hill across from Bewah and has 2 entrances.

The main entrance was reached by a wooden step ladder which would be underwater during high water levels. The entrance is quite small and low and the cave floods easily. Again there are archaeological pits in the floor by the entrance. The cave was first dug in 1959.

A passage with flat roof leads to a second entrance. There was no cave fauna.

We had a quick look at Gua Taat 2 which is basically a rock shelter.

On our caving days we used a small speedboat to get to the caves

and this was our houseboat

We slept in chalets at Tanjung Mentong.

UPDATE

Since our visit in 1999 there have been many plans for Kenyir. Gua Bewah has now been more developed for tourism. See my friend Jan's photos from June 2012.

See more on cave archaeology at Kenyir, including the remains of Bewah Man found in 2010.

© Liz Price

No reproduction without permission