Batu Niah - Not Just a Mountain of Bat Shit

It's funny the things that stick in your mind from a journey.  Batu Niah is one of the most spectacular of Sarawak's national parks.  It comprises a vast cave network full of bats and swallows in a setting of jungle and limestone cliffs straight out of "Jurassic Park".  There are mysterious wall paintings, mountains of acrid bat shit and a profound sense of darkness and silence as you grope your way along a two kilometre subterranean boardwalk.  And what do I remember best?  The National Park canteen.

From the second you walk in the door there is the smell of desperation.  The National Park is three kilometres from the town of Batu Niah, so the canteen has a captive market of tourists.  It's located in a brand new building with new steel and formica tables and chairs and yet the place is empty.  In one corner there are a few lonely boxes of potato crisps under a notice warning that "thieves will be prosecuted".  There is also a set of swing doors leading, presumably, to the kitchen, with a large "no entry" notice scrawled across it, as if hastily put up by someone who, having murdered the cook, now needs time to dismember him with the rudimentary kitchen tools available.

Suddenly the kitchen doors burst open and a Malay man in his late thirties emerges with a panicky smile on his face.
"You want food?  I have food.  Please to sit down.  Chicken and rice set?"
I am with Martyn, Janina and Eva, a dad, mum and teenage daughter I first met at Simlilajau.  We look at each other doubtfully, Janina and Eva are vegetarians.
"Do you have any vegetarian food?"
"Rice?"  He offers, nervously.
I settle for the chicken and rice set, which is bland and under-seasoned, while the others just have drinks.

We try the canteen one last time in the evening.  By the time we arrive there are already several tourists ploughing their way resignedly through platefuls of dry and bland chicken rice.  In a desperate search for variety I try a new tack:
"Chicken and rice set?"  Your man asks.
"You have noodle?"  I parry.
"Yes we have noodle."  He offers with a matter of fact air.
"OK, chicken noodle."
This arrives ten minutes later looking moist and actually fairly appetising, to the obvious chagrin of the other guests.

Later, I spy a letter on a notice board inviting tenders to run the canteen dated a few months ago and I surmise that our man has won the contract and having done so has not the slightest clue what to do.  He presumably wants to sell food and make money and the visitors, having no other choice, are keen to buy it.  But, his lack of understanding of what tourists actually want is almost total and the communication gap near unbridgeable and this seems to be the story of so much of Sarawak's tourist industry.  I want to tell this poor man - "look, tourists want snacks and lunches to take with them on walks and a price list and pictures of the things you can cook."  But I know it will not register, he is the wrong man and is probably doomed to fail, concluding that tourists are mean and have no appetite.

This lack of communication is also evidenced by the bus journey here from Bintulu.  I bought a ticket for "Batu Niah", but no one at the point of sale, on the bus or at the drop-off, felt it necessary to explain that by "Batu Niah" they really meant "the Batu Niah service area", actually twelve kilometres from the town of Batu Niah and fifteen from the National Park.  Tourists have been getting off these buses at the service area possibly for decades looking desperately for the National Park and yet nothing has changed, other than that there is now an established going rate for charging the benighted backpackers for a lift to the park gates.  Sometimes here it's like looking across a canyon at the people on the other side and trying to work out whether they're laughing, praying, crying or dancing.  Fucked if I know, but if all else fails just stay calm and keep smiling.