4 Most Terrifying Encounters in Malaysia’s Underworld | Southeast Asia's Dark Side 🇲🇾

Malaysia may be amazing, but it also has a dark side.

We came face to face with that dark side when exploring Niah Caves in Sarawak, East Malaysia. The deep cavernous labyrinth that we explored is no ordinary cave system – these are huge pre-historic caves that are situated in the heart of one of the world’s most inhospitable jungles: the ancient rainforests of the island of Borneo.

And here in Niah Caves, the many remains of neolithic dead humans in this cave is fascinating. But the creatures we found that were very much alive… That all equated to one of our most terrifying experiences yet.

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Transcript

Previously on Two Up and Overloaded -

Marisa: We ventured into the jungle to explore one of the world's largest caverns, the Great Cave at Niah Caves on the incredible island of Borneo. It was here in East Malaysia that “Deep Skull” was found, the Paleolithic skull of a woman who lived in this cave more than 40,000 years ago. Along with her remains, over 200 Neolithic burials have been uncovered here, making this one of the largest Mesolithic and Neolithic cemeteries in Island Southeast Asia.

And if that hadn't already sent a shiver down our spines, we were about to make our way deeper into the cave where we would come face to face with some very creepy, very not dead cave dwellers.

[bat squeaks]

Okay, I legitimately got the creeps.

Tim: Oh!

Intro: Hey everyone! Nice to have you here. We are Tim, and Marisa Notier. I ride in the front. And I’m in the rear. We travel the world and we pack too much gear. Oh, all the places we’ll go! Through rain and through sleet and through mud and through snow. Oh, all the things we’ll see! We’ve been to a country or two. Or three! Oh, all the fun we’ve had! To have you along, would make us real glad. So give us a like, and hit subscribe to join us along our epic ride.

[This episode is dedicated to those who support us here on YouTube.]

Marisa: We're on our way to Moon Cave, which is completely dark. There is no light that's going to be coming in, and so we'll have to use our phone lamps. Oh my gosh, but this is already quite a bit freaky considering that all I hear are bats and they're flying all around me. Wow.

Tim: So when we walked in, we made a decision to go further and deeper into the curtain of darkness and stench that was an arrow pointing to where we didn't even know. It said, “Moon Cave That Way,” and we were like, “Okay. Let's do that!” 

Yeah, and it's called Moon Cave because it's got a bunch of craters in the wall. 

Marisa: Yes. 

Tim: It looks very lunar landscape-esque. 

Marisa: And on the floor. 

And this floor is soft and squishy and spongy and stinky and it is all made of bat guano, which is bat poop. Yuk.

Those sounds are so freaky. The floor is just bat guano, which is their droppings of centuries of probably millions of bats. 

Tim: That was one of the first and most noticeable things about this cave was the incredible amount of bats there. The stink, the sound of them, screeching, clicking, making all these very creepy sounds.

Marisa: They were not asleep during the day at all.

Tim: No! All the vampire movies have lied to us throughout our lives. It's like, that is not, not, uh-uh. Usually, Marisa calls me loud and stinky and poos everywhere, but now, just for context throughout this video, she is not referring to me but about the millions of bats. 

Marisa: That's right.

It's really dark. This cave is huge. I mean, we just came from the Great Cave which had its own entrance, walking through a middle cave, Moon Cave, and it's ending up at Painted Cave, which is like another entrance on the other side of the mountain. It's like an entire tunnel of a giant cave. 

Tim: It sounds like radioactivity, like it's like, [clicking]. 

Marisa: Yes. Yeah.

[bat squeaks and clicks]

Oh, freaky! I mean, I kind of like bats. Well, I know that they're very important for the world, and therefore I like them even more. But I think they're kind of cute. But it is freaky to hear their sounds, I'm not going to lie.

So they had these little boardwalks that we could go along, and some of them had railings. And they were... 

Tim: Don't touch the railings. 

Marisa: Yeah, they were all covered. 

Tim: Lesson number one.

Marisa: Bluh, bat poop everywhere! I could see when they were constructing it that the railings sounded like a really good idea, but unless someone goes in daily to clean them... 

Tim: With a little scraper tool, no way. If you were to lose your footing, you're like, "Oh no, I need support," and grab the railing, it would slip off, burn an acidic hole through your hand, and you'd be like, "Ahhh," turn into the Crypt Keeper and just die. So don't touch the railings.

Marisa: So to the side of the well-marked boardwalk area, you could kind of go off-roading, I should say, and there were these little ladders that led down to another cave entrance. 

Tim: Yeah, it was like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where you'd pretty much have to return back to page 1 because it'd be like, "Oh no, you died again." Like,"Oh, all right. Well, go down dark scary ladder into smelly darkness, yeah! Turn to page 76. Yeah, you

died." 

Marisa: That's what we chose. 

Tim: That's what we did. And it was super scary. It was, it was not well lit, obviously. There wasn't... In a lot of caves that we've been to, it almost looks like an orchestra hall, because it's just well-lit and really, really pretty. But this is the down and dirty and stinky version. 

Marisa: There was no electricity running through. There were no lights, this was cave.

Tim: We were channeling our Neanderthal past and trying to get our… I have more Neanderthal than the average person, so I was in the lead. Check out these brows, folks. This just comes to me naturally. I could almost see in the dark. 

Marisa: But with the help of our cell phones and their light source, that really did help us. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to get anywhere. I mean, it was very, very dark and this was the middle of the day.

These little ladders, I wouldn't call them rickety, but they were also covered in bat guano, and so they were extremely slippery. And then the areas between the ladders, it was very hard to see your footing. There were a lot of loose stones and there were some boards that were kind of put around in different places, and some of those were loose as well. It was pretty treacherous. 

Tim: It was treacherous. It was like trying to find the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones. Like there's caverns that you look down with your lamp and it just goes into dark. Like there's nothing shiny, I don't even know how far down this goes. But 10,000, 40,000 years from now, they're going to find “Deep Skull” Marisa, with her little stupid headlight on, and her iPhone, and be like, “Oh, look at the primitive technology.”

This is truly a Slipper Path. 

Marisa: A slipper path!

Tim: And we got to a point where I would have, well Marisa would have said, let's not go any further. But I heard a guy, a dude. 

Marisa: Yeah. 

Tim: And I was like, "Well, somebody else has made it this far." And it was either going to be a Neanderthal who had secluded himself, or... 

Marisa: A Neanderthal who had secluded himself…

Oh my gosh, that was so scary. I'm not a spelunker. 

So the guy that we had seen was actually a worker there. He had been collecting trash, which blows my mind that anyone had been there before us besides the people that put the ladders there. But yeah, he was just going all over the place, and so that gave us the courage to continue on to this beautiful cave entrance.

[Music]

Tim: It was well worth the immediate danger we had put ourselves through.

Marisa: Okay, so I am feeling dizzy still from being still congested in my sinuses and my head from being sick. And so I think that's why the little trek over here felt very, very unsteady for me, but now I have to make that trek back. So here we go. Wish us luck.

[Music]

Tim: There was definitely a lot

of teamwork going on getting around into this pitch darkness of where the footing was... You know, I just really wanted to make sure that Marisa was safe. So we took it extremely slow.

Marisa: You saved me on many occasions, and you guided me. You told me what was ahead, and every single step I should take, and with which foot, and where I should put my hands.

Tim: The edge of this board, this whole part is super sketchy. Don't step on the edge of this board.

Marisa: Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to make it through any of that if it wasn't for you. 

Tim: You're too kind. 

Marisa: Alright. Here we go. Oh yeah, very, very, very, very slippery. 

Tim: Now, put your hand here, I'm going to move. Okay?

Marisa: Okay. 

Tim: Some of my helpful words was like, “It's both slippery and grippy. Now proceed forward with this newfound information.” We were tethered to each other, so if you fell, I would have gone with you, and they would have found two humanoid bodies 40,000 years from now. 

Marisa: It was mostly the confidence you exuded, the knowledge that you thought and knew that I could do it. And that you had made it this far, and you were there with me, and so that gave me the confidence to accomplish it. 

Tim: This is true. 

Alright, now this is like seriously the dangerous, most dangerous part. So… 

Marisa: Alright.

[Music]

Tim: Don't think that any of these rocks are rooted.

Marisa: Look at us, cave spelunkers! 

Tim: I felt like we were in the B-take version of Lord of the Rings, like when we got to Mordor and were like, "Ah!" Like Bill and Ted's version, like, "Let's go down there!" And we did it, and we lived to tell the tale. And we shouldn't have. 

Everything has a little bit of grip and a little bit of slip. But once you make it past here, we should be good. 

Marisa: Oh. The worst is over, yes.

Tim: We got back to the main path, and I said, "That might be the last time we deviate into the scary, bowels of the Earth." 

Marisa: This next part of the cave  was the freakiest, darkest tunnel. I didn't know where the walls were, I couldn't see them, it didn't matter. All you could do was listen to this strange clicking. It wasn't like the millions of bats that had been in the great cave, it was more like alien clicks.

What is that sound? So weird.

[soft clicking]

And then you're walking along this little tiny light that you have with the flashlight along the boardwalk, and every once in a while, a cave cricket jumps out, which is huge and giant and black and scary, and there's spiders all over the bat poop-covered railings, and there's bats hanging overhead and flying around. It was very freaky. 

It is crazy dark in here. And we are all alone. All you can hear are the sounds of the bats.

[soft squeaks]

And you can see them too if you shine the light up onto the rocks all around us.

Bats are incredible creatures that help pollinate plants and reduce insect populations, especially the dreaded mosquito. A single bat can eat more than 600 insects in 1 hour, which is the equivalent to a person eating 20 pizzas in one night. They are the only mammals that can fly, and bats have few natural predators. Besides human development, disease is actually one of their biggest threats, mostly because they live in such large colonies and so close together.

Tim: Oh!

[bat squeaks]

Marisa: I had freaked myself out because I thought, "Oh, look at these cool spiders. I'll take some footage of the spiders." And I kept seeing more and more and more, and then I just freaked myself out by getting close to these spiders. 

Tim: That's definitely your own fault. When were we like, "Let's look for more little beady glow-in-the-dark eyes in this dark, humid cave."

Marisa: Okay, I legitimately got the creeps.

Tim: Do you think it's 10,000, 20,000 beady little glow in-the-dark eyes?

Marisa: Ahhhhh!

Tim: And the cave crickets, they're no fun, but I knew they were harmless. They're not venomous, they're just gross looking. And I think if you're a bad person, you're coming back in the next life as a cave cricket. 

Marisa: The cockroaches of the underworld. 

Tim: This is true. 

Marisa: Ew, I'm getting freaked out just thinking about all these things!

Although they might look huge and terrifying, cave crickets do not pose a threat to humans. They are not venomous and are not known to carry any diseases. They do not have wings and do not chirp like normal crickets. But they are scary because they live in the dark, can resemble spiders, and can grow to be very large. 

I am getting creeped out looking at all these giant crickets and spiders.

Tim: But through the darkness, there was light.

Marisa: Yes! 

Tim: There was, we turned this corner, and there was this UFO. I'm surprised there wasn't a cow floating up through it. It was this insane rays of light that were just driven into the cave. And we must have caught it at the perfect moment of the perfect day for the sun to hit it at such an equinox light. 

Marisa: It was this shaft of heavenly rays that were streaming down through the cave and onto these giant limestone rock formations. 

Tim: Holy moly, folks. That is pretty cool.

Marisa: It was a giant chamber all lit up with basically a waterfall of glorious light. It was amazing!

Tim: It was super pretty and like usually I'm not like a "super pretty" dude... I am. I like some pretty stuff, that's why I married you. 

Marisa: Aww! 

Tim: But this was like, "Wowzers!" Like... Right? That's a good description. You have your glamorous waterfall of light and I got wowzers.

We were the only people we had seen, except for the guy collecting some trash. I don't know, like I don't know why this was not just full of people appreciating this to catch it at this moment in time of the day.

Marisa: Because they had to go through that horrible tunnel of doom. 

Tim: There were the bats pooping on you, and... 

Marisa: Yeah!

Tim: We knew we needed a well-deserved break to try to sit down, we were sweating, it was stinky, we were hungry. We wanted water. 

Marisa: I mean, I'm really enjoying this, this is unbelievable.  But I feel like my ears are kind of like I hear myself echoing because I'm still all congested in my head. I'm dizzy, I feel like I just ran a marathon. I could never do that, but if I did... I just feel exhausted, like I can't stand. And I, I think I just need like a pick-me-up.

Tim: Water was easy because you can unscrew the cap and drink it, but our hands, by this time after climbing around all these rocks, making sure we don't die, we were now, you know... 

Marisa: Covered in bat poop. 

Tim: A putty from the Power Rangers, you know, just poo hands. 

I think we got some cookies somewhere. 

Marisa: Cookies, yeah. But the problem is we're covered in bat guano. I'm concerned about drinking water, and I just don't want anything to get in it. 

Tim: And we had cookies. 

Marisa: We had these cookies, but I was very afraid to eat them because I didn't want to touch them and eat the bat poop.

Tim: That's how you get Covid 24. It was the guy eating chocolate cookies in the bat cave.

How to eat cookies when your hands are covered in bat guano. 

Marisa: You did a good job. 

Tim: We did do it very well. We could be on some weird Japanese game show. 

Marisa: We would rock that. 

Tim: We would.

Marisa: Obviously, I wish I was feeling better, but this is still like, “Oh my goodness!” I mean, we've been to caves before, but this is unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life. It's amazing.

Tim: This is pretty cool, folks. I have to say I haven't been in many caves, but none of the caves that I have explored have been anywhere near as cool and as amazing as this. This is just fantastic. 

Marisa: The scaffolding that you see behind me is actually quite old. It was built by the people who inhabited these caves up until the 1950s, collecting those bird's nests from the Swiftlets. They make these nests out of their spit, and these people would collect them, and then they would sell the nests, mostly to the Chinese who believe it has wonderful properties for longevity, healthy properties.

But I don't know if they were climbing up these wooden scaffolding or what. Yeah, I wouldn't do that.

[Mind your head for the next 5 meters.]

Tim: And then we got to a guardian. Cave snake! 

Marisa: Cave snake!

There's a huge snake right on a rock that the walkway goes right past.

Tim: Boo! Cave snake? I have no natural defense of that, uh-uh. 

Marisa: No way. 

Tim: And this was unnecessarily long. Just like you started over here, and it was just... It did not need to be that long. Just, I don't know what it did, but, "Dude, stop eating for a while." 

Marisa: Cave snake?

Tim :Yeah, I'm not a fan. 

Marisa: The problem with the snake was that it was on this rocky ledge that was about head height, hanging over the place where we would be walking.

Tim: Where the poo-poo stairs were. 

Marisa: Yes, on the boardwalk.

Tim: We almost made it out alive, and then we ran into... cave snake. 

Marisa: So it was hanging over with its head out, sticking out its forked tongue right where we were supposed to be walking.

Tim: Not my favorite, uh-uh. There's no way. Like, I took pictures, I put on my telescope zoom thing, I got close, and I just, nope. Things that slither and have forked tongues...? Like, no. Again, this Neanderthal primitive mind was like, “Snake bad, Marisa. Snake bad.”

Marisa: I don't know if we should go past there. 

Tim: Uh, we can go the muddy way? 

Marisa: Yeah, I think that would actually be less dangerous. 

Tim: We were able to find an alternative route. 

Marisa: Just keep in mind that snakes can move really fast if they want to, so... We just should probably keep our distance. I don't think I'm going to spend a lot of time in this Painted Cave because I kind of want to keep an eye on where that snake is at.

Tim :We made it past the snake of doom, which I'm very thankful for. I do not like snakes, so that was creepy. 

Marisa: But we have to go back past it, so...

Okay, so this is not the Painted Cave. Painted Cave is still to come, it says. So now we have to walk through the forest again. 

The walk to the Painted Cave was beautiful. Again, we were just submerged in this gorgeous jungle that was humming and buzzing.

[bird songs]

I half expect to find Yoda here. 

Tim: Yeah, right?

There was actually some kind of breeze every once in a while. And we figured, walking through the jungle, it's hot and humid. And I guess comparatively from being in the cave, which is just dank, humid, you get pooped on, like anything besides that, it's like, "Wow, this is really, really nice!" 

Marisa: Yeah.

I think I could be happy walking this trail every day of my life. 

Tim: This is the most beautiful walk. This is insane, everything but that snake has been insane. But like, look at these... this is like Cambodia's...  You know? Angkor Wat. 

Marisa: Oh my gosh, it's like its own hidden temples. It's amazing.

Look at this vine thing. What is this?

Tim: Papayas, like vines grow papayas now?

Marisa: But we finally made it to Painted Caves. 

I think this is Painted Cave.

[Painted Cave - Malaysia]

These cave paintings are only 1,200 years old. I say only because in the Great Cave, you know, they have a skull from 40,000 years ago.

Oh man.

But these are still very, very old. This is where the paintings are of the Painted Cave, and although a lot of people say they can't see, oh I see two! I see the little tail.

Unfortunately, they're hard to see nowadays, but you can still make out the boats that they painted on the cave walls as well as a few of the people and different shapes all in this beautiful red paint. 

Tim: It was really pretty, and that was a good exclamation point to the end of our day. We had been hiking for hours at that point.  We had seen highs and lows, climbed up highs and lows, risked our mortal lives. 

Marisa: But now it was time to turn around and head back through everything that we had just been through. 

Tim: Can you loosen up your tension? I think you should be good from here. All right, I think you're all right, this isn't too bad. 

Marisa: All right, good.

Tim: There's the bat cave in front of us. And I can already smell it. I mean, there's just 20 tons of bat guano. It's got to be healthy for you.

So like any good epic quest, we went past the snake cave. 

Marisa: Okay, we're back to snake cave. I hope it's still where it was so that I don't have to worry about where it could be now.

Where's the snake?

I'm so nervous. Just go slow, just go slow.

Tim: He disappeared, which is good and bad because he wasn't there anymore, but then we didn't know where the heck he was, which is not good.

Do you guano go on a date with me?

And back up the stairs into where the shaft of light used to be, but now the sun had shifted. And then, yeah, back through the tunnel of non-love. And then finally, we descended down this magnificent stairwell, staircase into the Great Cave where we had begun our adventures and into the light and out of the darkness.

Marisa: Next time we get on the motorcycle again, and as we make our way back to Kuching, we explore some of Malaysia's influential Chinese heritage.

Tim: But all that will be in the next episode. 

Marisa: So thank you so much for watching this video. I hope you liked it. If you did, please give us a big thumbs up and hit the subscribe button below. And if you are interested in coming to the island of Borneo and touring around Sabah on a motorcycle with us as your guides, please check out our new Borneo tour at www.2upandoverloaded.com/borneotour.

Tim: We guarantee zero cave snakes. And we guarantee an amazing time. And we're excited to say that we've actually sold out two tours, and there is a third and final tour available in March of 2025. And we'd love to have you along for the ride, riding along beaches, snorkeling, seeing sea turtles, Mount Kinabalu, and all these incredible things that we've been able to see. It'd be fantastic to have you right there alongside us. 

Marisa: So check that out in the link in the description below, and we'll be seeing you next time. 

Tim: Stay safe, everybody. 

Marisa: Bye! 

Tim: Peace.

Marisa: Yes, stick to the boardwalk covered in bat poop. 

Tim: Yes, this is true. Be safe and stick to the bat poop is very literal. 

Marisa: Ewww! 

Tim: Like, yeah, everything was... It was like walking around to 7-Eleven after a slushy had spilled on the ground. 

Marisa: Ewww...