Taman Negara National Park

On Friday the 18th, we took a long bus and taxi journey to Taman Negara, a large national park in the middle of peninsular Malaysia. Taman Negara is the oldest rainforest in the world, 130 million years old, and we thought it would be a good first rainforest experience. Our last leg of the journey was a taxi ride, driven by a very small woman with bright pink lipstick listening to incessent techno music. The sounds of the jungle... She drove us past logging truck after logging truck, not a good introduction to a national park. We arrived too late to actually get into the forest, so we settled into our guesthouse and took the chance to cover all our clothes in high-powered bug repellent. Besides mosquitoes we were a little worried about leeches, which apparently don't like a good bug spray either. Our guesthouse was secluded in beautiful forest surroundings, and we soon realized the folly of leaving our clothes outside to soak in the repellent: I had to chase a large brown spider off of Nissa's pants. Many flying insects snuck into our room when the door opened, or attacked us when we used the outdoor sink, and a frightened gecko lived in our bathroom. Helpfully, an arrow on the ceiling of our room pointed out the direction of Mecca.

After a hearty breakfast of roti cani (a kind of bread) with bananas and honey at one of the floating restaurants on the river, we were ready to hit the jungle. We set out on a trail that led to a cave about 2 km from park headquarters, which smelled too terrible to linger at, so we continued from there to a spot on the river. Something about small quarters, getting knee deep in guano, and bats kept us from visiting the cave. We really enjoyed the morning of trekking. To our surprise we saw almost no other people on the trail, and there were some incredibly tall trees to gawk at. As we had heard, there was not much in the way of wildlife (the park is too popular and the trails too well-maintained). Just a lot of big ants and termites, flying insects, birds, and the occasional strange bug. By lunchtime we were a little disoriented and lacking in places to sit, so we had a modest packaged food lunch among the ants by a creek we stumbled upon.

By the afternoon, I had decided that trekking in the rainforest is fun for the first four hours, and increasingly not very much fun after that. We had gotten fairly deep into the forest, so by the time we got out, we had been hiking for about seven hours, or about 10 kilometers in very humid, insect-filled jungle. We were totally exhausted, and vowed to take it easy the following day. After two well-deserved banana milkshakes by the river, we were excited to relax in our room.

Unfortunately, we had decided to move to a more centrally located and much cheaper place. At $3 US per night, you get what you pay for. In the afternoon heat our 4-bed dorm room was like a sauna. Failing to find the sink, I asked the owner: "No sink here. It's jungle style, my friend!" No matter; we went out for dinner and would just come back to sleep, which turned out to be easier said than done.

When we got back at night, our roommates were gone but somebody had left the light on. Since the window was always open out of necessity and there was no screen, every flying insect in the nearest square mile had come into our room; the empty bed closest to the light had perhaps 40 bugs on it. It was high enough from the ground to keep out mosquitoes, but not a very inspiring sight when you're about to go to bed. We were also already tired from our battle with the cats; earlier, two stray cats had run into our room to play, hide under the bed, and bite all of our stuff. They were mangy and fearless, so I was really struggling to scare them out. Finally, Nissa enticed with them with a fun plastic bag, and when they left the room we shut the door.

Getting back to the bugs, we decided to just leave the light off for the night and let them leave. This seemed to be effective, though hard to tell in the pitch dark. I did find a cricket in my bed, and they are surprisingly hard to chase away, but I got rid of it. A roommate we hadn't met came in late and settled into the bug bed; we never found out if it was bug-free at the time, but we did hear him putting on a lot of insect repellent. I did finally fall asleep, only to wake around 1am to loud, obnoxious Dutch travelers in the room next door, who stayed up talking, laughing and possibly wrestling so long I finally had to get out of bed and bang on their door. That night and the next there were absolutely montrous storms outside, probably the biggest we have ever heard, and with addition of a loud gecko on my wall and the day's first call to prayer for Muslims at dawn, I didn't get too much sleep there. We have sworn off hostel dorm rooms for the rest of the trip.

On our second day of trekking, we headed for the forest canopy walkway, a series of suspended bridges high over the forest floor with decent views. Sounded like a fun way to see more of the forest and look for monkeys. We paid our small fee, climbed up the walkway entrance, stepped out onto the first bridge, and then suddenly remembered that we are both afraid of heights. The height was probably manageable, but we didn't realize how much the walkways swayed, so it didn't out to be as enjoyable as we had expected. But it was only appropriate, since one of our very first experiences together was a scary cable car ride at Hua Shan, China.

In the early afternoon, we were feeling energetic and decided to do one more "short" hike. We didn't realize it was a 4.5 km hike that was entirely up and down steep hills and filled with biting flies. When we got to the peak of the first hill, we were rewarded with great views, but mostly with biting flies. By the end of the day we had traveled farther and become even more exhausted than at the end of the first day. Upon returning to our hostel, there were 5 people in line for the showers, and we stood dripping with sweat in our towels for about 40 minutes. We were done with the rainforest, and booked our boat ride out for the next morning.

Native village that we passed, I took a sneaky picture

The butterflies were beautiful, one became Dan's friend

Not a lot of flowers in the rainforest, but these pretty red ones spring up from the ground

Dan is very sweaty

Enjoy this picture, I was bit by many flies to take it

The 2.5 hour boat ride down the river to the nearest city was beautiful, cool, and comfortable. Part of us wondered why we hadn't just taken the boat there and back and called it a day. We did actually really enjoy the rainforest, but we were overly ambitious and it took a lot out of us. And we didn't even see any leaches.