Taman Negara

    

 Imagine a lush forest that stretches up mountain tops, while sandwiched rivers and rivulets flow down from them. At night you hear thunder and hear pelting rain that comes down like hammers and swells the rivers the next day. The main river is rushing fast, churning and mixing soil, twigs and leaves into a brown soup. The water is not dirty or polluted, it is just full of rainforest. 

     Imagine trails winding through forests and hills with many gems hidden in the canopy of trees, the corners of caves, in tiny rippling fresh water streams to cool tired feet in, and the peaks of hills which open up to a vast display of mountains covered in tall trees beyond the reach of the eye. Though to see any wildlife like Tigers, Elephants, Sun Bears, Tapirs, Panthers, Leopard Cats, Wild boar, Cougars and other large mammals is unlikely, some a very rarely spotted, you know they are there and you are walking in there home. At times Kevin and I really wanted to see an elephant, but when we heard loud crashing trees, and I mean loud crashing, we darted down the path so fast in fear that we'd be trampled by a large angry  elephant. Of course, this is also probably unlikely, but when you are in unfamiliar land you have to be on your guard.  

     The first day we happened into the park, an older couple from Holland told us that an elephant had passed through the resort and trampled all the banana trees and shrubs. They saw one of the caretakers with his hands in prayer asking the gods that the elephant would not destroy any more of the garden. A few days later, a man told us that a guide had said that because it was mating season and the elephant was older, maybe it was his way of showing his power to make up for his inability to fight other elephants. Of course, this was all speculation. The guide at park headquarters told us that the same elephant comes only one time around the same time every year. Too bad we weren't staying in the resort that night, but it was way beyond our budget to sleep there, even in the hostel. So we had to make do with stories and footprints.

     At the moment I am sitting in a bamboo hut, it is actually made of bamboo, except for the tin roof triangle above us. I am looking from a small window that is next to my bed. I can relax and hear and see the sky and trees within its view. What I mostly hear are rosters Coack-a-doodle-dooing outside, and sometimes a bid chirping, or a bug buzzing if it happens to get inside. There is also the constant sound of the fan, though we have become so used to its sound we have tuned it out.

     The forest has so many distinct sounds and sometimes I wish we had binoculars so that we could see what is making all those noices. 

     There are insects that are the size of your index finger that buzz really loudly. There are the high pitched tiny bugs that like to biiiiizzzz near your head and drive you somewhat crazy. 

     There is so much colour in a rainforest. The greens and browns mixed with sunlight and shade are so soothing to look at. The flowers, birds and butterflies are extremely colourful when you see them from time to time. Even the insects can be turquoise blue, like the dragon flies here. I have even become found of this large insect the millipede. They are not poisonous, but the centipedes are. Beware of the centipedes.   

     Anyways, I want to talk about how we got to Taman Negara. Kevin and I left Kota Baru via the Jungle Tain at 7:15 am. The train was on time and when it arrived at the station, we saw the conductor driving a very old rusty locomotion with black smoke coming out of its toot. It made the "toot-toot" sound as it entered the station. We seated  ourselves in a freezing air coned coach and took out our blanket and opened the window for warmth. When the train started moving people opened the door that was situated between the coaches so that they could smoke and watch the scenery blur by. I fell asleep while Kevin listened to an audiobook, we had after all just woken up at 6:00 and I was felling a bit sick. 

     Sometimes the train would jerk from side to side and it woke me up. It sometimes felt like we would come off the tracks. Sometimes the train would suddenly stop and sit there on the tracks for 15 minutes before it went forward again. At first the scenery was mostly plantations and unimpressive farmland, but then, as we proceeded forward the farms looked more and more like they were part of the jungle landscape. There were lots of trees and rivers and not the mundane plantation crop that continued like a flat prairie landscape forever into the distance. Here was something that I wanted to soak in and keep in my memory. There were cliffs, rivers, rivulets all overgrown with trees. Houses nestled between the forest and a man herding cows, wearing only a simple sarong and carrying a hearding stick. It almost seemed like that back in time place that so many tourist look for and say they find in Laos and Myanmar. Kevin and I stood near the open door, held on to something as the train jerked from time to time, and watched the landscape pass us by and felt the warm fresh air on our bodies.

     The train ride was a good 6 hours, but it seemed a lot faster. Later, at this hostel in Taman Negara, I came across an old travel guide for Malaysia, on the front cover of it was a picture of the forest line. 

It was unbelievable. I took a picture of it because I was so astonished. Though currently still covered in forest, it was no longer primary forest  as it was in this picture, it is amazing to see how much we can alter the landscape. The book was published in 1996, it was in German, so the picture may have been taken about fifteen years ago. Sadly, a lot can change in fifteen years.

     We arrived in Jerantut, ate some food at the train station. It was good, but the people were somewhat friendly, giving you a weird your a foreigner look. We got to our hostile, called Sri Emas, it was so cheap, only 15 RM a night for a descent, clean room with a fan. We had a room to ourselves for 4 canadian dollars. We were amazed. So we went out, after a nap, since I was feeling a bit sick and feverish, and ate some Roti Canai and drank some cold Milo and Iced Tea, a popular drink all over Malaysia. Then we walked around town. Jerantut is a very simple town, small and not much to do. But it was nice to relax and just wander. When we had dinner, we enjoyed the company of many little cats we tried to befriend. We spotted a few moths the size of our hands! We enjoyed some more drinks and night market food, Kevin ate a "double special burger" which was wrapped in an egg. He quiet enjoyed it. I ate a disappointedly small, that was supposed to be large, set of fries from KFC. I know, but they are very yummie here, because they mix them with a kind of cheesy gravy. But they are expensive compared to other food in Malaysia, and their portion of the delicious fritters are for people with the appetite of a bird. 

     When we got back to the hostel, we sat down and chatted with the man, we forgot his name, who was working in the lobby. He was very friendly. We talked about travel. He told us how if you lived in Indonesia for a while you would also be able to speak Malay, because the languages are so similar. We also talked about how you should be careful before you assume that people may not speak the language. He said he could speak a bit of french and Italian, and he would talk to the people in french after they spoke in front of him, assuming he knew nothing of what they were saying.  

     We left for Taman Nigara by taking a shuttle bus from the hostel, that was 5RM each, and then a two and a half hour boat ride down the Sungai Tembling (River) to Kuala Tahan, which is a village that ferries people across the river from the town to the entrance into the park. 

The Sungai Tembling river is a wide river with rainforest on either side. It is brown because of all the soil that rushes into the river from the forests. The boat was made entirely of wood and we sat on the bottom with some cushions. It was all very wonderful until I realized I really needed to go to the bathroom, and there  were no pit stops along the way. At every bend in the river I hopelessly hoped for the jetty to show itself. But alas, it took about 45 minutes of very uncomfortable "I am going to pee my pants before we get there" sort of feeling. I rushed off the boat and up the hill as soon as we arrived, leaving Kevin with all the bags, frantically looking for a bathroom. I can't tell you how happy I was to find one.

     Then I went back down to the jetty and realized that Kevin was not there. As it happens, I had not gone to the public bathroom which is were Kevin went. Luckily we found each other shortly after I ran frantically about looking for him. 

     Then we went out on a hostile search. The Tahan hostel charged about 50 a night so we went down the way to the Durian Chalet, which is were we stayed for half the price. It is a march from the chalet into town, but well worth it because it is like staying in Rainforest Paradise without all the bugs and the traffic from town.

     After checking in, we made our way to Park Head quarters and got a map. We decided to do a small track, half-way up a trail, as it was already two o'clock and its not a good idea to be in the forest after six o'clock because it gets very dark.  So there we were, in our running shoes, stepping off the well trodden path and into the jungle. Well, the first thing we noticed was the mud. Mud mud mud, that sinks up to your ankles and into your socks. And you have to be careful not to slip and fall face first into it either. The farthest I fell was on my butt, which luckily landed on a log so I wasn't all brown. Also, it is humid, not a little humid, its like a steam room, or a steam bath, or thick, unrelenting sweat inducing place that renders you soaked in minutes. So we slipped and swam our way through humidity, mud and bugs. But the forest itself was very beautiful with the sounds of the river and the birds. On the trail we saw huge pats of poop and I saw something that looked like huge, and i mean huge, footprints that looked like it came from an elephant. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the poop was definitely not. So we walked in hope that maybe we might spot an elephant. Alas we did not, but when we reached Lubok Simpon, which we later found out you can swim in the river here (there are no leeches, crocs, or pirannas as the man at park headquarters jockingly listed), we saw some monkeys. A guide, who was barefoot, had spotted them, and some French tourists showed us their leeches wounds.  We kept on trotting until we had to turn back. We walked maybe about one and a half kilometers, though this does not seem far, in jungle terms it can be very far. 

     The next day we hiked to the Canopy walk. Well, when Kevin started walking, after reaching the next tree he had to turn back because it was too high. I must admit even my heart was racing and I am not afraid of heights. We decided to split up and meet at the end. Luckly, Kevin was waiting for me near the halfway point, because to my great annoyance, most of the walk was closed. I had finished walking it in 10 minutes. I was very upset because I had such great expectations. But I was unlucky this time, but at least Kevin didn't have to worry about me being so high for too long. He was happy. 

     Then we decided to hike up a "hill", as it says on the map, to a place called Bukit (which means hill) Teresek which was about 2km from park head quarters, or .9 km from the canopy walk. Okay, now this may sound like a cake walk with "hill" and .9 km, but it was not, in fact it was the hardest hike in terms of steep that we had in since we can remember walk. Think about a 70 degree incline, with the help of a rope (thank god), but you had to scale over trees and through slippery mud and sometimes see at your side how high you are from the ground. Though the trees would bloke your fall, they are pointy, some thorny, and falling onto them would be very painful. So we focused on our steps, sweating profusely, and finally made it to the summit. This is the view we saw:

     We sat, ate our cookies that we bought at the mini mart and drank lots of water.  Just before we made our decent we said "high" to a group of Germans who went ahead of us. So we made the steep decline down the hill. Our bodies were shaky by this point, but we felt exhilarated. Then we heard, about half-way down wing beats. But they were huge wings, you could tell from the sound. Then we saw the tail of a horn bill. It maybe was a Rhinocerus Hornbill which are the rarest Hornbills. You can tell if they are the Rhinocerus Hornbills by their size and the shape of their beak. 

     We admired it, but it new we were watching and it flew away. We kept decending and then realized that we could not find the path. It rounded about and then back to where we started. So we either had to turn around or rejoin the path that was somewhere out of sight. Now the worst thing to do would be to get lost, if it is anything like what Bill Bryson says about getting lost on the Appalahian trail, then wed be in serious trouble. Sometimes paths seem like paths, but in  fact they are not. The trail we were on was not very well marked, so we relied on footprints. I made a sort of trail using strips of pink plastic bag, which we had in our backpack, and wrapped them around the tree stumps to mark our trail in case we got lost. Luckl, after only about 5 minutes, we found the trail again. We were very relieved. When we made it down to the bottom of the "hill" which joined with the trail we had done yesterday. We decided we were still up for more hiking, since we had time and we were familiar with the trail heading back. We asked some hikers if the trail to Bumbun (which means hide) Tabin was easy and they said yes. So we continued. Here are some photos:

When we made it to the hide, we looked inside. We wanted to see what we were in for if we choose to spend the night at Bumbun Kumbang in a few days time. The hides look like this: Wooden beds, nothing special in the least, a window with benches near them to spot nocturnal animals, a toilet (to our surprise) and even a shower, though we weren't sure it they worked. On the floor was lots of poop from all the night visitors that come into the hide. A new Zealand couple saved they had a mouse runs across them and the man said he saw a huge rat, about a foot and a half, excluding the tail. Well, this is sort of what we expected, because it was similar at Uncle Tans, except we had no mosquito net to protect us.

     After looking at the hide we walked balk to park headquarters jus in time to be out of the jungle by 6 ockclock, but before that we stopped at Lubok Simpon, they had some benches. Kevin took off his socks and saw to his dismay very bloody ankles. As it happens, there are lots and lots of leaches in Taman Negara and they really bite. They also really make you bleed, there must be something in their bit that stops you from bleeding. I took of my socks and was disappointed to find no leaches, except for one crawling on top of my shoe. I had not been leached. I filled up the water bottle from the river and Kevin washed and bandaged his leech wounds. I put my feet in the river and really wished to swim, but i wasn't sure if there were crocs (as we had not asked park headquarters about this fear yet). Too bad, because swimming was entirely okay there. Sniff Sniff. I just imagine now, I am floeting on my back in the cold water, looking up at the trees canopying the sky and looking for monkeys or Hornbills and I was nice and cool in the water.

That night our shower felt so good and our food tasted delicious. 

The next day was another adventure of an entirely different sort, though not so pleasant unfortunately. Kevin and I set out full of ambition and pride, ready to hike any trail we felt like. We decided to take one more day hike before doing the overnight one in the hide. So we went to Gua (which means cave) Telinga. The guide at park headquarters said it was nay easy trail, though we could not go into the cave because it was closed. This was okay because we didn't intend to go into it alone anyways. But before, I asked him some questions and as it turns out there are lots of mammals in the rainforest that we though were not. That means, tigers, black panthers, leopards, cougars, and sun bears. The kind of mammals you would not  want to meet in the jungle. I asked him if he had ever seen a tiger and he said twice, but from the boat. That is how i would love to see a tiger, but confronting it on the path, no so much. So when we set out on this trail, we were not so ignorant and hence a bit more frightened. As it happens, the trail we choose was not a popular one, so we were almost entirely alone. The entrance to the trail, however, was beautiful:

The first part was very steep, but the worst part was the leeches. Oh my God, where there ever a lot of them. YOu could seem them advancing towards your shoe when you stopped to take a break. They were everywhere. They marched up to us like Yogi bear would march up to a pick nick basket. 

     We met a group of people who spoke French and English and we asked if we could join them. So we had company when we walked to the cave. All of us stopping every five minutes to flick of the leaches that had attached themselves to us. When we reached the cave, it was very small, this is what we saw. 

     Kevin and I were still ready to keep hiking, so we spilt up from the group and continued on to the Bumbun Blau hide a kilometre away. Well, now that we were alone we were feeling a bit scared again and this part of the jungle was even thicker. Kevin also said he was feeling sick, about halfway through the trail, so we were getting worried. Then we heard the biggest crash int he trees. It was probably an elephant or a falling tree, but the crash was so loud we walked to se fast hoping to get to the hide to rest before heading back. We finally reached the hide and Kevin was not feeling any better. We saw a local, probably a guide or from the village walking in the direction of a sign that said "Jetty 800m". Kevin and I decided to maybe try and catch the Jetty back because Kevin wasn't feeling well. So we walked another 800m, which is far, and the time was advance to almost four o'clock. We decided to wait 20 minutes, but nothing came. We had to leave, because we did not want to be stranded in the jungle. It was not so fun anymore. Luckily Kevin was feeling a bit better, so we started to make our way back. much to my annoyance, once we were our of sight of the Jetty, I heard the boat. It made me so upset, but we had to keep going because we weren't even sure if they would stop there for us anyways. We walked so fast, let me tell you. We were afraid because of all the noises we were hearing, that we only had two hours to make it back before dar, and we could hear thunder in the distance. We walked, forgetting about the leaches for most of the way. Breathed with relief when we made it to the trail we had walked with the Germans, because it was mostly flat and easy to walk. When we made it to the mean hill we were also relieved because it was near the entrance of the trail. We were almost there. We drank some water, flicked off some leaches, Kevin has a very professional way of flick ing them off, it is very affective, and we walked up the bitch hill. I very rarely swear, but that is what it felt like and there is no other way to describe it under our circumstances. Finally we made it to the actually river crossing. We caught a boat back, washed our feet in the river, drank some 100 Plus and relaxed in our hostel room after a shower.                     

     Unfortunately, Kevin was still sick and we were both getting worried. I had had a small fever before, but Kevin was gonna get one too, and a fever is always scary when you are in Asia. We ate dinner and Kevin relaxed. The next day we went to the clinic and the doctor checked Kevin and said he was fine, he had a cold. His fever was not very high to be of concern. So he had some cold medication to take. We are sitting at our hostel now relaxing. We cannot do the hike to the hide, but maybe another time.

I am sort of sad, but I am happier that Kevin is fine and that we made it out of that crazy hike. It just goes to show that you need to be careful, and that it takes good planning and good decisions to hike in a jungle. I think, sometime in the future maybe we will come here, just for Taman Negara. Spend a month here, learning slowly about the rainforest, spending the money to take guides and then maybe, do longer treks when we are ready. It is an amazing place to be and there is so much here that one life time would be only enough to glimpse a small part of this amazing environment.

With regret I say goodbye to Taman Negara, and I hope to see more rainforest like it.