Advertisement
Published: August 12th 2007
Petronas towers
You too can now worship them!Hiya guys,
I know, another blog already but somehow we've managed to fit in another country in the last few weeks so thought you'd just love to be updated, trust me the more frequently I do it the shorter they are and unltimately the better it is for you!!
Anyways..... Last time I ws sitting waiting for a bus to the Taman Negara rainforest after spending a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur. KL was good, though didn't really do much apart from the obligatory trip to the Petronas Towers, which they seem to love over there, you have to watch a whole video explaining how wonderful they are, and there's a whole load of stuff going on, even a worship room which we think they use to force their employees to worship the towers! After queing for about an hour, we got to go on a 15 minute trip, about half way up the towers (42 floors I think, didn't actualy feel that much higher than County Hall!!), we were with a very whiney American lady who insisted on us taking her photo several times until the light was just right and spent the whole time complaining that
we weren't there for long enough - what she wanted to do in a glass tube for more than 15 minutes beats me, but hey each to their own...! We also managed to get our flights changed so we dont have to come back in July, yay!!
The Taman Negara is a 130 million year old rainforest in mid-Malaysia, we travelled there in a tiny boat, really low to the river, which I must admit after the inital excitement of being in the boat going through the rainforest had worn off (for me, 40 minutes max!) the rest of the 2 hours I was bored with a sore bum!! Sounds awful I know, but once you've seen one bend in the river with a load of trees behind it.....!
While we were in the Taman Negara we went on the worlds longest canopy walk, now I'm always the first to say how good I am with heights (bragging, some might say!) but this was even outside my comfort zone at times. The walk itself looked fine from a distance, however the closer you got, the more gaps in the slats you could see ( and ultiamately the 45m
drop below!!) some parts just had ladders roped in over the gaps, but by that stage there was no going back! It didn't help that we were stuck behind the one family who thought it was a good idea to video each other crossing each section of the walk, meaning that they kept stopping to wave, it seems to bounce much more when you're standing still. Plus only 4 people are alowed on each platform at a time so whille they were filming on the walkway you couldn't get on, but people were starting to come onto the platform, big decision, do you overload the walkway which might send it crashing to the ground, or do you overload the platform, which might send that crashing to the gound?! my head couldn't figure it out, luckily the guides noticed the blokage and came to the rescue, phew!!
After the canopy walk we decided we hadn't scared ourselves enough so took a walk to a big cave full of bats and snakes, lovely!! what no-one had told us was that the Malaysians put up distances but they do them as the crow flies, regardless of gradient, so 3 km takes about
2 hours of really hard walking. Now I am disgustingly sweaty over here anyway, add on to that rainforest humidity and steep hill clambering and you've pretty much got a cure for world drought. I had to go behind Emma for fear that my sweaty trail may cause her to slip and slide back down the hills!! Anyway, finally the smell of the bats was a good clue we had arrived, at which point both of us decided we weren' that fussed about bats after all! however after coming all this way, I pushed forward a headed into the cave. Luckily the sweat came in handy, it made it harder for the bat poo to attach itself! after seeing one bat we nearly turned back but managed to keep going until we came to the main bat cave, loads of the little blighters all flying around our heads. We took a few photos, thanked them in a whisper so as not to disturb them more and backed out rather quickly. Whilst we were sitting outside feeling very pleased with ourselves, munching on some chocolate cake we had brought earlier (never thought the smell of bat poo would make you hungry
but there you go..!) two girls emerged from the cave, having just seen the snake. They assumed we had come in from another entrance, and we didn't like to correct them - if they were in there at the same time as us and we didn't see them, does that mean we missed the proper bat cave by not going in enough? our curiosty nearly got us back into the cave to find out, but at the last minute we decided, once you've seen one bat....?!
The next day we decided to do an easy little wander around, first a 4km walk to a hide to see if we could spot the elusive Tigers (more likely just some leeches, but you can hope!). Not as easy as we had imagined, dont think anyone except the wild Boars had gone that way for quite sometime so it was very rough and slippery, not to mention it always seemed to be uphill in that place!! after a brief spell animal spotting (not a sausage, excpept the noise of a rat in the water tank which kept me guessing for a while!) we headed back and I made the ridiculous suggestion of
Bat cave
Bats in Taman negara, dont scare them they might go in my hair! going back a different way, just for a change.... The name Teresek HILL should have given it away but the sign for 800m looked so appealing - how wrong can a girl be, after the worst 800m of my life, I thought Emma might kill me for the suggestion. The supposed 800m took a little over an hour and was pretty much a 90 degree climb up dubious ropes for the majority of the way, trust me, the view wasn't worth it!! when we told the guides which way we had gone to the Hill they looked at us like we were fools, aparently no-one goes that way, it's only a brief stroll from the canopy walk - live and learn!!
The next day we were off to the Cameron Highlands to visit some tea plantations and to do some more jungle trekking (gluttons for punishment I think!) It didn't go quite to plan however. I have been having a bit of trouble with some bites here, I don't know which buggers are biting me but when they do, they get really nicely infected. Anyway, with a combination of the heat, sweat and being rubbed during the trekking a
bite on my leg had grown to about the size of a small childs head, so on our first day in the Highlands, off we wandered - not to a tea plantation, but to the hospital ( I wasn't being over dramatic, just no other doctors in town!) After looking at me rather dubiously that a bite could warrant hospital attention, I paid my fiver and was ushered into a cubical, where they all made appropriate oohing and ahhing noises before launching themselves on it to try and squeeze out whatever the offending substance was, but to no avail. So instead they sent me off with the biggest strapping on my leg and 18 pills to take per day ( seriously, I rattled!!)
So after a day of rest, the child attached to my leg had subsided enough for us to take a walk to a tea plantation, after a rather long down hill trek (never good when you know you've got to come back up again!)we passed the entrance to the plantation, about another 30 minutes later we were at the door, but... they were closed for a special ceremony - no mention of this before the extra
Emma facing more fears!
balancing on the dodgy canopy bridge walking of course! after a bit of pleading it was obvious we were getting knowhere so of we traipsed back up, stealing a few tea leaves on the way!! After that we decided the Cameron Highlands just weren't for us so the next day we hoped on a bus headed for the Perhentian Islands.
The ride to the Islands was 'interesting' lets say. They cram as many people as possible into a speed boat and then off you go, at apparently only one speed, super fast!! as the monsoon has only just finished the sea isn't as calm as it could be so this involves crashing down on every wave possible, sending the people at the front flying off their seats and soaking those at the back with the spray! After 30 mintues, thankfully we arrived and found somewhere to settle. The islands were absolutley beautiful, there was a lot more surf than we had expected due to the monsoon but we got to do a couple of fantastic dives and I saw my first shark (only a little one, Reef shark about 2 m, but still, a shark!!). Three wasn't much else to do there except relax, work
on our tans and drink their amazing milkshakes! so after a few days we were off on the crazy speed boat again headed to Thailand. Which is where I am now, sitting in Krabi after a hard days kayaking through the canyons and mangroves! we're just about to head off and arrange some climbing for tomorrow, aparently they have some world class climbing here so it should be amusing to see how I get on!
I hope everybody is well, I'm loving the emails so keep in touch!
Take care, love to you all
Sarah xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.035s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Elly
non-member comment
Leg-Child
Am I the ONLY person who wants to see a picture of the child on your leg?!?!?!