Blogs from Pahang, Malaysia, Asia

I had a great opportunity to meet an indigenous tribe in Malaysia while volunteering and here are the most interesting facts about them: People of the Batek Tribe of Malaysia are literally people of the jungle. Unfortunately, they were forced by the Malay government to leave the rainforest in 60‘. They used to live there in traditional shelters called “hayak“. Although they were forced to leave the rainforest and move to the edge of the national park, Taman Negara, they still retained their beautiful natural culture. They are small, shy, smiling people and they have their own unwritten language. What they enjoy the most is running through the rainforest, or at least around their village barefoot in the rain. There is no better way how to earn their respect than when you play soccer in a ... read more

It was a foggy morning when I woke up, but still no rain though and the river is getting quite low. It’s much, much lower than it was when I first arrived and at the river swimming area, there’s now a huge sandy beach exposed that was entirely underwater when I got here. It was quite a quiet morning birding, although I did see a Lesser Mousedeer from the boardwalk and a nice view of a male fireback pheasant just sitting quietly on the boardwalk. I’ve still not managed any pictures of the mouse deer though, they just run away too quickly. The forest also seems to be overrun today with a mixture of Low’s and Slender Squirrels with large numbers that seem to just have appeared out of nowhere. I also got an unexpected fly ... read more

(this post covers three days – the 4th, 5th, and 6thand so it’s a long one at a little over 4300 words. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Epigraph: In mammal watching, there are some species that are legendary. Species that you sometimes wonder about with awe because in theory you know they're out there somewhere but in reality? You can't help but think of them more in terms of unicorns and the Lock Ness Monster than animals that you really see. Malayan Tapirs are a zoo animal. Big funny looking black and white things in paddocks. Not wild animals in forests. Sure, you might sometimes see a camera trap photo but can they really be out there? Somewhere? In the vast darkness of the forest at night? It can't really be possible to see a ... read more

Just a quick update, this isn’t a proper blog post. I wasn’t sure whether to post about this or not, but I think it’s better that I do because it’s a fairly important thing. To cut to the chase, last night at Jerantut I had my wallet nicked. I don’t know exactly what happened, but between paying for food from my wallet and sitting at a table, the wallet was gone and it was not anywhere around and none of the people/staff around knew anything or had seen anything. The circumstances are not really the point anyway. So last night, once I was sure that my wallet had definitely been taken, I did all of the annoying and time consuming things like making a police report, calling the insurance, contacting banks, etc. I didn’t lose very ... read more

In the morning I woke up to find a leech in my bathroom crawling towards me. I’m not sure how that got there, whether it had come up the drain or latched onto my bag or something. But I went out for one last morning of sunrise birding at Bukit Fraser around the Telekom Loop which was good because I was able to add a few interesting birds and also saw a group of wild boars eating out of an upturned bin near on of the fancy cottages although they were extremely skittish about having a camera pointed at them. I said goodbye to all the super-cool common Bukit Fraser birds like the Minlas and Laughingthrushes and Fantails and Spiderhunters and got the taxi down to Raub with a nice view on the drive down. There ... read more