Peninsular Malaysia

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Hello again everyone - its been a while since I've updated this thing - been very busy!

Since writing the last blog, we flew back to Peninsular Malaysia, to KL, and spent a night there.

The following day, we set off to Tamen Negara - literally meaning 'National Park' - where we stayed for 5 days. Tamen Negara is unbelievable - a huge area of rainforest where you can walk over loads of half-heartidly marked paths (fun and games). The base camp is called Kuala Tahan, and sits on the edge of a river where, to get to the forest, you cross on little boats every morning.

We stayed in jungle hides on two of the nights - one of which took 8 hours of solid walking to get to. Great fun, but unfortunatly didnt see any animals from them - although did see Monitor lizards (about a metre long), snakes, Hornbill birds and masses of insects all over the place whilst walking.

The food was also nice here - we ate on floating restaurants on the base camp-river every day, and even managed to get some washing done - which was pretty muich vital, after the amount of walking we did - the weather is humid at the best of times,but I wrung out my T shirt ofter the longest hike, and at least half a pint of sweat came off. Nice.
Also did a bit of caving, coming face to face with hudreds of bats - there are also snakes in there, apparently, but we didn't see any.

After Tamen Negara, we needed a rest from all the excercise - so, we went to the beach. The beach in question is on an Island called Kecil (meaning small) in the Perhentien islands. These had just 'opened', after its annual abandonment by everyone during the monsoons, so lots of holes in rooves and things.

The Island was amazing - real paradise place, and not too busy either. We rented a cayak and some snorkling gear, and the 6 of us (we've picked up some stragglers) went to see what we could see - lots, as it happened. Massive black tip sharks, about 2 metres long, rays, turtles and tonnes of other wierd and wonderful stuff.

In the following days, we played vollyball, did a bit more snorkling, and drank once or twice, but always in total moderation, obviously. Actually, we were originally intending to do a dive course on the island, to get our PADI licences, but the visability wasn't so hot, and the dive school I had been recommended wasn't open yet; so we're going to do that on Ko Tao in Thiland instead.

After leaving the Island (dragging a couple of very hung-over members of the group behind us), we said good Bye to Malaysia - we were crossing into Thiland, and taking the slightly dodgy eastern route up towards Krabi, through the areas with some 'extremist activity' periodically.

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