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Published: March 17th 2007
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On Saturday we spent the entire day on a bus, which had the worst air conditioning you could imagine. We arrived in Taman Negara about 6.30pm feeling hot and tired.
We had a bit of trouble finding somewhere to stay as it is the school holidays here and everywhere was fully booked. Eventually we found a room for two people but the owner put a mattress on the floor for Rich.
We met Gorlo and Ingrid from Germany on the bus and happened to be eating at the same place as them in the evening. We arranged to hire a boat the following day to visit a cave with them.
Erica, Rich and I then walked to the Woodland resort where they sold expensive beer and had a really bad Internet connection. Rich left before us and we had a drink there and got talking to Clay and Jeff (USA) and Ian (Canada). Clay is starring in My Fair Lady when we are in Las Vegas so we said we'd email him as we are up for a laugh!
On the return to our room we found we had a lodger in the bathroom, a small frog that
Erica and Rich named Nigel. Despite me saying you can’t call a frog Nigel, the name stuck!
On Sunday morning we met Gorlo and Ingrid for breakfast and then headed down the river to the Orang Asli village which is actually in the National Park. The people there are extremely poor and live very simple lives, even making fire from sticks. There houses are made from the materials the jungle has to offer and their clothes are very basic and well worn.
We then walked to Gua Telingga (Ear Cave) which had a very small entrance and was extremely dark inside. I had lost my torch in Koh Lanta so I was relying on Erica, but no one else had though to bring one either, so there was five of us with one torch whose battery was on the way out, not very wise! It made negotiating the cave extremely difficult as we had to constantly pass it backwards and forwards.
On entering the cave Rich thought he saw a bat, we all laughed at him only to discover he was right. There were several of them flying in and out of the cave, they moved
so fast you doubted whether you had actually seen them.
The cave stunk and as we got deeper into the cave someone shined the light onto the wall which turned out to be covered with bats, there was hundreds of them and the more we took photos with the flash the more they decided to fly about around our heads. We then realised what we could smell was actually bat feaces.
The cave was getting narrower and we decided it was best to turn round and head back. Which I was pleased about as I was the last one and the bats were flying extremely close to my head and back, touching me at one point which I didn't appreciate as I really didn't want to catch rabies. I was also convinced that one of them opened its bowels on me, as something solid fell from above and landed on my arm.
We walked back through the jungle and we saw lots of natural swings which I think were probably vines, lots of them were quite fine but there was a couple of sturdy ones that looked like they could take my weight so I had a swing!
Ingrid and I were walking in front talking when something ran into the buses in front of us, it turned out to be a large monitor lizard, at least a meter long. During all this excitement we had taken a wrong turn and came to a dead end, but luckily we hadn't gone far wrong and found our way back to the village where our boat was waiting for us. We didn't fancy getting lost in the jungle.
We all had lunch together before Ingrid went back as she was feeling tired, the rest of us crossed the river to the national park and trekked 1.2 km to the canopy walkway. This was a series of bridges which are on three levels, the highest being 25m, over a path of 400m. The actual canopy wasn't made of much, metal ladders with planks of wood over them, held by very strong rope and nets tied around them. Not very stable either and in some areas in need of restoration. We saw plenty of monitor lizards, I got quite good at finding them, but we soon got bored of them and wanted to see a snake.
On the way back we decided to visit the Tahan hide, a view point which overlooked a clearing in the jungle. On our way there we saw a mouse deer, which was very timid. There was only one person in the hide when we arrived and when we asked him what he had seen he rather abruptly said “there was some birds until you lot turned up!” oops! We saw a wild boar but that was all. Gorlo then suggested that he run out and we take pictures of him, it was at this point that we thought it was best to head back. On the way out we saw a junior praying mantas, which someone thought was a stick insect (I’m sure it was Rich).
In the evening Erica and I had planned to go on a boat trip to see the night life in the jungle, but they had over booked. Instead we went to try and use the internet, but decided to give the beer a miss.
When we returned to our room we found Nigel had been replaced with a baby frog, I think they called this one Steve. We seem to make pets everywhere we go recently. In Koh Lanta we had a cat that they named Alan. Erica and Rich name them all, hence the bizarre names.
On Monday we slept in as we intended to do a 9km trek through the jungle. Unfortunately Erica’s shoes had badly rubbed her foot so we opted for the 4.6km trek instead, but hadn’t realised that it was up hill. It took us to Bukit Teresek which was at 344m. It had amazing views out over the jungle. We made it there just in time to get some pictures before the storm started. Luckily we were under shelter, but as the rain didn’t seem to want to pass we headed back with our rain macs on, which got too hot so once it seemed to subside we ditched them.
We didn’t see as much wild life as yesterday the lizards seemed to be in hiding. We did see a few rather large black and white birds that made a lot of noise. In the evening we identified them as Botak Leher Hitam from a wildlife chart. The man who worked in the restaurant asked us where we had seen them and when we told him he said “No, you’ve not seen them”. But we were certain that it was them, he tried to convince us that the birds we saw were actually blue, but we weren’t convinced, especially when he then tried to tell us we had seen pheasants.
On the way back from our trek we stopped at Lubok Simpon which is the part of the jungle next to the river where you can swim. We hadn’t brought any swim wear, but due to the majority of the locals being Muslim people were in the water fully clothed, so Erica and I decided to join them whilst Rich just watched, he didn’t want to put wet feet back into his trainers!
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