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Published: July 14th 2008
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Having stayed in the Perhentians for an extra three days, we got back to the mainland with about 50 ringit ($17) left thinking that there would be an ATM there. Unfortunately this wasn't the case, but our bus driver assured us that we would be able to stop off at an ATM before we reached the national park.
After a couple of hours and breakfast and lunch already eaten, the bus pulled up at a shop front and said you need to go and buy your national park entry tickets...uhhh....crap! we had about 10 ringit ($3) on us and we were sure that this wouldn't be anywhere near enough. Fortunately when I asked how much they were the lady said 1 ringit! That price is a bit of a joke really and it kind of seems like a waste of time for them to even sell it at that price, however the fine for being caught without one is 10,000 ringit!
Taman Negara is supposed to be Malaysia's premier national park and the primary forest there is about 130 million years old. We stayed at a place away from the main town area, about a 5 minute longboat trip
down the river that was actually inside the jungle. It seemed to us that we were actually the only people staying there because we never saw anyone else aside from the family who ran it. Our little cabin was very simple but it overlooked a little stream and a whole bunch of trees.
The park itself is nice and there are a lot of hides and walking trails that you can do, however because of the number of tourists that go through it you dont really see any wildlife except the occasional bird. We did a walk out to the canopy walkway which is basically an elevated walkway that is strung up high above the ground. Apparently its the longest in the world ~500 metres and it was worth doing, but once again the only wildlife you see are ants and sweaty humans struggling through the humidity.
That night we decided to have a quick dinner before we went back to the hotel, but basically as soon as we had finished it started to rain. Not the half-assed couple of raindrops that we get in Australia, and not even like your usual tropical showers. This was pretty much
a waterfall coming out of the sky. We ended up having to take refuge in a floating restaurant while we waited for the rain to stop. The rains were so heavy that longboats around us were quickly filling up with water and their owners were in them bailing out water. Eventually after about 45 minutes our hotel boat driver decided it wasnt going to get any better anytime soon and we took the 5 minute trip all hunched over and got completely soaked. It ended up raining all night until about 6 in the morning, and when we came back to the town the river had risen about 1/2 a metre, which doesnt sound like much but the whole exposed beach that had been there the day before was totally covered.
Because of the time we'd already spent in the jungle in Borneo, we decided that we had seen enough of Taman Negara and basically on the spur of the moment we booked train tickets to Singapore to visit a friend for the weekend.
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