Blogs from Taman Negara National Park, Pahang, Malaysia, Asia - page 14

Day one: 10 August: Thursday Ingo and Conny picked me up from outside the Puncak Inn and we drove down to the Gap where we birded for an hour or so, netting me seven new species. Then we headed for Taman Negara. We were going to just drive all the way there but a wrong turn at Jerantut saw us ending up at the ferry terminal at Kuala Tembeling instead. In terms of wildlife the boat trip is very poor (mainly Pacific swallows and water monitors), but for sheer style there's no better way of entering a national park. It may cost a bit more (but not much) and take a bit longer than the bus but it beats it hands down. The boat is a long low-sided affair with wooden plank seating, like a big ... read more

Selamat datang! After much debate about our next move, we left KL having decided to squeeze in the Cameron Highlands (home of some high quality tea) and the jungles of Teman Negara National Park before heading to more beaches. CH was our first stop and the gorgeous mountain views and tea fields made the trip worthwhile. We stayed at a really nice hostel (called Father's Guesthouse) where we actually saw other backpackers! This has hardly been the case since we've been here, so it was nice to stay in a more social setting. We had a pretty chill day - we did one of the shorter jungle treks from town, then caught a ride in the back of a truck with a bunch of young school children up to one of the tea plantations for a ... read more

Hey All, So we've been really busy the last week or so. Taman Negara is a national park that's like 4000 square km of jungle. There's all kind of wild animals there like elephants and tigers. We didn't see any of them though cause you have to do over night treks and stay in these places called hides which are basically like caves with beds and rats and insects all over the place and even after all that horrible stuff you only might see some animals. So I was like no way!! To get there we took one of those longboats through the middle of the jungle for 3 hours. It was pretty cool cause we saw water buffalo and stuff but by the end of it our asses were broken!!! We ended up staying in ... read more

It's been awhile. We've been to the jungle and back. For those of you without an encyclopedia, allow me to enthrall you. Taman Negara is a 130 million year old jungle in central peninsular malaysia. Among it's dazzling features are the Orang Asli native jungle dwellers. Their name roughly translates as "Africans Lost in Asia." Indeed that is what they are. In all fairness it was neat to see their little village on the banks of whatever river we were on. They started a fire for us without matches, lighter fluid, a lighter, indeed without even lighting up an entire phonebook (Mom). They also did their requisite demonstration with the blow gun. The guy was mighty accurate. They even had a jug of their paralysing poison stuff on hand. It was securely stopped up with some ... read more

Hi everyone! This is gonna be a bit of a long one, cos we never managed to drag ourselves off the beach to a computer until we got to KL! We didnt actually do nothing though - we spent the last week exploring the beaches and caves in Krabi on the West Coast of southern Thailand, as well as taking a boat trip round the surrounding islands and doing a lot of snorkelling around the coral reefs and seeing some really cool tropical fish and brightly coloured coral, not to mention jellyfish and giant clams!!! Having eventually dragged ourselves away from the beach - we made it to Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia for the start of our last tour around Malaysia, taking in the rainforest, highlands, islands and beaches (of course)! KL is quite a ... read more