Quiet Down! This is Bat Country!

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As the sun started to set on Malaysian horizon we found ourselves skipping along a muddy river in fishing boat headed towards our jungle camp. Now we were heading "in the shit" we told ourselves. Uncle Tan's is really in the middle of nowhere, or at least it felt like nowhere. We saw some people come down to the river to bathe but where they came from remained hidden from our view. We arrived at the camp and headed up the rickety boat ramp that would eventually collapse during our stay.

I walked up to check our hut and saw that in fact, it was just a mattress on the floor covered with a mosquito net. I spent the next few minutes making sure the net was securely tucked under the mattress and just finished when Joe pointed out a very colorful spider on the wall. Not big. Just colorful, but hey, we're in the jungle so I'm sure it had some poison. Hopefully just not enough to paralyze me since I'd be sharing a room with it. Why not throw it out? Well I didn't really want to piss the thing off by throwing it out of it's house, besides I was still waiting for my karma to set in from Jenny making me kill a spider the previous night. After setting up "the room" we headed out to look at the camp and have a few beers. Uncle Tan's really is a nice place, they've really done the jungle up nice. After our dinner, which continued to be very generous, we settled in one of the open huts for some information on what we could expect over the next few days. We would be doing a lot of river tours and a couple of jungle treks, one at night and one during the day. We'd see orang utans, kingfishers, frogs, crocodiles if we were lucky, or unlucky depending on where you are when you see it, and some other wildlife. There was a chance of seeing the blue tarantula and I kept my fingers crossed that that wouldn't be the case. As we sat and listened I noticed that I could check one animal off the list already. Bats. They were swooping through the hut and feeding on the insects hovering around the lights. I decided to keep my head low. Surely they'll go for the taller people first.

Our first real activity was heading out on the night river safari. We grabbed our cameras and went down to the boats with our river guides with the hopes to see some wildlife. The jungle at night is incredibly dark so luckily our guides had rigged up some flashlights to a car battery. We were going down the river when our guide spotted the first and really only wildlife that we would see our first night. Croc? Nope, a frog. I still don't really know how our guide saw the thing from the middle of the river. We headed for the bank and I finally picked it out of the camouflage just as he was trying to grab it.

Back at the camp we headed to the bar for a few more drinks before bed. Soon somebody was ranting about a giant spider they saw behind the bar. "How many are there?" I heard somebody ask. "One, but it's protecting an egg sack so when they hatch there will be thousands of them." Wonderful. I stayed and drank my beer. No use giving my brain something to focus on before bed I thought. As is turns out it didn't really matter. I would wake about five times during the night in a pool of sweat and immediately wonder if I had electricity and could turn on the lights, what would scatter? And where would it scatter too? I'm glad I don't have electricity. Is the mosquito net still tucked in? Man, it's hot. Maybe I should take more clothes off and just sleep naked. No, that's what the bugs would want. I'll sweat.

Finally our six o'clock wake up call came and it was time to grab a quick breakfast which was already spread out buffet style and back into the boats for our morning river tour. Apparently the morning would be the best time to see wildlife. I grabbed my camera, and downed the rest of my coffee. It was bound to be a long hot day and I haden't really slept since entering the country. I'd like to think that it wasn't all fear of the bugs, Joe's information of the Blue Trantuala was not sitting well with me, the heat played a major part in my night sweats. Heading up river as the jungle started to wake reminded me of fishing trips I would take as a kid when we would get up before the sun in order to be the first ones on the river. The only difference here was that we were surrounded by jungle, those theiving Macaques were everywhere and any fish we might have caught was in danger of being snatched up by a crocodile before it could even reach out boat. After an hours worth of primates, egrets and water monitors we headed back to base camp to find that our dock had collapsed. This meant that the rest of our time at Uncle Tans would be spent traversing up and down a muddy bank whenever we went to and from the boats. As our day progressed the crew at Uncle Tan's kept out day stocked with activities. After our trek through dense jungle we headed out for a bit of Malaysian fishing. The idea is to tie a string and hook to a water bottle. Toss it in the river. Drink a few tigers. Then head down river and pull out each bottle and see if there is a fish at the end of the thing. This actually turned out to work better than the traditional method that I'm more accustomed to and it left more time for beer. 'Cause if there's one thing you want to do on the equator it's push fluids. Safety first. As we approached the last of our homemade fishing traps we noticed that one was bobbing up and down quite violently. General Sherman we thought. It has to be. As we got closer we noticed that hooked to the other end was an enourmous catfish. My mind filled with thoughts about our grilled catfish dinner and I started to salivate. Just as we were putting out hands in to pull out our catch it jerked down suddenly with a splash. Our fish and bottle were gone. We spent a good 15 minutes looking around and waiting for the bottle to reappear. No luck. We slowly came to realize that some crocodile had just stolen our dinner literaly seconds before we grabbed it. No matter, we still had 3 good sized fish to cook while we traded stories about the big one that got away.

Our last tour was the night jungle trek. We headed out after dinner in our boots and clothing to protect us from the mosquitos. Flashlights in hand we headed out to the jungle to see what stirred in the night. I was wondering if we'd see any snakes or scorpions. Both, I thought would be great to see as long as it didn't fall out of a tree onto me. I'd had a wind up flashlight with me and I kept it pointing at the trees becasue we'd been told that the snakes like to hang out in the branches and try to catch things that float by. Only thing was, my flashlight had broke so now it wouldn't keep a charge. If there was any wildlife around I'm sure my constant winding sent it away. Wwwrrrrr Wwwwrrrrr WWwrrrrr Wrrrrrr WWWrrrrrr "I can't understand why we're not seeing alot of nightlife guys." Fortunatly for us, kingfishers don't wake to the sound of a broken flashlight. We came upon one sleeping on a branch and we able to get within a couple of feet. Apparently they won't wake unless they feel something move the branch they are resting on. Not even when 12 noisy traverlers apporach with cameras and tripods and try to get the best night shot.

Our last night at Uncle Tan's was spent like all the others. Sat in the bar and chatting with out fellow camp mates. I ended up spending a portion of the night talking to a man from Germany while he showed me pictures he'd taken all over southeast asia. He'd been to Uncle Tan's years before when it was located at another site so we spent a while talking about what it was like before. He did show me the only picture of the Blue Tarantuala that I saw. It was taken outside of the old Uncle Tan's camp. I would make it through my jungle experience without seeing one up close and I have too say that I don't really feel cheated at all.

*Pictures will be uploaded as soon as I get my computer working. Yippeee!

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Photos

Garden
Two boys tend to their garden.

Sunset
The sun goes down over the trees.