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Published: August 7th 2007
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You wouldn’t believe what adventures we’ve been having! Just thinking about it all makes us both topple over with giddiness. We’ve seen so many wonderful things and learnt so much that we are now much, much better people than anyone else, fact.
Actually, that’s not all true. For a start we spent some of our time in Singapore which is one of the tamest cities in the entire world. Although it’s cleanliness was a welcome change from the madness of India, Singapore is just like the city of London (the really dull bit where Canary Wharf is), but with an absurd number of shopping malls. You may remember that we are brave adventurers who laugh at danger, so a city where chewing gum is illegal is bland bland bland bland bland. Except for its cable cars. Looking for adventure, we ventured onto what must be the highest cable cars in the world. Biddies and brats didn’t care a jot for the height, but we cakked it, literally from a height. Then we cakked it back again. Heights aren’t for us, and that’s why we upped the ante. We went to the jungle.
Taman Negara National Park is slap bang
in the middle of Malaysia, and is home to a 130 million year old rainforest. More impressively and more pressing, it’s also home to loads of snakes, leeches, spiders and all sorts of nasties. In a scene that was slightly more Bridget Jones than Indiana Jones, we hopped on a boat for a 3 hour trip up river to the park. Sightings of water snakes (probably swimming lizards) did plenty to whet the appetite and wet the pants for what was up ahead…a 3 day trek into the deep jungle.
Leeches. Millions of leeches. The previous night’s storm had seemed so exciting, but if you’re a leech, it means feeding time when the human s come trudging through your patch. They’re not big, they’re not even dangerous, but their ability to make people freak is nothing if not impressive. Jenny got one before I did, but our Aussie companion Chris was the most efficient carrier with blood pouring down his legs and feet from the off. Now imagine you’re a five year old boy and I’ll give you the rest of our trek in brief: with leeches clinging to our feet, we trudged through deep jungle towards a giant
cave which was to be our home for the night. On the way we disturbed snakes underfoot, but made it to the cave just before nightfall. Elephant dung lay around, but our only companions were hundreds of bats. The next morning we made our way towards a river, crossing an ant infested log. These were no ordinary ants. These ants are so hard that when they bite, you swipe their bodies away but their heads and pincers remain firmly lodged in your body. So horrible were they, in fact, that Jenny flung her trousers off in front of the whole group, in order for an ant-riddance team to scout her arse for the little blighters. Ant free, we found a river complete with vines to swing from where we had lunch - amazing! Then with most of the group buggering off at this stage, we and our remaining companion Faye stayed the night with the Orang Asli - the local tribes folkpeople. We made darts for a blow pipe and lit fire using traditional methods while the locals laughed at us and played with their lighters.
All in all it was a jolly good yomp in the jungle. We were
grubby and tired but we’d survived 3 days without major incident and headed off for a much needed scrub. So, what should happen when I open the bathroom door? A hairy spider the size of Jupiter landed on my shoulder. The spider died soon afterwards in a heavy book related incident.
Unperturbed, we managed one more day there which confirmed our utter uselessness with heights by struggling across the HIGHEST JUNGLE CANOPY WALK IN THE WORLD (40m)!! You know the rest.
It was time for the beach and we headed north to the beautiful Pulau Kecil, part of the Perentian Islands off the northeast coast. We found an amazing hut, which was about 15 feet from the sea, with a balcony above the rocks, hammock and resident Gekho. Before you could say ‘how much for a PADI course’, Ant was diving, while Jenny made the beach her territory. Strangely though - and it must be that love of danger again - Jenny also signed up for a PADI course. It’s safe to say we’re both nearly as scared of diving as we are of climbing - around about ground level seems to be our our new thing. But we
Pulau Kecil
our new home both passed and are now proud members of the diving club - and it’s brill! This did all come at a cost though, and sadly, neither of us are nearly as brown as we should be by now. Careless, yes. But a great excuse to hit some more beaches. As a result of our new-found hobby, our planned 4 day stay became 7. On our last day we decided on a bit of snorkelling and had the most amazing day - turtles, sharks, stingrays… the only thing we didn’t spot was Robert Maxwell bobbing around. Beach life came very easily to us and it was difficult to leave. We’d made a few mates there including a baby monkey called Abu, and also rediscovered beer, which had become an alien concept. But move on we must. We wanted to see Thailand next, so just about managed to tear ourselves away from the island. Our planned train journey through southern Thailand was scuppered when we heard that there had been a few shootings at the border crossings in recent weeks, so we thanked our lucky stars for budget airlines, and hopped over to steamy Bangkok from where I’m tapping away right now.
jungle canopy walkway
40 meters up, and bricking it And that's that. Best dash. Adventures of an altogether different nature await. Where did I put those ping pong balls?
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jolyon
non-member comment
singapore
jenny - hopefully you've be taking the chance to contact beta as you're in singapore :)