Bukit Fraser

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I would be in Malaysia for just a couple of days before heading home to New Zealand and I was going to be spending it at Bukit Fraser, which is in the hills north of Kuala Lumpur and is really easy to get to. So easy, in fact, that my intention was to go straight there after landing at 4.20pm.

The KLIA2 airport is just new (opened in 2014) and it is ... what's the word? Annoying? Close enough. When you get off your plane you have to walk a looooong way to the Customs area. I swear it has to be at least a kilometre. Then I had a half-hour wait for my bag to come round on the luggage carousel. There's a handy digital display which tells you when the bags from your flight will start being loaded onto the belt (ten minutes...) and then when the last bag has been loaded. My bag was the second-to-last bag to arrive. Then I went to find the train station.

The second level of the airport is a mall. I don't mean a collection of duty-free shops, I mean an actual mall. There's even a supermarket in there! I thought it would just be selling packaged food of the sort tourists would buy to eat on the plane, but there's fresh meat, frozen food, cereals. Who thinks "hey, I need to do some grocery shopping... I'll just pop out to the airport!"? The funniest thing in the airport-mall though is the shoe shop with a statue of a golden bear almost the size of an elephant which takes up half the shop's floor-space. Just really wierd. There are, of course, signs pointing everywhere so you can find your way around. The only problem is that when you reach a certain point - not the point at which you have reached your objective, but somewhere before that point - you will encounter another sign telling you the place you want is in the direction you just came from. If you follow that sign, you arrive back at the first sign.

Nevertheless I eventually found the entrance to the station and took the train to KL Sentral in the city (it takes 33 minutes and costs 35 Ringgits). Then I took another train to the town of Rawang where I transferred to a third train to Kuala Kubu Bahru. These two latter trains together cost 5.60 Ringgits and take about 1.5 hours. From KKB it is an hour to Bukit Fraser and you need a taxi. Back when I first went to Bukit Fraser in 2006 there was a bus which did the route but this was long ago done away with, so now taxi is the only public transport option. Last year the taxi was 80 Ringgits each way, now it is 90 (I asked around a number of non-taxi-drivers to make sure of this). Of course the drivers will fleece you if they can. This time I was told it would cost 150 Ringgits "because it is night-time." I said I wasn't paying twice the normal rate and there was a short stand-off before the price dropped to 120. I said this was still unacceptable and there was a much longer stand-off. There was only one taxi so this could go on for a while. The driver even called over a staff member from the station to tell me 120 was the "real" price (except he told the guy in Malay to tell me that, not realising I knew what he was saying). It wasn't until I got fed up with it, said I would just stay in town that night and go in the morning, then started walking away, that he finally broke. (If you're wondering about exchange rates, there are currently about 2.7 Ringgits to one NZ Dollar. So 150 Ringgits is about NZ$55 or US$35 or £22).

The cheapest place to stay at Bukit Fraser is the Puncak Inn, and their cheapest room is 110 Ringgits, breakfast included. Not the most budgiest of birding spots but it is worth it. I had been going to go out spotlighting as soon as I arrived, and try to finally find a Sunda Slow Loris, but I was really tired and after washing my stinky Bach Ma clothes I just wanted to go to sleep.

My first day at Bukit Fraser started out looking like my run of bad luck was carrying over from Vietnam to Malaysia. I headed first to the Telekom Loop which I had found on previous visits to be the most birdy place in the area. There were a few bird-waves, ironically containing many of the birds I had already just seen in Vietnam - Mountain Fulvettas, Golden Babblers, Silver-eared Mesias, Black-throated Sunbirds - but it was really very slow going with only about twenty species seen along this road in the morning.

I had lunch at the food court then walked the 4km road to the Jeriau Waterfall. I had seen Siamang along this road on my last visit, but not today. Instead there were Crab-eating Macaques, including one male individual which made a really good show of attacking me for no reason at all. Crab-eaters often get aggressive around humans because people feed them, but they usually back off quite quickly if you stand up to them. This one however repeatedly charged me on the road, shying back when I pretended to pick up a stone to throw, then it'd come right back. On one charge it got to within a couple of feet (coming from the other side of the road, so pretty determined). I really thought I was going to have to actually hurt it, but eventually it stopped. There seem to be a lot more macaques around Bukit Fraser than previously, and they (or at least some of them) are certainly getting more stroppy. Worth noting is that these were the first primates I had seen since leaving Cat Tien, apart for the non-countable glimpse at Bach Ma.

Elsewhere along the road I saw a group of Southern Pig-tailed Macaques and two separate troops of White-thighed Langurs. Some of the nicer birds seen along the way included Black-eared Shrike-babbler, Speckled Piculet (a sparrow-sized woodpecker), Red-headed Trogon, and best of all a Jambu Fruit Dove (in the same fig tree as a Himalayan Striped Squirrel). I have been looking for Jambu Fruit Doves for years, but even though they are supposed to be common I had never been able to see one. This one was a female, so not as colourful as a male, but very nice nonetheless. I was going to return here the next day to see if any males were present, but I couldn't remember where the tree was!

I didn't really see anything on the Telekom Loop during the last couple of hours of the day except a lone White-thighed Langur and a couple of Slender Squirrels. After dark I spent another hour or so on the Telekom Loop, then headed for the Old Road (the one which comes up from The Gap to Bukit Fraser), which is 8km long and through forest the entire way. Nothing there either. This is the third time I have been to Bukit Fraser, where everyone else has no trouble finding Slow Lorises on every second tree, but for me it remains lorisless. I did encounter several free-roaming dogs at night, which I was not happy about. Dogs are the one thing I fear when travelling because they are unpredictable and the dangerous ones are not afraid of people. On previous visits I had only ever seen one dog, and that one lives behind a fence at someone's house.

I had a walk down the Old Road on the last morning before breakfast but there were only the most common of birds to be seen. Coming back up was better. I saw some trees shaking up ahead from primate action and was pleased to find that it wasn't Crab-eating Macaques as expected but rather a family group of Siamang in a fig tree right next to the road who just sat there completely unconcerned, feeding on the leaves. Their positions amongst the branches were pretty hopeless for photos unfortunately; I took a lot of the juvenile even though there was a twig across his face in every shot. They provided what birders call a "walk-away view" - that is, I was the one to walk away when I had had my fill of watching them, instead of the animals leaving first. Walk-away views are the best kind in animal-watching.

Bukit Fraser is one of the best places to see wild Siamang. I have been here three times and seen Siamang every visit. I have also seen White-thighed Langurs every visit, but Dusky Langurs in only one of the three.

After breakfast I took a quick walk through the Hemmant's Trail specifically to find a Rufous-browed Flycatcher which I successfully did (one of the cutest little flycatchers there is). I have seen Brown Wood Owl on this trail before, but not today. While I was on the trail I heard a crashing sound from the canopy above. My first thought was "monkeys" but a split second later I realised what it really was and ran like a rabbit as a great rotten branch came smashing down onto the path. Good thing I had run or I would have missed my taxi. And the rest of my life.

The taxi driver back to Kuala Kubu Bahru was the same guy who took me back on my last visit. "When was your last visit to Bukit Fraser?" he asked me. "December 2013" I said. "Yes, I remember you from then." Everyone I meet in Asia always seems to recognise me again, no matter how short a time I had met them previously or how many years before it was. It's really weird.

Once back in Kuala Lumpur I went to the Puduraya Bus Station because there are cheap hotels opposite. KL really is a dump of a town. I ended up at the KL City Lodge which, while not a total hole, is... um... I don't know how to finish that sentence. Anyway, it's cheap and the guy on reception was friendly and helpful which is unusual in this part of the town. I have to say I don't really like Peninsular Malaysia much, even though I've been there quite a bit. There are certain parts of the peninsula I do like, such as Bukit Fraser, Taman Negara, even Melaka, but overall I prefer every other Asian country which surrounds it. The food is much better in the other countries, the people are nicer, the vibe is generally much friendlier, the accommodations are almost always better. It's kind of like if you have a food court with stalls for Thai food, Mexican food, Chinese, Italian, Moroccan - and then right in the middle is the Eskimo stall selling rotten shark and seal blubber. That's Malaysia.

The next morning I had a flight out of KL heading for home. The airport has layers upon layers of security - you have to pass through about four checkpoints before boarding the plane. At the departure lounge I was stopped by a security guard. He looks at my passport, says "you are a New Zealander?" and read out my name slowly. Then he says "can I see your ID card?"

Many countries in Asia have compulsory ID cards which all citizens are required to possess, I assume because it is so easy to move illegally across the land borders. New Zealand, obviously, does not have such a requirement.

"New Zealanders don't have ID cards," I said, adding helpfully "We just have the passport."

"Show me your ID card," he replies.

"I don't have an ID card, I'm a New Zealander."

"You need to show me your ID card."

"New Zealanders don't have ID cards."

"You need to show me your ID card to prove you're a New Zealander."

"New Zealanders don't have ID cards."

"Where is your ID card?"

Just a strange strange situation, where he is demanding to see something which I literally cannot show him, and which as an airport security person he should know I cannot show him. Fortunately one of the (obviously better trained!) security guards stepped over, took one quick glance at my passport and said "yep, that's fine, go on through."




Now I need to start saving again......

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