Taman Negara National Park - long boats, mahoosive trees, a night in the hide, the sweeping of the spider and buckets of sweat!

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We took a bus from Jeruntut to the small village in the middle of nowhere that had the jetty for the boat to the national park - and essential part of the park experience according to the lonely planet! so after an early start and some good organisation we arrived at 8.30 to be told that there was no official boat until 2pm, not a good start! but a local boatman for about 2 pounds extra agreed to take us, so we had a long boat all to ourselves! it was a beautiful (but bum-numbing) 3 hour boat ride into the park, we passed fisherman and local children in the river which was really cool, we also passed lots of other long boats that unlike ours were full, we got waves and a few smiles alongside the looks of the people which spoke 'how did they get one to themselves'. we arrived at the park, and got a dorm at the small village just across the river from the main entrance and later that day ventured into the park! the place was just incredible, you could feel walking around inside its 130 million years, the trees were just HUGE and it was so dense, and noisy with life - but what struck us was also the heat inside it despite the shade, the sweat just poured of us. we tackled one of the hill climbs for views over the forest and the last 800 metres was just continuous steep steps which for us little people was hard going but the views were brilliant from the top!

After convincing cat that staying overnight in the forest in a hide would be a really fun experience we booked a hide for the following day, which was a 2 hour walk but mostly flat we were told! phew! during the day we headed out for the canopy walkway, but as we were leaving park headquarters a chimpan like animal came running up the path to us, it grabbed cat and began to climb up onto her - as we were wondering what on earth was going on, its trainer came running after it and reassured us 'blau' wasnt damgerous but he just likes 'girls'. it was really funny experience and you could pick him up, or mostly he just swung up clutching your clothes! but as we tried to leave for the walkway he kept running after us and his trainer had to hold him still while me made a quick exit! the canopy walkway was really brilliant, they went pretty high up into the trees and wobbled quite considerably (not cats favourite part!) but it was great to see the trees and forest from high up! we then prepared for our night ahead, we packed the day bags with the essentials, hired a sleeping bag and roll mat, brought some bread and crisps and set off on our adventure! just as we were leaving we saw blau harassing this couple, the crying woman had clearly did not take to him as much as we did! the 2 hour walk was a lot easier than the previous hill climb but there were parts with ropes in place to help with climbs. we got to the river crossing, the boots and sock were off and we waded across which was quite difficult as it was pretty stony and slippy underfoot! we got to a sign for the hide which said 100 metres, then for some reason we got very lost and we foudn ourselves hacking through the vegetation trying to find the trail, passing an abandoned rusting tractor! we retraced our steps and we had totally gone a different way top the sign, we blamed fatigue and loss of water through sweat! the hide was a large concrete building in a small clearing, inside there was just bare boards to sleep on and nothing else at all! but to our horror there was the biggest black spider in the room that i had ever seen, although cat was ok aslong as it didnt move, i decided it had to go else i would never rest - so as cat took to high ground on the wooden bench, i got hold of a small broom and decided to throw the broom at it to squash it. turns out as the broom was flying through the air it just came bolting toward us and the plan failed with us now both on the bench. but we eventually swept it more towards the lookout area in the hide and then swept it out from there!!! then we just spent time, looking around, we went down to the river to paddle and generally observed from our lookout but only saw a group of wild pigs!

the night set in, and we had our nets up and cocooned ourselves in our sleeping bags and neither of us slept a wink the whole night - it felt like one of the longest nights of our lives! the noise was just incredible, we also had monkeys on the roof and a massive branch fell in the middle of the night with a massive bang which caused the hearts to skip a few beats! the roll mats were pretty useless and were were pretty achey in the morning from a night on the boards but we set off early back to the headquarters and to food and a mattress! for all our cursing during the night it was a great experience and i would certainly do it again (cat is not quite so sure - but she loved it really!)

after we recovered from the trauma's of our night we organised a visit to a native settlement, of the orang asli. it was a tiny community of only about five families but we saw the demonstration of them making fire and generally got to have a peak into their bamboo houses. but the highlight was having a go on the blow pipe which was their hunting weapon when loaded with poisonous darts! cats attempt hit the target well but mine sadly went pitifully into the material surrounding it! one guy on our trip from the phillipines who had been living in london for several years joked that if he took the weapon into a tube station and threatened to fire he would be sure to get on the trains alot easier!!!

the national park was been really amazing, a must for anyone going to penisular malaysia!!! next the jungle railway to kota bharu and the perhentian islands!!!

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