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Published: November 8th 2009
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Despite my best efforts, my attempts to see the
Amorphophallus flowering came to naught. The damn thing just stubbornly refused to burst into bloom. You can't force nature's hand in matters like this. Its either too wet or too dry or too cold or too hot; the conditions need to be just right and until they are the bud just sits there biding its time. After waiting for days after the estimated flowering date, I finally had to call it quits, throw in the towel, and abandon ship. It may have flowered the next morning or it may have sat there for another week, there was no way of telling, and I had to get back up to Medan (via yet another overnight bus, this one for 20.5 hours) to catch my flight to Kuala Lumpur. A very disappointing thing but there was nothing else I could do. Ulrich, the owner of the Raja Wali Homestay where I was residing, said he would email me photos of the flower when it eventuated. And guess what -- I had only been gone an hour and they got a text message saying it was in flower! When I found out about this (a
number of days later) I was practically spitting blood. We had checked with the guide Joni that morning as to the flower's status and he'd said it was still not showing which, as they come into bloom in the morning and not the afternoon, means he hadn't even bothered to check the damn thing. If he had I would have seen it! I was seriously annoyed. And just to add insult to injury, Ulrich and the other tourists he took along also saw a
Rafflesia arnoldi in full bloom just 200 metres away from the
Amorphophallus, despite Joni having specifically told me that there were none ready to bloom for at least several months! Double bad points for him!
But before I found out any of this I was flying back into Malaysia, home of the oil palm plantations. In fact you have to fly over a big one to land at the KL airport, just by way of introduction. I'm now on the right time again; Indonesia is an hour behind Malaysia but all the buttons have fallen off my watch so I can't change the time so my entire time in Java and Sumatra it was reading
wrong. How cheap am I? The next day I headed off to Taman Negara, Malaysia's premier national park. There's a hide there deep in the forest where one can stay overnight and hope to spot the Malayan tapirs that come to the wallow in front. I'd been to Taman Negara before in 2006 so this was just going to be a short visit specifically to try and see tapirs. Last time I was here it was blazing hot, it being August, and it also hadn't rained in months which didn't help. This time, being close to winter, it was only 26 degrees (that's a cool temperature!) and nights were surprisingly chilly. To get to the hide entails either a 6 or 7 hour walk, or a boat trip up-river followed by a 1 or 2 hour walk. I was going for the latter because I'd be carrying a lot of food and water. The plan was to spend the first night in one of the backpackers at the village of Kuala Tahan, and then the next two or three nights in the hide, but I never made it. In the night it started to rain and it didn't stop. For
anyone thinking they wouldn't be put off by little rain then think again. Rainforest rain isn't just a "little rain", its like never-emptying monsoon buckets emptying their loads over the land. You could stand under a waterfall and get less wet. However the much more important reason was that I fell foul of some dreaded lurgy that very first night and spent the next two full days with the shivery-shakes huddled up asleep in my room, wearing every piece of clothing I had and covered in blankets to try and keep warm, while some invisible person forced sharpened matchsticks into the backs of my eyeballs. It was literally the sickest I have ever been in my life. On the third morning I tried to pack up to head back to KL but I couldn't even walk in a straight line, so it was another day in bed. The fourth morning I managed to stumble to the bus stop and make it back to KL, without even having set foot in the National Park!
Total number of birds seen: two
Total number of mammals seen: zero
Total number of reptiles seen: zero
Total number of amphibians seen: zero
Total
number of fish seen: one in a tank, one on a plate
If that's not a failed visit I don't know what is!
More failures await still. I'm still too sickly to attempt any of the animal spots around KL (the zoo, aquarium or bird park) so they're all out the window. My flight home leaves from Bangkok on the 12th which is only four days away! "Thailand" of course translates as "land of Thai girls" but by the time I get up there I'll be lucky if I have one day before leaving again. The Khai Yai National Park is therefore impossible which is really annoying as I really wanted to return there as well. Basically the final three weeks or so of this trip have just been an absolute shambles.
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Peter
non-member comment
sympathy
You have my sympathy! I have read a number of your postings and pasted some on to others. I am sure many have benefited of your travel stories. When you have a chance have a look at www.pbase.com/peterericsson/sulawesi