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Published: August 4th 2006
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Templer Park: 1200 hectares of primary rainforest 24 km north of Kuala Lumpur. According to my pre-trip information, to get there you catch the no. 66 bus from Puduraya station. Easy-peasy, for once. But no. I went across the road this morning to Puduraya. "No no, not from here. Go outside and down the street, and outside Kota Raya shopping complex you catch the bus to Templer Park." I went down to outside the Kota Raya shopping complex and asked around. No-one knew. Eventually I found the one bus driver who did. "No not from here. Go down this street and turn right and go to outside the Bangkok Bank, bus to Templer Park leaves from there. Metrobus no. 34" Okey-dokey. Did that, found no. 34. "No not me, bus in front." Having determined that the bus in front did in fact go to Templer Park, I was off on my way. The conductor assured me he would tell me when we were there. Coming into a dump town some time after having passed a lovely stretch of what looked like 1200 hectares of primary rainforest 24 km north of Kuala Lumpur, I eventually asked how far to Templer Park. "Templer
Park? That's back that way." Trying to control myself, I got off the bus, crossed the road, waited for another bus going in the other direction, and asked "you go to Templer Park?" Indeed he did, but..."which Templer Park you want? There's two, one for the waterfall and one for golf" "Golf? Like, playing golf?" "Yes" "Um, the waterfall one" :I didn't know, but it sounded more likely. The place where he let me off was fronted with road-works, he told me to just walk down the path there and I'd find the waterfall. It cost 1 Ringgit to enter, and I still didn't even know if this was the place I was trying to get to. None of the signs said anything even remotely close to "Templer Park". Still, it was forest, and where there's forest there's birds. Turned out it was the right place (I think). I wandered up along a rough truck track which I had been informed was better than the main path to the falls. It was rather muddy; certainly broke my boots in to the ways of the jungle.
The birds were once again very hard for me to find. Easy to
hear, hard to actually see. I saw a red-bearded bee-eater soon after I started, sitting up in the treetops (didn't need my field-guide to identify that one), and then heard the most bizarre call ever. I thought the malkohas were weird, this thing sounded like nothing you could describe. About the closest I could come would be a toy ray-gun, and even that would be far off the mark. Took me a while to track it down, and I was still none the wiser when I did manage to get a look. My book sorted it out, although the call as described left a lot to be desired; it was a black magpie. A boring sort of name for a boring-sort-of-looking bird, but the magnificence of its vocalisations made up for any deficiencies in the colour department. Other new birds for the day included streaked spiderhunter, black-naped monarch (very pretty), fairy bluebird and orange-fronted woodpecker. I also saw another Raffles' malkoha and other feathery beasties. Best mammal for the day was a cream-coloured giant squirrel -- and I do mean 'giant'. I knew they were big but actually seeing one in real life is something else entirely.
After doing that track for several hours, I headed back to the start again where I found hoards of local day-trippers coming to see the falls. I took a walk along too. The falls were quite nice, nothing spectacular. There was an amazing quantity of rubbish around though. I mean, there's always rubbish around here where-ever you go, especially empty water bottles (I seem to be the only person who will carry the empty bottles out with me instead of just tossing them off the side of the path). Here at the falls there were literally piles of bottles and chip packets and all sorts everywhere. Dozens and dozens of crab-eating macaques were swarming about threatening people for food (not me, they were scared of me: like my old saying goes, "Monkeys don't scare me, I scare monkeys"). I saw a baby macaque with its head jammed inside a plastic cup (it got it off) and another little group tearing into someone's carry-bag of noodles. It was pretty sad.
It was nice and cool at Templer Park (well, 26 degrees, but cooler than KL), but getting off the bus back in KL it must have been at least a million degrees. I had to send away some parcels, so after dropping my binoculars and things back at the backpackers I headed to the post office (as may be expected, I inadvertently took the long way there via going in the wrong direction for a while). The post office took extra delight in sending me from one end to the other. "Can I send parcels from here?" "No, go back outside and go to the counter at the far end." Did that. "Can I send parcels from here?" "You have to go up to the second floor to get the boxes." Go up to the next floor. "Is this the second floor?" "No this is the first floor." Go up another floor, wait in line. "Can I get boxes from you?" "No, go round the corner to the next counter." And so on. Then went to try and find the thing I passed earlier that I thought was a supermarket because there was bread and stuff at the entrance. Had to check my bag at the entrance, costing me 1 Ringgit to stash it in a locker, and then the damn place was just some kind of junk warehouse place. Seriously seriously seriously getting ticked off with Kuala Lumpur. I'm getting ready to hit the next taxi tout. If the Devil ever left Hell and needed a worse hole to clamber into, then KL would fit the bill. Tomorrow I'm going to Kuala Selangor, then back to KL for the night, then off to Bukit Fraser. They'll be no more KL, EVER! No-one ever go to KL! Heed my warning.
Item of interest: yesterday at Taman Pertanian I came away with no fewer than twelve huge mosquito bites clustered on my arm above the left elbow. Right through the shirt. And they were from the black-and-white striped diurnal mosquitoes that spread dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis. yay...
ANIMAL OF THE DAY: red-bearded bee-eater and cream-coloured giant squirrel.
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Ariel
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remosquito bites
Well, that's good news for anyone with bets on number 1 or 2 on your 'returning early or untimely death' list!!