Welcome to the jungle!

Sunday 5^th December 2010

MP3 track of the day: Welcome to the jungle – Guns 'n' Roses

Weather: Humid but dry

Due to the early night I was up at around 8:15am fully refreshed. Unexpectedly – as I thought rainforests were hot humid places - I got really cold last night; so much so that I put on some of my clothes to give me an extra layer (really wished the hostel gave a top sheet). Also unexpectedly I checked myself to find no mosquito bites at all … bonus.

Due to skipping a shower I went to claim my free breakfast from the Han restaurant, the travel agency I booked with. Not really feeling the love for Han travel (I had given them 160 ringgit and they had put me in a 10 ringgit per night hostel … surely they could have afforded more) I ate as much as I could to get my monies worth. Whilst eating I met some others in the restaurant and we chatted for a while. I then headed back to the hostel to pick up my day bag and waited for the little shower of rain to stop.

At 10:00am it was dry and so I headed to the village jetty, paid one ringgit for a boat trip to cross the river, and into the national park ... I started walking towards the canopy. Earlier that day I had been told that the canopy was closed, due to the weather, however I still decided to walk that way as my day trek. I walked into the rainforest and soon I was getting very sweaty, not hot just sweaty. I went to a hide for a brief rest and a drink of water before continuing the walk.

It was then that I met the two Canadians on their way to their overnight jungle stop at a hut 11km away. I decided to walk with them and we chatted a long the way; the rainforest was pretty cool and it was just that, a rainforest. Vines, trees and watery mud (full of leeches we reckoned) covered our path as we slid and climbed our way through. It was an amazing experience and I felt very fortunate.

We made it to the canopy walkway, 1.5km into the jungle and up a small staircase, and it was certainly closed. Here is where I left the Canadians; they continued deeper into the rainforest where as I, took a breather and drank more of my ever decreasing water supply. I had only been in the jungle just over an hour however I felt it was time to head out. As I walked out I spent more time looking around, taking photos and reading the information panels present. On the way back I saw a spider, a huuuge ant and, believe it or not, a wild boar. Seeing the wild boar was pretty amazing, however a little disconcerting when it ran right past me. The final creature I saw was a leech, on the top of my boot, trying to penetrate my sock defense (I had tucked my trousers into my socks, my shirt into my trousers and sprayed myself, head-to-toe, in deet. This resorted in some laughs from the locals but I didn't care). The leech was unsuccessful and after a quick flick it was gone.

Once out of the jungle I took a boat back across to the village, went to my hostel and got changed out of my sweat soaking clothes (also checking my body for leech attacks … there were none). Whilst chilling I thought about my experience; some may say that to only spend two hours and thirty minutes in the rainforest, after spending all that money and effort, was a waste. However I had hit my limit; I had hiked in many different types of terrain but the rainforest was the hardest by miles. I gained a deep respect for military conflicts that had taken part in jungles. Mainly for the men of World War Two and the Vietnam War; I wondered how they did it, how did they continue; like I said I gained a massive respect for these people. One thing that surprised me about the rainforest was that it wasn't that hot, just very humid with buckets of sweat pouring down … strange.

It was now 2pm and so I headed for something to eat before checking out the internet cafe. This is the weird thing about Malaysia; the houses look like they are going to fall down any second and most represent a concrete slum. However here I am, in a shed in the jungle, faced with the most modern Acer machines to date and a broadband connection. It's not just the internet; cars, 4x4 and motorbikes that I couldn't afford are driven around all the time. It's like Malaysia missed a huge step in development of housing and infrastructure and instead of filling the gap, just missed it altogether and went for the nice new possessions of cars and computers.

With no friends around (the hostel was empty and the two Canadians were in the jungle) I took my book 'The Vietnam War' and read from 3pm until 7pm, almost finishing the book in one go. It is an extremely well written book and the Vietnam war is very interesting politically … it's so much more than a democratic vs communist cold battle ground. Did you know that when Saigon fell the Americans weren't even part of the war, apart from aid (American involvement had ended two years previously with the Paris agreement). The famous video of US troops taking off from a helicopter on top of the US embassy roof was only a handful of American troops sent to guard the embassy, not an army.

After this I headed for more fried chicken before returning to my hostel for my final night. I was glad that I was only spending two nights here, my accommodation is so dire that any longer and I probably wouldn't have coped.

Toodle Pip!

Spitting, boat rides and bad bathrooms

Saturday 4^th December 2010

MP3 track of the day: Last Christmas -Wham

Weather: Humid, not hot but humid and it's spitting!

Not fully knowing what time I was likely to be picked up I got up around 6am and I was ready for 7am. As I waited I spent my final minutes communicating to the outside world and reading what was happening in Blighty (apparently some lady has had her snowman nicked: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-11908583 classic). A gentleman came to the door and my hostel receptionist told me that he was here to pick me up (as obviously he couldn't speak himself). We headed out and into a small van where he transferred me to a bigger coach half way across town.

I was worried that I would be the only one on this trip; my worries were nicely put aside when I saw a group of middle-aged 'European looking' people get on the coach. Unfortunately none of them spoke a word of English and so, with a group of non-English speaking Europeans and a Malaysian non-speaking driver, I put my MP3 player on and looked out of the coach.

I noticed a few things on my journey, some good, some bad and some bizarre. We'll start off with the good; soon after leaving Kuala Lumpur we started to drive through rainforest type terrain that was very pretty indeed. There also seemed to be a Malaysian car rally starting today; lots of different cars where parked along the motorway with official looking vehicles at the front. It all seemed like a lot of fun for the boys taking part … however, whilst peering into the car windows from my coach, it seems that girl friends, wives and children had been brought along and they seemed to be having a less than enjoyable time.

The bizarre things included seeing a shop mamma-kin – with a road workers jacket on, shades and it's arm stretched out with a flag in it – being used to inform drivers of a lane closure and the fact that the coach driver had to fill up twice on a three hour journey.

The worst thing about our trip was the driver; it wasn't the fact that he was a bad driver, or unpleasant (I couldn't really see his driving from where I was sat), it was the fact that he continually spat out of the window throughout the entire journey. The sound alone was enough for me to turn my mp3 player up high. Finally, as we drove through the Malaysian countryside, I did notice that the rainforest type of terrain did give way to huge palm oil plantations. Now I haven't mentioned this before (mainly because I keep forgetting) but Malaysia is covered - as far as the eye can see sometimes – in palm oil plantations. Lonely Planet describes Malaysia's environmental policies as “Yon name it – logging 60% of their rainforests, huge palm oil plantations and dam creation that floods thousands of acres of rainforests and forces indigenous people to move from their homes – Malaysia's done every environmental unsound action it can think of”

After three hours the bus journey was at an end; we had reached the jetty at the beginning of the park. I think that all on-board were glad that the bus journey had ended; the journey had been freezing due to the air-conditioning being on full blast. Once at the jetty things were pretty well organized; I got given my vouchers for the two days (1x voucher for the boat trip, 1x voucher for my accommodation, 1x voucher for breakfast and 1x voucher for my travel back to Kuala Lumpur). I had an hour to kill before our boat left the jetty and, as it was midday, I headed to a restaurant to have something to eat; I also needed to get my park and camera license (these cost 6 ringgit; without these you face a 100,000 ringgit fine and three years in prison … harsh).

Throughout my coach journey I had wondered if this had been a good idea; I worried about the fact that I was going to a remote area and I reckoned that food prices would be sky high. However, when I got my vouchers, I also got a map of the village where I would be staying – Kampung Tahan – which showed many restaurants, shops and an internet cafe. My fears of high prices was lowered a little after seeing all the competition.

Once on board the boat I settled down, quite comfortably, for the three hour boat journey to the village. The journey was stunning, we headed down a brown colored river with jungle on each side. As we were following the course of the river I lost all sense of direction due to the amount of 'S' bends within the river. I also had Sir David Attenborough in my head: “... And here we are, the Taman Negara Rainforest, the oldest Rainforest in Malaysia...” etc, etc.

For three hours jungle after jungle came into view, which some might have thought would have become very monotonous, however it didn't. Each bit of the jungle seemed different and I saw a beautiful bird with an orange under-belly, and bright blue wings. The only annoying thing on the whole trip was the European in front of me who, on a couple of occasions, put his hand into the water to cool it down (possibly) but didn't realized that his actions was causing spits of water to fly into the boat and hit me behind. I was a bit surprised that the guy in front needed to cool down as the trip was actually really cold, I put the life jacket on willingly just to keep warm (this was very weird to me, I thought the rainforest would be boiling hot).

Once at the village of Kampung Tahan I thought that it had already been worth coming for the boat journey alone. The village was on a hill to the right of me, and the actual park was on the left (I had to get a boat across to the park when I wanted to visit … it only took two minutes to cross). My first impression of the village was that it was a Blue Peter activity that went horribly wrong (today children we are going to build a Malayan jungle village using plastic bottles, a yogurt pot, cardboard and lots of sticky tape) with badly made sheds being used as houses, restaurants and lodgings. I put my first impressions aside and went in search of my accommodation ' The Lana Hostel'.

Even though the village was pretty small I couldn't find my hostel; combined with the humidity I didn't fancy searching for long and so I saw this guy – who turned out to be Canadian – and asked him for directions. Luckily for me he was staying at the same hostel and gave me the heads up that the dorm was clean … well that was good.

Once at the yellow building, that was my hostel, I had to wait a while for the receptionist to turn up before I got my key and saw my dorm for the first time. The room was clean however, due to being a wooden 'shed' structure, there were holes in the wood that I thought looked very 'mosquito size'. The beds seemed okay but there was no top sheet, only a sheet for the bed and a pillow case … I actually didn't think that mattered as I reckoned it would be pretty hot with four people in this small sized room, with no air-con, in the jungle. I then went in search of the washrooms.

Located down a corridor that resembled the corridor Leonardo DiCaprio walked down, in a Bangkok hostel, in the film The Beach, I made it to the mens washroom. It was so disgusting that I immediately decided that I would spend as little time in their as possible, which meant no showers for me as the showers were so grotty (I would just have to stink for two days). The toilets didn't fair much better and there was no toilet roll so I had to purchase some from a local shop. I was not impressed at all (I would class it as 'barely habitual') and I did wish for the 'riverside resort' up the street … still it was only two nights.

After chucking my stuff in my dorm I had a quick walk around the village, taking a few photos, before meeting the Canadian guy and having a chat. It turned out that we were in the same dorm, it also turned out that he was broke and his mate had gone into town today to use an ATM as they through there would be one here (we are in the jungle I thought). As we chatted, and waited for his mate to come back, we sat overlooking the river and the national park. It made me very eager to go and have a look around.

Whilst chatting I worked out that I had spent 50/60 ringgit more than I needed to for my trip here, if I had done it on my own. I was slightly annoyed as I could have used that money to do an activity or, more probably, upgraded my accommodation. I also found out that a coach goes to the Cameron Highlands from here everyday, which meant that I didn't need to go back to Kuala Lumpur and I could have brought all my stuff here and then head straight to the highlands … again this meant that I was spending more money when I didn't need to and if this was explained to me then I could of acted on it, yet again lack of information was costing me time and money.

Once his mate came back we went for a drink before getting some fried chicken from a stall; at first I was a little annoyed with the Canadians choice of meal, however after eating my chicken I was pleasantly pleased (when you order chicken in Malaysia, most of the time you are greeting by chicken bones with scraps of meat on … this time the chicken pieces were loaded with meat ... so much so that I may come back tomorrow).

After this we chatted before taking an early night; tomorrow I shall head into the park, towards the canopy walkway (which my guidebook states is a must) for a day trek. The two Canadians are going much further into the park and spending a night in a hide … sounds fun.