The Rainforest

The last night in Kota Bahru we went out to a shadow puppet show, which is very famous in the region. We took along a gal from the UK we met at the hostel and I think she was glad to go with us and learn the ropes a little of Malaysia. She had just flown into Kota Bahru from Singapore the day before and was on an insane 6 month around the world trip so she was only in Malaysia for a week, Thailand for 10 days. I thought that was a bit too fast. The puppet show was cool, though I wish it had been in English. I was able to follow it a bit better than the rest I think, b/c it was about the tale of the Ramayana which I studied heavily in English 101 with Simonton. I thought the puppetry would just be black and white, but it was actually color, which was pretty cool.

Clare, Kim and I got up bright and early and took the jungle railway from Kota Bahru to Jerantut. It was a cool train ride through dense jungle and stopping at a few local villages along the way. It’s one of those infamous train rides I had always wanted to do. I’m doing quite well on my list of sweet train rides: Japanese death railroad (Thailand), Tsavo NP railroad over the man-eater bridge, the Gunnison fall colors steam train (I think dad took us on that one when we were little and living in Montrose, but I’d like to go on it again sometime. Still want to do the trans Canadian and trans Siberian railways sometime, and just any crazy train in India. When we got to the town of kuala lipis where you are supposed to change trains, we found out that the train from kuala lipis to jerantut had stopped running of 2 days ago! Only the night train was still going. So kim and I went out to search for a bus. We found one getting ready to leave and the driver was so nice that he picked us up, drove us back to the train station to get clare and our bags before going on. We stayed the night in jerantut, which is just a small little town and not much going on except for munching on our favorite foods (roti cani, mee gorang, nasi pattaya , and tea tarik (milk tea)). The hostel we stayed at had horrible bed bugs, so we were quite bitten and itchy all night.
The next day Clare and Kim took the bus to Kuala Tahan (the entrance for taman negara np), and I took a 3 hour boat journey to get there. The boat was a bit more expensive, but I love taking river trips in small local watercraft up muddy jungly rivers. We didn’t see much but a few monkeys, but it was cool to see the jungle over the water. I met a nice german girl, who lived in St. Gallen, Switzerland though (David’s hometown). She was quite fun. Got into Kuala Tahan, just a tiny little village right at the confluence of two muddy rivers. Met back up with Kim and Clare there who had been looking around for guides and such for the long trek we had been schemeing.
Taman Negara is the largest park and Peninsular Malaysia and is made up of all pristine rainforest. In fact, it’s the oldest intact rainforest in the world as it was not affected by any ice ages or geologic activity. It’s something like 140 million years old. It’s home to tigers, sunbears, malay bears, panthers, leapards, elephants, the highly endangered Sumatran rhino, and loads of other animals. Rainforest animals are extremely difficult to see b/c of how dense the jungle is and b/c most are nocturnal and incredibly shy. They have some hides (bunbun) set up so you can trek to and sleep overnight and watch down at a clearing or saltlick during dawn and dusk and at night with a flashlight. Before I met Kim and Clare I was going to come here and go check out lots of hides to search for wildlife, but they had suggested the really long trek, so I decided to join them on that b/c really, it is nearly impossible to find people to go on the extended treks in the jungle and I really really wanted to do one at some point, but if you go buy yourself you have no one to share the guide fee with, so it’s quite expensive. But I still wanted to check out a hide. Clare and Kim weren’t so interested, but Jenny was going that night, and b/c it’s more fun to do stuff like that with someone, I quickly packed up and we headed off into the jungle. It was quite hilarious b/c people seem so scared of the jungle b/c of leeches and bugs and such. That stuff doesn’t really bother me, maybe b/c I’ve been in rainforests and even did some research in them before…but it was just quite funny to here people talk about it…always the leeches, always asking about the leeches. The leeches don’t really bother me for some reason. I think it’s b/c they don’t sting or itch or carry disease. In fact half the time you get a leach, you never see it b/c it just takes your blood and drops off. The only reason you know you had one is your sock or leg will be bloody. That’s the only reason I don’t like them is they use an anticoagulant that makes you bleed like crazy which quite stains your clothes. We only had time to make it to a hide about 4km away (in jungle terrain that takes about 1.5 hours instead of 45 minutes), so we went there. We stayed up pretty late and got up early, but we didn’t see anything except a few bats, lots of bugs, and some rats in the hide (a big wooden structure with some wood bunks inside). I think you have to be lucky to see some things and it didn’t help that it had been raining a lot here lately, so the salt lick was underwater and the animals didn’t really need to come to this stream to drink. It’s supposedly the dry season here, but it has just been raining so much people had been telling us. Usually in the dry season I guess it rains a few times at night per week, just for a few minutes, but it had been raining hard here everyday and sometimes all night. The locals, with not much real idea of the huge climate change debate going on in the western world said that things are changing and they don’t know why. It’s funny, but this was the 3rd country I’ve been too (Thailand and the Philippines as well) where I had lots of people tell me they weren’t sure what was going on with the weather, unusual things were happening. These countries have incredibly distinct and constant weather patters with their monsoon. Like in Thailand during the dry season, it is never rains a drop the entire time, but the last two years it has been raining. And on the coasts locals would tell me they used to always be able to predict the weather, but no anymore and they are quite confused. And hear, during the wet season this year where it usually rains 6 or more hours everyday, they had 2 straight months without a drop, and now it’s raining hard in the dry season. With all this in mind it’s kind of comical to me that us western nations have had to look at receding glaciers and melting polar icecaps to hypothesize global climate change. All they had to do was ask the local farmers and such around here that depend heavily on an easily predictable weather pattern.
But even though we didn’t see anything we still had fun, sitting there looking for wildlife and eating our dinner of crackers. Reading the log book of comments and wildlife seen was quite funny. Some aussie’s claimed that the hide was the closest thing to hell that they knew of. I had to laugh at that. The hide was definitely no ritz carlton, but it wasn’t the worse thing in the world…but lots of bugs and rats and other uknown things running around. The worst thing for me was I was soaked in sweat when we got there, which turned pretty cold at night. All I had was a small sheet, but I used that to put on the wooden bunk to sleep on. So at night just in my underwear I was pretty cold. I tried to use my mosquito net as a blanket, but not like a mesh material will do much. Some Americans had written that they had been in the jungle too long and were going crazy and hadn’t seen any wildlife b/c these 2 finnish ogres sharing the hide with them wouldn’t shut up.
The next day we hiked back to the entrance and took the little ferry crossing to get back to kuala tahan. Met back up with kim and clare and we then went back to the park to hike to this really awesome canopy walk. It was the coolest canopy walk I had been on as it was really high, the longest one in the world, and unlike the others I had been on, was not built out of wide stable wooden walkway but was a rather creeky, shaky, and swingy suspension structure strung between the huge trees. We also did the short hike up to a little summit in the area for a view and then down to the river. The rainforest here is definitely quite nice with just some monstrous trees and all the rivers flowing around adds a nice contrast to the dense jungle.