Jungle hike at Taman Negara

Wednesday, 25 July 2012

We got ourselves ready around 7:30am to head into the floating town for some breakfast and the canopy walk. We all put on pants. I've decided to wear the same clothes I wore the day before. Anders is amazed how I can wear the same shirt over and over in 30 plus degrees without being smelly. I'm gifted :-)

Our free and easy package included breakfast for the day at the NKS floating restaurant. We didn't have high expectations, but the boys were extremely disappointed. We each had three pieces of toast, scrambled eggs, butter, jam and some nasty power orange juice. On top of it, only I had actual bread that was actually toasted and a fork to eat with. Anders also felt really ill that morning and threw up. We have now concluded it must be taking the malarone with an empty stomach.

To take a guided tour or not was the dilemma we faced that morning. We were skeptical if the guide will be informative, or crappy like the previous night's tour. Anders felt it was little money (30rmb / $10) to gamble on. I agreed. A good guide would make all the difference. So at the last minute, we tagged on one of the trips.

We first went to the canopy walk, which was really cool. We were walking on swinging bridges that were 45-50 meters above the soil. It was important to walk in single file and 10 meters apart from each other. At this point we thought having a guide was useless. There was no opportunity for him to explain anything to us. Anyhow, this was a good opportunity for Anders to conquer his fear of heights. He actually managed it pretty well, despite that he was holding tightly for his dear life on the sides of the bridges...the whole way.

At the end of the canopy walk, the guide took us to two view points. It was around 1.2km straight up. The guide was a bit informative during the walk. He explained that the canopy walk used to be longer, 530 meters compared 280 meters now. They had to make it shorter because one of the trees a bridge was attached to grew too thick. It required a whole reattaching and testing of the tree. Also another supporting tree turned hollow because a colony of termites built their nest in it. Now it's a mission to find another well-rooted candidate, which proves to be difficult.

He also showed us an Ippo (sp?) tree, which the native people used the sap as poison on the tip of their spear when they hunt. Apparently not all trees have the same potency, so to test it they wait to see how long it takes for the white sap to turn black. If it takes less than three days, it's good because it will take 30 secs to paralyze an animal. More than three days, between 5-10 mins, which means the animal will be long gone by then. The native people also have interesting burial ritual. They need to carry the dead body in a coffin crossing 7 streams before burying it in a hut on top of a tree. Be careful of going in random tree houses in the jungle!

The view points were nice. We saw the tallest mountain in the area and snapped some nice photos. Our guide was lazy and just waited for us in the bottom. This guide thing is stupid. Would of been fine without him.

After the walk we went back to the floating restaurants area and had lunch at mama chop. Apparently one of the better places. Anders had some really deep fried chicken with rice, Alan had a fried rice and I had a kwey teo. I was still hungry after that, so alan and I shared a Tom Yum Mee soup and fatty Anders had an ice cream.

It was so hot in the jungle, but we didn't want to go back to our crappy hostel / resort. What to do? After some discussions and looking at two boys jumping in and out of the river, we decided to do another trek ourselves. We paid 2 RM to cross the river by boat into the national park. Malays have a way to charge 2 RM for every little thing. The amount is so small that you don't actually want to complain about it, but it happens often enough that it adds up and become annoying.

Our plan was to take a walk, then chill out at the only 3 star resort that was in the entrance of the national park and the only place that serves beer for the evening. We consulted the park center on which trail to take. We had a time constraint due to the park closes at 6:45pm and it was already close to 3pm. We decided to do the short swamp loop walk and then go to the observation hide.

During the swamp loop, Anders and Alan did a fantastic job spotting animals. They spotted squirrels, lizard, and birds. Nothing too exciting. We also had some interesting conversations about insects during the walk. I was educating the boys all about these huge bullet ants that were crawling all over the place. Anders told us about these African beetles that could push many times it's weight (10xs or something like that). So every now and then people would see cow poo moving around by these beetles. The beetles used it to build their nest. So these beetles move shit around and live in a pile of shit, pretty impressive.

When we got to the observation hide, we sat for 10mins in silent staring at the open field hoping to spot a wild boar. No luck. Alan started to doze off, so we were going to leave and call it an afternoon. At that critical moment, we saw a deer run through the field, and another one slowly followed. That was pretty cool, so we sat for another 10 mins hoping again. Our luck ran out...not too soon.

We went for a swim in the river after the walk to cool down. Alan and Anders were in their boxers and I kept my dry fit running tights on. I ended up being the less soaked of the three. As we were drying up, we heard a Spanish kid screamed crocodillo. What? Swimming in the exact same river as us!?!?! We checked it out but it was too far to be certain what creature it was. Anders was certain it was a snake and not a crocodile.

On our way out, we spotted more wildlife. We saw a family of monkeys. They were pretty cool and curious about us. The one stupid polish tourist that was all decked out in safari outfit was aggravating the monkey by getting closer and teasing it with his voice. The monkey was not having it so it gave him a ferocious warning by hissing at him. I did not want to be in his shoes if he was attacked.

The three star hotel resort was pretty nice. We started off with overpriced beers that costed 19 rm, instead of 7 rm. The boys were desperate so we stayed there and chatted and eventually had dinner too. Neither of us wanted to go back to persona to chill there. The dinner was very good. It was tasty for being jungle food. I had the nasi lemak, Anders had chicken curry and Alan had beef rendang. The Conversations were nice. We all agreed this trip to the forest was definitely worth it, but will never do again. The best comment of the evening came from Anders. He said "Nothing was as bad as I initially thought it was." turning into a true backpacker.

When the dinner wrapped up, Anders went to ask for the bill and had a moral dilemma. She gave us a significant cheaper bill. Anders' good heart made sure he told her the error. However, she still screwed up and charged us two fewer beers than we ordered. Anders didn't feel it was necessary to correct her twice.

We took the 2rm boat back to our side of the river. We didn't actually know how to get our hotel to pick us up, but luckily after some confusion and frustration, the guy turned up anyways. We went back to crappy persona and decided to not let the place dampen our mood. So, we threw our own party - played some dance music and drank some of the rum we bought in duty free before calling it a night. Persona is not that bad after all.