Jungle Living

This weeks episode: Jungle Living - Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia.

Okay, so to put this into context, I wrote this while bouncing around in the back seat of a bus headed from Jarantat to Kuala Lumpur. So give me a break if it lacks correct spelling, grammer and makes little sense. It's a long one too.

Michael Franti is rockin in the headphones and Alisa, Jenn, Ashley, Annie and Dave are all trying to sleep - which is understandable considering the 
last few days. Starting from the beginning:

Friday evening we left Singapore by bus. Pretty cool by Canadian 
standards; 4 of us had the lower level of the double decker to ourselves, the seats reclined completely into an almost-bed, and there were personal tvs and blankets. We left by midnight and all fell asleep quickly only to jump awake to "PASSPORT" echoing through the bus which we assumed to mean "please kindly exit the bus and present tour passport to the immigration official". 5 hours later we were hurried off the bus onto the 6am streets of KL by the same cranky Malay. Disoriented and sleepy we booked a Monday return bus from a stand in the street and then took cabs to out tour meeting spot at the mandarin hotel. After checking in I grabbed breakfast at a mcdonalds where I got a sausage mcmuffin and a coffee *note: sausage made from chicken. The bus which was headed to Taman Negara left at 8.

36 km's away from KL, when we had all fallen asleep again because thebus was crawling up hills at 20kmh - it comes to a quiet stall/stop in the middle lane of traffic.

30 mins later we are told that another bus is coming to pick us up and is an hour away. Convinced the side if the road is safer, we hung out there for 3 more hours until the bus was fixed. In the meantime, I lost in a game of cards and got a sunburn, and we witnessed a tractor pull the bus up the hill.

Our tour company felt bad so they gave us a free 6ringit lunch (about $2CDN) and let us take the bus the rest of the way instead of going by boat so we would not miss our night activity.

Our weekend tour guide, Atan, met us at the bus and gave us our keys. 
We had two small cabins rented with 4 bunks in each plus a sink/shower/ 
toile combination. Very different but overall it was sweet. We were 
given a set dinner at the floating restaurant consisting of rice, 
veggies, and a whole fish. Haha I dug right in and eventualy the 
others did too. It was great but we all stayed away from the fishes head.

We crossed the river and Atan took us on a night jungle trek. It was 
pitch black and the forest was sooo noisy with insects and whatever else. I bought a flashlight but eventually just gave it to Alisa so I 
could attempt some pictures. We saw lots if bugs and vegetation plus some large deer and a scorpion or two. Also some fungus that glows in the dark and a python.
Afterwards we grabbed a few beers at the woodlands hotel since it was the only place that served alcohol(Malaysia is mostly Muslim). Overnight a 
HUGE storm woke me up.

Sunday morning we had breakfast and headed out for our hike. We hiked about 4k to a lookout point at Bukit Terersak and then headed to the canopy walkway. 

The walkway is a series of suspension bridges held up 
over 50m in the air at some points for a good 500m in total. 

I was a 
little nervous at points and I'm sure the others would agree. Still, such a cool experience. After almost 10k of hiking in total we made it 
back to camp for some lunch and relaxation before we headed out again at 3. This time we took a boat for 5 mins to another hiking spot. 
There we found a small village of aboriginal people called the Buntan? Our guide told us about how they hunt for food, how they make their weapons and how they male primative fire. We then got a demonstration of all three! We also got to try out the blowpipe on a teddy bear.

Okay so this next activity was ridiculous. The place is called Gua Telinga 
and it is a set of caves that stretches for about 100m underground. 
Okay no big deal right? Beforehand, Atan told us there may be cockroaches, snakes, bats and a type of spider that is half spider and half scorpion inside. Oh and we couldn't bring backpacks in because we had to crawl through small openings. Shut your mouth Atan. After some hesitation we all made our way in. The first bit wasn't too bad, and then we came across I don't know, something like 50 bats sleeping on the 
cave top. We snuck past those little guys without waking up too many but then Atan led us on a shortcut to get around some slow (and larger sized) Asian tourists in front of us. That might have worked if *stuff didn't go down. Annie fell on the slippery rocks and smashed up her leg, Atan left the lead to help, leaving Ashley exposed to the bats 
who were now taking flight and losing their shit (both figuratively 
and literally, seriously there was bat scat everywhere) around the 
cavern. So basically we all stood around waiting for room to move 
ahead while bats were flying around our heads. This went on for about 20 mins since I was at the back and couldn't move at the pace I wanted to haha. I was EXTREMELY uncomfortable having the bats circle my head that once I got the chance to squeeze through the last army crawl tunnel I was so full if adrenaline I almost flew out. At least now I can cross "non-mickeymoused cave 
adventure" off my life checklist.

From there we did some rapid shooting, which is really an excuse for the boat driver to soak some tourists. In a small wooden boat with a 15hp we rocked some white water upstream and litterally took waves in 
the face. So fun haha. The driver kept going "Sorry, Sorry"  every time he got us good. Afterwards Atan les us to a small river heading into the main one where we could do some swimming and cool off. We capped it off with dinner and a few rounds of beer. Perfect ending to a crazy and fulfilling day!

So this takes us to today (Monday). Breakfast and then a 2.5hr boat ride down the river to meet our bus. Beautiful ride, I wish I had my camera because it felt like we were in a national geographic documentary it 
was so unreal.

Oh and I should mention this. Sat nigt after our drink at the hotel we were walking back down a dark road when a local skidded his moped in front of us and told us to stop because there was a snake 5m in front of us. Black 
with yellow he's a dangerous fellow or something like that? Turns out it was a 3ft long Krait snake just crossing the road. They are one of the most poisonous snakes in the world and we almost walked right into 
it... Thank god that guy stopped us!!

This story wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the Reggae Bar in KL. We stopped in there for some beers and food and shisha before we caught our bus home on Monday Night. This place was awesome, true story.

Allright kiddies, this took a good 2 hours to write on my itouch so I hope you enjoy =) tune in next week, hopefully same matt time, same matt channel. Peace.

6 ft above sea level, I grab the mike because I like to take you to 
another mental level - Michael Franti


Sent from my iPod