Taman Nagara

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  Kuala Tahan, Pahang, Malaysia
Monday, October 6, 2008

We arrived at 8.00am on the dot
hungry, tired but very pleased, for two reasons the first it was
amazing to be with in 50 kilometers of the oldest rain forest in the
word, the second because we managed to avoid merlin punching the living
daylights out of the driver who dumped us in the middle of nowhere and
told us that we had to catch another bus,as you can imagine a very
tired merlin was in no mood to be told "tough luck" after a lot of
shouting the driver paid for our fair ( oh my god ) and we were off on
another bus

Big tree ?

. we arrived at the national park at 9.00m on the dot,had
some breakfast which was a coconut roll then found a little hostel to
stay in, we slept as you can until 1pm then ventured out in to the
unbelievable heat, it didn't last very long until we came back to our
air conditioned room.

Tuesday morning (7th October) we set off early to go across the river into the jungle, first thing we did was head off to the canopy walkway which is one of the longest canopy walk ways in the world at half a kilometer. At times it was so wobbly you thought you were going to fall off the side, we also asked if it was safe and he assured us that every morning all the ropes and steel wires were checked "yeah right !" we got to the walk way very early to avoid the heat and snobby tourists,it was well worth getting up early to miss the tourists as we mostly had the canopy to our selves.
When we were up above the trees it was amazing,you could really see the size of the trees and the leaves which were bigger than Helen's head,and although we were about 50meters above the ground some of the larger trees that were attached to the walkways were still managing to disappear up in to the sky

Cannopy walk way

. we didn't get to see many birds while we were up in the air but there were a lot of ants which were incredible as they were in a long line running up the tree for as far as you could see, and then running down the tree, maybe to the bottom.
we finished the walk way and decided to keep on going to a mountain where you could get a real view of th rain forest,the path way started to deteriorate rapidly with huge vine like roots coming up out of the ground. We got to the top and the view was amazing and so were the sounds,we were warned about leeches so we had to be very careful, and keep checking our trouser legs, Helen was the smarter of us,she tucked her trousers into her socks which worked well but she looked like a right mental.


When we got to the top (by this point most of the tourists went back down the way they came ) but not us! so we walked the pathway that looked a little less worn in,it took about 1hour to get down to the huge river where we thought we would see some wildlife if we crept around and whispered , but no luck..... all we saw was a blue chicken and huge lizard and i mean huge probably about two foot long !. we found an amazing place to sit by the river and we just sat there listening to the jungle, by this time we were 4 hours into our trek and hadn't any leeches on us at all, although Merlin had one stuck to his shoe,but he managed to see it in time before it got his ankle or his leg. we decided to walk a little further in as we knew there was a hide somewhere near by, we eventually found the hide which was in a really cool pace there was even bunk beds in case you wanted to sleep there. we hung around inside the hide for a while but didn't see anything,so we headed back and came across a little bridge and decide to do a leech check, good job as well because merlin saw his socks and they were covered in blood not just one sock but both socks..

floating restaurant at Taman Negara

. he rolled up his trouser legs and gave the same type of scream as did when he was attacked by the monkey ! he had a grand total of 7 leeches, 3 on his left then 4 on his right,and boy were they stuck on, He first started to poke it with a stick, then tried to flick them off,and then tried to pull them off, but nothing worked. He then remembered he had lighter in his pocket so started to burn them off, only problem was that the heat would burn his leg before the leeches gave up, so he then went back to flicking them which did eventually work ,only one problem he was flicking them at Helen... After all the leeches came off his legs, we set off again only to do another leech check and found a further two in his shoe and one on his leg.


It took about 7 hours to do the round trip and by the time we left the shade of the canopy of the jungle, you soon felt the heat when there were no trees. Helen was happy to have made it through the jungle and only to have seen one spider.....which was dead! but there are some huge spiders in there. We caught a little boat across the river and instantly jumped onto the floating restaurant and ordered a whole lot of food, as we hadn't eaten since breakfast which consisted of three small cakes each..... nutritious and delicious!


The jungle was well worth the 6 day wait in Penang, if only just to come to listen to the amazing buzzing of all the insects and lizards and birds,The noise is just incredible!

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Helens socks	Jungle	Our first view of Taman Negara	View from the top of canopy

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