Lions, and Elephants, and LEECHES, oh my!
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2007
1
88
141
Trip End
Ongoing
Kuala Tahan (Teman Negara),
Malaysia
Thursday, September 13, 2007
We (Frank, Murray, Lynn and Kay) left the Cameron Highlands at about 10:30 am by private minibus. A slight delay as we watched the cranky chinese bus driver try to squash the luggage of 10 passengers into a minibus that has No Boot (trunk) and No Luggage Racks/Storage. We chuckled wondering why a travel agency that provides transportation and transfers would buy mini-buses with no luggage storage. So, 15 minutes later, our driver had successfully managed to squeeze all 10 suitcases/backbacks into every nook and cranny he could find. After two more transfers (total private buses = 3) and 7 more hours, we arrived in Tanah Rata, the little village that sits across the river from Teman Negara.
Teman Negara claims to be the oldest jungle in the world, over 130 MILLION YEARS old - older than the Amazon in South America
A Squatter
. With 4343 square kilometers, it is the largest national park in Malaysia. Teman Negara is also home to many of the countries endangered animals like the Asian elephant, tigers, leopards, rhinos, and exotic snakes like pythons and vipers. Sadly, and commonly, because of the deforestation outside of the park and shrinking protected areas, these populations are declining so sightings of these animals are rare. There are three general lodging options to visit Teman Negara: Roughing It (tent-camping deep in the park), Basic lodging (bare-bones chalets and hotels in Tanah Rata), and Comfy-Luxury lodging (high-end and $$$$ resort just inside the park). We opted for the basic lodging and got a 40 RM (about $12 USD) private cabin with moquito net, fan, and private bath at the Durian Chalets. Though this really should be in the Roughing It category, because it seems that none of the hotel in Tanah Rata have proper toilets -- they are all "squatters". So even though we had our own private bathroom, it was really just an oval hole in the ground.
Tanah Rata sits on the river Sungai Tembeling and all of the restaurants are on barges along the river's edge. Throughout the year, these Floating Restaurants rise and fall with the rains and are always accessible. During our stay, we ate every breakfast, lunch, and dinner at these cheap local eateries. The local dishes were tasty, but stay away from the "western" menu items like the chicken-like burgers and beef-like burgers. We aren't quite sure what meat was really in them!
The Teman Negara park entrance is just across the Floating Restaurants on the other side of the river
All Twisted Up
. It's a quick and cheap (1 RM) water taxi ride away. The high-end resort is located right at the park entrance, as well as the ranger station.On our first morning, we woke up bright and early (well, I guess 8 am is not THAT early for those of you reading this...) to get our hiking started before the heat of the day. We hiked our way throught the jungle to the Canopy Walkway (5 RM - about $1.50 USD each). The Canopy Walkway is a series of wood planks and rope bridges above the treetops, about 45 meters above the jungle floor. The bridges were quite shaky, but a lot of fun and offered beautiful views of the river and jungle. And at $1.50 USD, we were ready to go on it again and again!
After the Canopy Walkway, we continued hiking up a trail to Bukit Teresik, a mountain and viewpoint at 344 meters. It was a steep and strenous trail, complete with ropes to help pull yourself up. The view at the top was gorgeous. Instead of circling back, we made our way down the other side of the mountain. This trail was just as steep, but a bit wetter. Halfway down the mountain, we noticed these cute inch-worm looking things on the ground. They were on the leaves, standing on their tails and excitedly twisting their heads around like they were sniffing the air
Attacked by a Leech!
. We soon found out that these cute things were actually blood-sucking LEECHES! Frank was the first Blood Donor of the day, and found a large sucker on his leg. After screaming a bit, I pulled out our bugspray (7% DEET) and sprayed the sucker. Note: you are not supposed to pull off leeches because their heads can get stuck on you like a tick. Frank's leech curled up into a ball and fell off, while spitting out blood. Yuck! Leeches are not dangerous and carry no diseases (that we know of at least!). But they do have something in their spit that prevents your blood from clotting. The bite doesn't hurt, and you usually don't feel anything at all. But you end up with a rather frightful looking and bloody leg! For the rest of the hike back to the park entrance, we kept yelling out to each other "Here's another one - watch out!". In between the "Oh darn - there's another one on my sock/shoe/leg!". And of course, more screams from me. We all, except Murray, wore pants, socks, and hiking shoes. In the end, Murray was the only one that did not become a member/victim of the Blood Donor Club. Was it Murray's Luck or Smart Attire? Lynn ended up with 2-3 suckers, I had about 3 suckers, and Frank had about a half dozen or more. Not counting the ones that we pried off before they started sucking away. After pulling off a few dozen more leeches, getting spooked by a huge monitor lizard, and spotting a monkey in a tree, we ended up back at the park entrance
Beautiful Jungle Flower
. Total hiking time = about 4.5 hours and we think about 10 kilometers. Total leeches = probably 100. Well maybe not that many....We ended the hike back at the park entrance. I spotted what appeared to be a foot washing station next to the Ranger Station. At least is looked like one. There were about 8 spouts (4 on either side of a half-wall) with a drain. Frank mused that it may be a urinal. Outdoors in the open? So we made ourselves comfortable at the steps of this Foot Washing station, took off our bloody socks and shoes and inspected our legs for the Leech Damage. We washed off our bloody legs, inspected each other for hidden leechs behind the halfwall, then sat back on the stairs to re-dress. A couple Muslim gentlemen walked up the stairs and gave us a funny look. One of them told us that this was actually a Prayer Room! The foot washing station was for their use to cleanse their feet before entering the Muslim Prayer Room! Oops! Blushing, we grabbed our things, apologized and made our way back across the river.
We initially planned on staying in Teman Negara for several days. However, we soon discovered that most of the other hikes would require spending the night in the depths of the jungle. The thought of spending the night in a tent, surrounded by all those blood sucking leeches, just didn't have the same appeal to us as it had earlier
Canopy Walk - Don't Look Down!
. So we decided to head out of the park the next day and continue the journey through the rest of Malaysia.The next morning, we took a longboat ride 2 hours down the river to the town of Kuala Tembeling. The boatride was a beautiful trip along the park's border. We saw some small monkeys playing around and a herd of water buffalo. From Kuala Tembeling, we caught a private minibus for the 4 hour ride to Kuala Lumphur. (Boat and bus was 60 RM per person - about $18 USD)
Cheers,
Kay
