Firstly, apologies for this long blog but we haven't had the internet apart from half an hour in an internet cafe to look at bus times. Get yourself comfy and I would possibly not eat during or just after this if you tend to go 'erw' at things!
Our 3 hour bus journey from the Cameron Highlands to reach the boat to get to Taman Negara was like an awful rollercoaster. Our driver was a joke, driving like he was in F1 around all those corners. I had a headache and felt sick when we'd finished. I'm not sure why he was in such a rush as we then had a 2.5 hour wait before our boat set off. The boat into Taman Negara was a lot more relaxing although pretty uncomfortable for 3 hours. The scenery was impressive though and I couldn't help but listen to 'Welcome to the jungle' by Jay-Z and Kanye West. We saw quite a lot of water buffalo on the way, an eagle, a bright blue bird and then just a random cat on the way, in the middle of nowhere!
Our base camp, Kuala Tahan, was made up of a few floating restaurants on the river with a few hostels behind it. Across the river, which boats frequent, is the actual park and it's headquarters, plus a luxury resort. We nipped over to get our park and camera licences and booked to sleep in Bumbun Tabing hide the following night which is 3.1km away. It was that or a 6-7 hour walk to a hide. No thanks to that 2 days in a row! There were lots of monkeys running around the resort as well which was nice.
We ate in a floating restaurant on the river that evening and then took a night safari into the palm plantations on our side of the river, not in the jungle. We were actually sat on the roof of a pick up truck...I kid you not. Other people were sat in the back on benches. I wasn't sure how much I would like sitting on a roof with not much to hold on to, but Ben thought it'd be fun and we'd get the best view so I gave in. I'm always saying we shouldn't do certain things in case they go wrong but I was glad we did do this. At first I was very sceptical as we drove along a main road and the guide sat on the roof with us was shining this stupidly bright big light onto either side of the road. I thought we'd been had. But we soon headed off road onto some dirt tracks through the palm plantations and drove a lot slower. It was pretty exciting. We saw a few different types of birds including a little red kingfisher and we also saw 3 leopard cats (not leopards!) I thought they'd made up that name as an easy translation as the cats were beautifully spotted like leopards but I googled it and that was their actual name. They were gorgeous though. The second one we saw we followed for a little while and it came quite close. It even tried to catch a mouse in front of us but that ran off up a tree-it probably didn't help that it had a massive spotlight in its face.
Our accommodation by the way was pretty shabby. It was a little wooden hut but it wasn't fully closed. It had a roof but part of one of the walls was purposefully missing. It was quite horrible but there wasn't much better to be honest and a lot of places were closed because of national holidays. We had a nice little frogger in our bathroom. He was green and orange so I'm not sure if he was poisonous! We were woken a lot in the early morning by a cockerel crowing a million times and he was so loud he sounded like he was in the room. Apart from that we had a decent sleep and didn't see too many bugs.
On our second day we tried to get prepared for our stay in the hide. We rented sleeping bags, stored our big bags and packed. We bought the most expensive water and packed lunch in the world (only the 5 star resort shop and restaurant were open) and we were ready to go. It was only supposed to be a 2 hour walk so we set off just after 2pm. It took us less than 2 hours even though we kept stopping to listen to the noises, trying to spot animals and to take photos. We saw a couple of people along the track and numerous birds, lizards and a squirrel.
We arrived at our hide; a wooden treehouse looking building on stilts. 3 sides of the hide had about half a metre cut out of it going all the way along so it was more or less completely open. There were 4 wooden bunk beds with nothing else, no mosquito net but there was a small bathroom just outside. We watched for a while and played cards, stopping every now and then to investigate sounds. We had a squirrel on a tree right by us-they're weird here, their tails aren't bushy. And a big tree fell over quite near us. That was mental, I was sure an elephant was going to follow it! Some of the sounds the insects were making were amazing. There were some that sounded like people screeching, it was quite horrible to listen to!
An older French couple arrived about 2 hours after us but we didn't really talk as we were being quiet. As far as whisperings go, they seemed alright. Tea started off well with a couple of spring rolls each with a chilli dip but we should have known better when we ordered a club sandwich with chips to share. The toast and chips were well soggy. All we were thinking about was the extra bread though. We had also splurged out on a Snickers and Mars bar. I'm sure Snickers has never tasted so good! We saw some baby squirrels playing and they were quite entertaining to watch for 20 minutes but nothing else sadly. It would have been nice to see some deer but I would have settled on seeing some wild boars!
Just as we were about to go to bed, we noticed a massive spider. It was probably as big as my head. It was truly terrifying and was on our side of the room. Just what I needed! We hadn't brought our mosquito net with us because we were in bunk beds we thought only 1 of us would be able to use it which was unfair and it would be extra weight. But the bunk beds were pushed together so it would have done its job. I couldn't believe we'd been so stupid and now the massive spider could crawl all over us in the night. I watched with jealousy as the other couple put their net up. I know it doesn't sound like much but they make a massive difference. You rest so much easier knowing that nothing can touch you and it therefore doesn't matter what position you sleep in or what you wear. We didn't rent roll mats either, again mainly for the weight. Our bags are only small and both were full with things hanging off the outside of it. We thought that if we lay on the sleeping bags and slept in our own sleeping bag liners that we'd be ok. Again, we were wrong. I've never slept on wood for 11 hours before. So, it wasn't easy to get to sleep and we tried from about 8pm. You couldn't see very far into the jungle with your torch, only up to the first trees so it was quite frustrating when you could hear things in the night. Another tree fell over and we thought we could hear pigs rustling clumsily, snorting and something else bathing in a little pond. Every 5 minutes I would shine the torch on the spider, just to check that he was still there. At 1am we decided to go to the toilet and then try harder to go to sleep. The spider was gone, I was mortified and kept thinking that he would be on the beam above my head. I couldn't see him if he was. Ben was inspecting that there were no spiders or anything in the toilet first and just as I thought he'd finished, he pulled his head out of the room really quickly with a horrified look. He went back in for another look in the top corner nearest to us and came back out with the same face. 'Look up there at that!!!!' he said. I half didn't want to look as I expected an even bigger spider than the last, or maybe a load of them together. I didn't expect to see a snake curled up in the roof. It was green, black and yellow and I couldn't see it's face. It was curled up over the beams and was not a small snake! The bathroom had no separate roof to the hide, probably about a quarter of a metre of the wall separated the snake from getting into our section which it could have done if it wanted. No way was I locking myself in that bathroom! We found the spider outside on the wall too, or one of his mates.
So, back to bed with a snake about 1m away from me albeit through 2 walls! My technique was to pull my sleeping liner right over my head so that nothing could crawl on my face! This didn't work though and I was far too hot so I ended up with a vest top over my face with a little hole for my mouth. Yes I know things could crawl in but I had to do something! After about an hour of sleep it started to chuck it down which woke us up. Great, I thought. Even less sleep because of this, it will bring all the leeches out tomorrow and I was fully expecting rats and our spider to come in for refuge. I was settling back down getting used to the new sound when the loudest thunder in the world started. The lightening was illuminating the jungle and it struck somewhere nearby as our hide started to shake! The thunder was nearly at the same time as it so it was close and was pretty scary. I probably managed about 2-3 more hours of sleep in between looking for spiders and noises. We woke up about half 6 then got up at 7 as it was light enough to see then. We had another check on the snake-he was still there but had moved round. I could see his tail but not much else so my photo of him isn't the best.
We left around 9am after only spotting a mouse. Along the way Ben reckoned he saw a big brown snake. If I hadn't already have seen his snake face then I don't think I would have believed him as I didn't see it but he was stomping ahead so it had time to escape! Due to the heavy rainfall the leeches were out in force and we didn't see any the day before. I had trainers on with 1 pair of ankle socks, 1 pair of normal socks pulled up as far as they go and my leggings on over the top. They wiggle out of the ground trying desperately to grab onto something ie. you. They crawl all over you though, get in your shoes, try to get into your socks and I even had one right up my thigh! We had to keep stopping to throw them off before they wormed their way anywhere. They were disgusting. They rolled up into a little ball so that they were too slippy to grab or would then try to attach themselves to your hand. I don't think I could ever get used to them all the time. You see locals walking around with no shoes on...in the jungle!!!
When we got to the edge of the jungle we took off our trainers and socks but none had gotten all the way in. I was bleeding though so they'd gotten their teeth in and had a go. We checked into a dorm on our return to save some money (accommodation but particularly travelling are hitting the budget hard) and had one of the best showers ever. It didn't seem like a good saving though when we got back from eating and there was a rat on my bunk bed. I had left a lot of stuff out on my bed too and it had pooed over some stuff!!! We swapped rooms (the guy wasn't apologetic at all, maybe they don't think it's a big deal. He just kept saying mouse and didn't seem to know what a rat was!) We put the mosquito net up in our room so that at least nothing could crawl over us, watched a film on the iPad and got a decent nights sleep.
This morning we happily checked out of the hostel and went to the jungle canopy walkway, 1.7km each way over the river. On the way there we saw our usual monkeys, a fairly big monitor lizard and the regular pretty butterflies, squirrels and smaller lizards. The canopy walkway is the longest in the world at 450m and 45m high in the trees. It was like what they have in 'I'm a Celebrity'. You're walking over planks of wood, up ladders at times or metal planks suspended by rope. The rope bridge goes up to about your waist so you can't fall over the edge but it was still pretty scary! You had to keep 5-10m apart, I guess that it couldn't handle too many people on it. Every so often there were little wooden platforms around trees as a more secure stop but the further apart they were the more wobbly the walkway would be! I am scared of heights and there were times when I was wobbling away thinking it was going to snap but at the same time it did feel quite strong and was a lot of fun! On the way back we saw a different type of monkey, they were black with little black faces and were thinner and a bit longer than the normal ones with longer tails. They were jumping quite large distances from tree to tree, some with babies clinging onto them and it was wonderful to watch. We saw another monitor lizard wandering about like a dinosaur and we were lucky enough to see a family of wild pigs! I'm not sure if they were warthogs or wild boar. The adults were massive though, really big and impressive. The babies had beautiful markings on them, almost like deer which Ben thought they were at first. They were really close to us to start with and we watched them for about 10 minutes. They were snorting and rummaging around. They didn't seem to particularly mind us but certainly kept their distance and if it was noisy (the path was very busy with families) then we wouldn't have seen them. So we saw more on a small walk then we did all night in the jungle! I felt like our trip was complete though and was really chuffed. Plus it was very sunny so there wasn't a leech in sight.
I know that some of this blog has been a bit 'I was scared/tired/uncomfortable and I had this next to me, crawling here and there etc' but it doesn't mean that I didn't love our time in the jungle. It was certainly memorable for many reasons. I might not have been thrilled to have a rat in my stuff or to have to try and sleep when I know there's a giant spider a couple of metres away from me but I'm still glad I saw them (ok, maybe not the rat-I've seen enough!) and we've got some great stories. I've definitely felt more adventurous since coming away and have tried lots of things I think. I don't think that a lot of people I know, would do some of these things. Taman Negara will certainly be a stand out point of our trip.
We are currently in Jerantut after a 1.5 hour bus. We have a train to the coast via the 'jungle railway' which isn't until 3am! With over 10 hours to kill we booked into a hotel anyway. We've done too much to be hanging around a strange town at that time of night. The train takes 7 hours to get to the east coast of Malaysia, then it'll be another couple of hours to the ferry port and either 40 mins or 1.5 hours by boat to the islands. I think we're going for the smaller island which has no roads, ATM's and limited electricity during the day so this might be my last blog for a little while as well!