We arrived in Malaysia in a bit of a pickle - after the Perinthian Pickpocket got his sticky fingers on my wallet it didn't take us long to figure that we had a grand total of RM300 between us to last the next couple weeks of travel down to Kuala Lumpar. So im writing this now all snug as a bug on the sofa in bondi sipping coffee and eating muffins i yoinked from work, i do think i may have my rose tinted glasses on slightly mainly as im flicking through my diary of malaysia and the phrase "oh crud :(" seems to be jumping out a LOT.

We only had time for a few days of jungle fun so we decided to man up, throw ourselves into the Taman Negara experience headfirst and hike into the heart of the rainforest to spend a night in a hut. In hindsight, perhaps a little more time could have been spent organizing our hike considering we had only 2 water bottles and a pot of peanut butter (all our budget would allow) between us. The hike was pretty tough, a lot of slipping and sliding, ducking and diving so we were pretty chuffed with our effort as we managed to reach the hut in half the time the ranger had estimated.. RESULT! So, the glory of our achievement outweighed the fact that we were absolutely stinking from the walk with only a box of wetones to try and scrape off the grime. We arrived at the hut at 6pm and found it empty which we figured was sweet considering our stench could seriously put someone's health at risk. I was slightly disconcerted by the 'Visitor's Book' in the corner of the room where on the 6th of every month for the past few months all the entries had described a strange man who lurked behind trees and stared into the hut. Not too great to know considering it was the night of the 6th and the windows were essentially just massive square holes cut in the walls... then the thunder storm started which was AWESOME! But with the rain came the leeches and it wasnt long before the silence in the hut was disturbed by a girlish squeal as James became the first victim of a leech attack. By this time it was pitch black and the creepy crawlies of the rainforest were starting to come out and play and the suddenly hit home just how vulnerable we were all on our lonesome in this 430,000 hectare rainforest.... Perfect timing for the door to start rattling and a strange man stumbled into the hide - before we had time to hurl the visitors book at the 'intrudor' in a pathetic attempt at self defence, the dude turned out to be an american hiker (Gregg) who was also stupid enough to pick the day of a crazy ass thunderstorm to spend a night in the rainforest. That night was pretty exciting, full of noises of birds screeching, bugs chasing around and Gregg-the-slightly-quite-and-extremely-over-prepared-for-just-one-night-american-bloke flick on his grade A quality head torch and blowing up his specially made for travel bed and mini-pillow (which in my mind was completely unnecessary - i used my stinking vest as a pillow whilst james chose the empty box of wetones as his choice of head rest for the night, yes i think its safe to say Gregg thought we were one classy couple of hikers!).

James claimed that bats flew into our hut at stupid o'clock in the morning but i was too busy trying to make sure every gust of wind across my legs wasnt a hungry rat looking for traces of peanut butter. The next morning we decided to take a detour home through some bat caves and managed to get mauled by leeches, drop the torch in a puddle and so had to clamber blindly back to sunlight on our knees but it was totally worth it to get a glimpse of those sleeping beasties. The we had a cheeky peak into the huts of the aboriginal Batel community before we hit the last leg of our treck home.

When we got back to the hostel we took another walk up into the jungle canopy which is pretty much a rope and ladder bridge among the tops of trees 80foot up. The views were pretty awesome and being engulfed in the jungle was a sweet experience - a butterfly even took a little rest on my hand until it got a smell of my stinkyness and flew off... probably to die.

So, after a few days of noodles in floating restaurants we took a boat down the river edging that little bit closer to KL. The old financial woes kicked in again as we sailed down stream but somehow in a wierd sort of way, being mauled by leeches and covered in cuts and scrapes from losing fights with thorny branches in the rainforest made it all seem so worthwhile.

Joanne