9 April

This morning we were up at 06h30 to pack what needed to be packed in order to be ready for the bus picking us up at 08h00. We showered grabbed the 2 pieces of toast, swallowed what should have been some form of coffee and headed down to wait for the bus. The bus came and we left to pick up 3 other co-passengers, two from England doing what we were doing but in reverse, Mathew and Danielle and a swede Otto who took off a year after school and had toured USA, Australia, NZ and was now finalizing his tour with Asia.

We were taken to the office where we paid the RM 150 for the both of us for the bus and longboat trip, after which we departed for a two hour long bus trip North to Taman Negara, the famous Rain forest National Park of Malaysia. Half way there I needed to call Dell again to arrange that they meet us at our next stop, Cameron Highlands, seeing as the laptop again did not want to turn on. After arriving at Jerantut we found that it was possible to do a 4 day 3 night trek through the forest for RM 380 pp, which we really wanted to do, the sales lady was not of much assistance and if only the two of us were going to do it we would have had to pay RM 660 which was to much, after trying to persuade Mathew, Danelle and Otto with little luck I headed to the next best thing, Germans, their always game for something like this J Three of them were sitting near us so I approached them with the idea of them joining. After much persuasion they decided to come but unfortunately only for the 3 day 2 night trek. I made another call to Dell while Leanne made the payment, a cool R1 500 for a trip through the inner jungle of Malaysia!

We boarded our longboat and started the two and a half hour long boat ride up the river to our accommodation at Tehan Guest house. Once there we were given a short briefing by a young cocky Malaysian, who told us he was the boss, later it turned out he was not.

We started up the embankment to find our accommodation which we had prebooked in Jerantut - luckily because when we got there the sign said full house. LITERALLY up a cliff, half way up you needed to stop just to catch your breath. Once upon the hill we made the wrong turn but at least found out where the bus stop was (handy for our departure), but with the help of locals we were quickly shown the correct direction of our lodging. Tehan guest house from the outside, mind you from the inside also appears to have a preprimary setup. The walls are painted with different colors, the inside rooms have birds painted on them with their respective names. All in all a cheerful place! We settled down, took a shower, changed clothes and headed down to find something to eat, finding our old bus buddies. We settled in with them to discuss each others travel plans, where to go and where not to, had some divine spicy chicken curry, which came to haunt me later that evening…