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The Wandering Rupa
Hi All
Still haven't got near a facility to upload photos and I couldn't find one on the web that has anything to do with Tamen Negara so I'll leave KL there for now.
After a long bus journey and then a boat journey I've arrived in the oldest jungle in the world. It's monsoon season here and up until the day before I got here there had been flooding etc but it's not too bad now. This is a beautiful place but my experience of it has been a bit tainted by an over-friendly Malaysian tour guide that won't leave me alone. I met an American woman called Nicole while I've been out here and she's having the same problem with another guide so we've formed a mutual protection society for the couple of days that we're here.
I really only had one full day (two nights) to really see this place so I've not stopped once. In the morning I went on a canopy walk about 130 meters above the ground through the most beautiful greenery I've ever seen. It was so peaceful I really got lost in myself and I can't wait to show everyone the photos. My sleazy tour guide turned up at the end of it and insisted I allowed him to take me on a trek through the jungle at ground level. Thankfully an German couple I met happened to walk by and the tree of us went with him together. I went for a quiet lunch back at the mainland with the intention of writing in my diary and chilling out for a while but my new found admirer insisted on sitting with me (am I the only one that's noticed that Malaysian men seem to think that women don't want any time to themselves?!) He invited me to shoot rapids on the river with him and I think my Mancunian charm must have bubbled involuntarily to the surface because I couldn't help telling him to get lost. I did want to go on the rive though and that's how I met Nicole. Her situation with her guide had pretty much mirrored mine and we agreed to go together. After the rapids the guys taught us how to find rocks beneath an amazing waterfall that we could use to make paint and we had a childish half-hour drawing on eachother before we got back onto the boat.
On the way back we visited a Malaysian hill tribe (if we'd booked all this at the tour office it'd have cost a fortune so I suppose there was an upside to being harrassed by these two). It was a nomadic tribe called the Bateq. They move around every 6/7 months with the hunting seasons (or when someone dies - to avoid being troubled by their spirit). They live completely from nature and have various rituals in birth and death that allows them to "give back" to the environment that they live from. Despite this, however they seem to have no respect for the landscape and litter and ciggarette ends were dumped all over the place. We had a great couple of hours learning how to make fire and how to hunt with blow-darts. A lady from the tribe made me an afro comb out of a piece of bamboo and engraved it for me so all-in-all it was a ace afternoon.
I've loved it here but I'm glad to be leaving for Cameron Highlands - I don't think I could put-up with this bloke for much longer before I give him a well-deserved "Salford Hello"
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