We were early risers this morning, we slept with the curtains open so we could watch the sunrise. It was beautiful, the sky was bright red!
We sat on the balcony for a whole and enjoyed the scenery before we had to check out and walk over to the jetty to catch our speedboat back to the main land at 8am.

The boat was a smooth ride, the breeze was lovely because it was so hot this morning even with cloud coverage! Got to the main land in record breaking time, we dumped our bags in the office and went to find a cafe for some breakfast before the bus to Taman Negara.

We had loads of room for the first leg of the journey, it was a bumpy ride and the driver was a loonatic! Meaning we got to what we thought was the half way point early. We were stopping for half an hour to get some lunch and then everyone would swop over buses as everyone's coming from different directions and going to different places.
Lucky us we got stuck with the crappy bus, stuffed in the back like Christmas turkey's. We thought this journey wasn't as long as the three hour journey we just did but we were wrong... We didn't get to the main town outside of the national park until 4pm so the second ride 3 hours but then we had to register for our park visas and we were given a map and an idea what there Is to do there and then another hour and half journey into the Taman Negara.
So the journey took 10 hours overall but at least the scenery for almost all the way there was really pretty! We were surrounded by jungle and forestry and palmtree plantations, which looked really pretty when they were all grown and all you could see were the tops of them.
Once we got into Taman Negara, outside of the protected national park you could see how bad the deforestation really was, it went for miles. We thought it was bad considering the amount of big trucks stacked with logs went passed us but you can't picture the real damage until you see how many trees have actually been cut down.

When we arrived at Kuala Taman the local village we were staying at we were a little surprised at how busy it was, I'm not saying it was as busy as big towns and cities. Obviously not! But we were expecting to be dropped off in the sticks, there were a few hotels and minimarts and restaurants. We were told that there was bad flooding during monsoon season last year and it did some real bad damage but wow! The banks around the river had completely collapsed, houses had slid down the bank, and the resort on the opposite side of the river were close to losing done of their chalet buildings!

We found a really nice little guesthouse on the hill called Abot hotel, it was newly painted so we went in. She offered us aircon room with hot water and wifi for 70 ringt instead of 90. We weren't complaining, that was really good! Especially being in the jungle and all the other hotels we had looked up on the Internet were either coming up as really expensive or looked absolutely awful. These rooms were newly refurbished!

We got a much needed shower and went for our first meal of the day! We had a huge rain and thunderstorm just before we went out. Luckily we missed the rain but the thunderstorm went on for ages! The sky was lighting up pink! It was really nice! Jungle storms!

We had an early night and caught up on some of our shows on you tube!