A word from Jordan on the trip to Taman Negara

Azli explaining our walk to us



The 'intro' to the canopy walk




Guess what this is!



RIING.

RIINNNNNG.

Even though I was foretold of the fact that we were leaving for Taman Negara, the famed rainforest national park, at 6:00, my head was telling me it’s just another early wake-up-its-time-for-school; but after we drove out of Kuala Lumpur, it was quite clear that this was no school day. The lush green hardwood trees, the enormous Batu caves, even that smell that just represents Malaysia (a combination of durians, sweat, nasi lemak and anything else interesting around). In five minutes we stopped for a packed breakfast of peanut butter and caya sandwiches. If you haven’t tried caya, it is coconut jam and I am excited to say that we will bring some back for you to try!

 Besides this, managing a pill of Gravol down my throat, getting lost at one point, and finding a stinky rubber plantation where we saw latex drip into pails (very much like the sap of a maple tree), the trip was quite uneventful. That is, the 3-hour car trip. The 3-hour boat trip is a whole different story...

I would have thought that such a bouncy boat trip in a long wooden boat would keep you awake, but I am surprised to say that I was out quickly. When I woke up, I was being offered a Malaysian equivalent of banana chips and after the usual “are-we-there-yet?” and “how-much-longer?”, I found out that I had slept for half the ride. From there I took out my handy GAMES magazine and spent the rest of the trip battling a diagramless crossword.

It was quite obvious when we were ‘there’ because up until now, there had been no signs of life except the longboat that we occupied, so seeing tiny wooden cafés floating on the murky river was quite interesting. We got off with the other tourists into the floating restaurant and after a couple minutes of listening to the ‘boss’ orient us, we were told to get back on, but just our family. It seemed alright to me and later it was confirmed as we neared a different floating café. We met our guide, Azli, and he politely showed us where we were supposed to go. By now we were all quite tired so I think it’s fair to say that I was relieved when we took a truck to spare us a 15 minute walk (which would have been 20 minutes lugging our packs) in the burning heat and humidity.

The Rainforest Resort had a silly name (I mean, come ON. Rainforest? Umm...) but was nonetheless beautiful, with each individual room a house on a ‘street’(our street was the national flower, bougainvillea). THAT was cool for I felt like I was living temporarily in a rainforest village.

Entering the house was ecstasy. Have you ever been lying in the desert all day only to enter an oasis at night? I haven’t, but that should be the equivalent of stepping into that air conditioned room. Because of all the travelling and the fact that we were going on a night walk later on made us lay low and watch Manchester United vs. Chelsea (for those of you who care, Manchester won 2-1).

Dinner was superb, but the real highlight for me was the night walk. Sounds boring, but hiking in the jungle, not really protected and other than the guide you are alone is quite the thought. Azli, the awesome 22-year-old who helped us throughout our stay, found so many interesting animals (such as big black scorpions) for us; I thought he would spot a clouded leopard or tiger ‘just for us’!

We got back at around 10:00, so there wasn’t much talking to do. We were all tired from the walk but I thought one last thing as I fell asleep: if we do more of the stuff that we did tonight, tomorrow, I want to go to Malaysia next year...