Taman Negara

So after a relatively comfortable overnight train from Bangkok to the border with Malaysia, I spent a couple days recovering in the city of Kota Bahru.

From there I took the famed jungle train through the interior of Peninsula Malaysia. Both coasts are the main populated areas with the mountainous/ jungle packed interior being far less populated. Right in the center is a national park, Taman Negara, that boasts to contain the oldest rain forest in the world.


The jungle train lasted all day and dropped me off in Jerantut, a small city near the park. Here I stocked up on essentials since I was intending to spend a few nights in the jungle. So I bought a bunch of water, instant noodles which I intended to eat cold, and peanut butter and a loaf of bread. I also had a strange and a little creepy encounter with a man at the grocery store.

The next morning I took an early local bus before dawn to Kuala Tahan, the village at the entrance to the park. Before the ride I met an enthusiastic group of five 30 somethings from Kuala Lumpur coming to the park to spend three days fishing.

Upon arriving, and after catching a few more hours of sleep in a dorm overlooking the river that separates the park from Kuala Tahan, I took a ferry across and booked a couple nights in the park. There a few trails leading to different places, and I booked the furtherest hide away that didn't require a guide. A hide, in this case, is a freestanding stilted wood hut that is set in the jungle near water sources or salt licks and is used by tourists to view wildlife. I also booked one close to the park HQ for a second night.

After making my plans starting the next day, I took a short hike into the jungle to get a sense. There is a popular "Canopy Walk" that takes the visitor high into the trees, and across bridges in between the tree tops overlooking the jungle and river more than 100 feet in the air! It was a pretty cool experience, especially since I somehow avoided the lines and was basically there alone.

Treetop-spanning bridge.


View of the river from the Canopy Walk

After another short hike up a steep hill, I headed back to the village to rest and sleep. I felt confident that the trails were clearly signposted and dry, so I wouldn't have to deal with mud and leeches the next day. But conditions can change.

View from on top of a hill in Taman Negara. I laid my shirt out to dry, I was a little sweaty.

Although I didn't hear any rain the night before, isolated showers are common all year round in this near equatorial country and when I crossed the river and began my trek the next day I found the same path that I had taken the day before was now damp and even quite muddy in some places.

Worse still was what the wet conditions meant: leeches.

A trek through the Malaysian jungle is a unique one, at least for me. Never before had I felt like I was hiking in a sauna. The humidity was incredible, and the temperature was hovering around 80-90F. Basically within the first hour on the hilly trail my clothes were completely soaked head to toe. I looked like I had jumped into the river instead of just following its twists around. I felt like it too.

A little sweaty but enjoying myself!

A jungle-shrouded bridge.

I first discovered my little green friends after my first short sitting break about an hour and a half in. I'd had a little experience with leeches before in Nepal, so I checked my ankles. Yep, about a dozen little leeches had grabbed my passing shoes, inched their way across the leather and laces and attached to my socks around my ankles and the tops of my feet and some had successfully penetrated the layer of white cotton socks to reach the delicious smorgesbord of blood beneath. I didn't think much about it at the time, I pulled the slippery creatures off and flicked them away, and five minute later I was back on my feet and down the trail.

Lunch on my only sitting break of the day. A big mistake.

The rest of the day went this way. Every half hour I would bend over and check my ankles and feet and had to continually rip away leeches that had begun to attach themselves to my skin for a quick liquid meal. Once I felt someone on my right hamstring, and had to pull down my pants in the middle of the trail and found half a dozen leeches that had somehow journeyed all the way up my legs to reach the delicious delicacy that is my white ass. After that, I didn't sit down any more until I reached the hide.

By the time I arrived there, five hours later, I had removed nearly a hundred leeches from my body and clothes and had 25 bites on my left half alone. The great thing with leeches is that they inject a anticoagulant into the blood so it won't clot and continues to bleed for hours.

In the hide, waiting for me, was a young German guy who had studied at USC and was a good guy to converse with. I stripped off my wet clothes, attempted to dry them by hanging them out the open windows (but clothes don't dry in a sauna) and was down to my boxers with a dozen bleeding sores on my feet and legs. I had to clean up the concrete floor of small puddles of blood later.

A Czech couple joined us later- actually the girl was Slovakian- and after hours of staring out the windows at the small clearing below us had revealed no wildlife, we went to bed. The others had brought pads and sleeping bags to sleep on top of the wood plank bunks, and the German guy had a mosquito net. I brought only my small backpack, so I used it as a pillow and slept in my wet clothes. I didn't really have a problem except that I had a horrible headache that woke me up in the middle of the night and prevented me from getting much sleep. I think it was from the dehydration.

The wonderful accommodation.

The next day I followed the couple on a different path back to the headquarters and across the river to Kuala Tahan, forgoing another night in the jungle since I didn't have much food left and truthfully didn't feel like dealing with the discomfort of sleeping on wood with no pad, soaked clothes and open sores on my legs.

The young Czechoslovakian couple

Yes, I am about to ford this river.

After eating my weight in salt, and taking a much enjoyed cold shower and putting on dry clothes, I caught an afternoon local bus back to Jerantut. Also riding with me was the same group of five fishermen from KL. I thought it was cool that they remembered my name and we chatted a short while about our respective trips.

The next afternoon I caught a bus to KL where I've been since, couchsurfing with a really cool guy. I guess I am a little ashamed at not sticking it out in Taman Negara and staying the second night which I had already booked and paid for. But leeches are just not as cute as some people think they are. And because of them I had to throw away two pairs of socks and now one pair of boxers and my favorite backpacking pants have large blood stains on my legs and butt.

My blood soaked socks. Had to throw them out.

I can update my past few days in KL when I update about my impending short time in Singapore. Tomorrow I head there for a day and a half and have a bunch of couchsurfers lined up to hang out with. Then on Sunday I fly to Borneo and meet up with Adrian! I can't wait. I hope my shoes make it the rest of the trip or at least to Saigon. (They are in BAD shape. Read: duct tape.)