I Write Whatever You Don't Like: Taman Negara The Primitive Virgin Jungle

It was really impulsive. As I've mentioned earlier. Charles called me around midnight suggesting a trip to Taman Negara which is like the second last place to travel on my travel list before Genting Highlands. Without giving much thought to it I just gave it a pass since the plan to Malacca got backfired and I didn't even have much time with me in pocket for I have to work. Anyways, according to Nicole she needs to visit as many significant places in Malaysia as possible before she headed to Australia or went back to Taiwan. As Taman Negara didn't sound very appealing to me at first, so instead of giving effort in packing stuffs, I just chuck in some very simple and ordinary items few minutes before I moved my ass afterall it was only a good 2 days 1 night.

We assembled at Mandarin Pacific Hotel before departed to Jerantut, some town in central Pahang hundred kilometers away from KL. OK, now the thing was the whole bus was full of Caucasian tourists in full equipments that it made us so tatty and unprepared. Damn siasuay can! Anyways, the journey on the bus was uneventful as I was sleep-deprived so I barely open my eyes.

Reached Jerantut around 10 am, transited to a local bus and continued with another long journey deep into a village situated at the heart of Peninsular Malaysia called Kampung Kuala Tahan. There were endless villages along the way and they all looked the same to me. After a joyride of 1.5 hours from Jerantut town. Voila, we were finally there! Checked in to our hostel chalet and started our very first adventure, jungle trekking cum cave exploring!

We were required to cross the river with sampan at first to enter the national park reserved forest area then proceeded on with a 1.5 km of trekking in jungle before the said cave visible to us. Basically the entire place was infested with foreign tourists cos I bet the locals must have preferred their weekends at shopping malls over exposure to raw sunlight. And so, the space that we were allowed to move in the cave is around half the size of us, so to say, cos it's way too narrow for adult to move at ease. Thus, a series of acrobatic poses involved where we were being forced to bend, twist, distort and melipat-lipat our bodies in order to advance ourselves. I really hate myself for not excelling in any of those Yoga-Pilates classes, well not that I really gave in much effort also but still...

After exploring the cave, we trailed another 1.5 km back to where we started and took sampan back to our chalet. We were allowed to rest for few hours before the next activity, night jungle walk! And I really wanna mention this but if you ever planning to go visit Taman Negara, please make sure you tapao food (e.g. a bucket of KFC fried chicken) from adjacent town before you found yourself here cos most of their foods taste like mixture of burned leaves and printer ink. Very terrible and the reason simply because Caucasians don't have fussy taste buds like Asians do, our foods mean more than just salt and pepper. Why are Malaysians so 'xenophilic' sometimes I wonder?

Nuff said, the night jungle walk was so-so-ish. Didn't see much nocturnal creatures except for some eerie looking spiders, scorpion, snakes and deers here and there. Oh yea, there were some glowing mushrooms that emit organic lights all over the ground which is at least something new to the few of us. But I was hoping to see tapir, rhinoceros, porcupine, pangolin and bunga rafflesia to no avail cos I suspect they are not nocturnal or camera shy. But some of them are on the verge of becoming extinct though :(

The night walk was rather monotonous and sweaty cos the weather was humid. Then there were always flocks of creepy crawlies flying around frantically, that kind where they would smack hard right into your face deliberately if you failed to siam them. Scary like mad especially those disgusting looking cicadas! They look horrible like Jurassic creatures.

After we called it a day, we settled down at a wooden platform beside the river for some chit-chattings whilst lying flat out face towards the sky pondered about many things happened in this year. During that interval, I couldn't help but feeling powerless amidst of mother nature and why do we try so hard to defy nature sometimes? What I'm trying to say is, no matter how far we go, we can never be anything but ourselves. The land can shatter anytime and as a consequence, thousands of lives will be taken along with it. We can never defeat the host we are living in which is the earth can we? Alright, so we just talked, played chor dai di and munched tit bits until wee hour under sea of stars and moonshine and finally turned in to bed.

Came the next day, we needed to crawl out of the bed at 8 am in the morning for food hunting! Cos it was very hard to find food at discretion for it's bulan ramadhan. As expected, foods are overpriced at this kinda place. A simple mediocre American breakfast in stingy portion cost us more than RM 10. Sighs. Our first event for the second day which was few hours before we headed back to 'civilization' was rapid shooting. Interesting as it may sound but it was merely sailing the engined sampan upstream against the river flow so that it can cause collision with water in order to make us wet out of earthbound water splash. Later on we went to an aborigines settlement to experience their stone age living cultures, reminds me of what I did for Anthropology fieldwork during my first semester at Kampung Pangsun, Hulu Langat. The difference is probably they are of different tribes that's it. Lastly, there was a more adventurous Canopy walking. We walked on elevated suspension bridges tied between tree trunks. It was quite fun especially when the bridge will just swing and dangle around along with your weight at that height whenever you lay a step forward!

Presto and begone! Time to leave the park and back to scary civilization of KL! Journey back was sleeepy, we conked out whenever on the bus. First we took the same local bus back to Jerantut from Kampung Kuala Tahan then only to realize we had missed the last bus to KL in that town. Therefore, we took another local public bus to the bigger town, Temerloh, which took us an hour more. From Temerloh, we sorta 'chartered' a bus back to KL, cos the bus that was supposed to carry 48 passengers only being used to accommodate the 5 of us all the way out of unknown reason or the generosity of that bus operator which I forgot its name. Because, I think we would've missed all the buses back to KL there had it not been the over-friendly ticket vendor. Fortunately enough, luck was on our side even with bonus of having the privilege of enjoying chartered transport at normal communal price. Memang durian runtuh betul!

Arrived KL at 9 pm (Sunday) and marked the end of this offhanded but gratified trip. Not forgetting, burned a big hole in pocket also :( for 2 days 1 night the price we paid is exorbitant and that was already the cheapest/worthiest we could find in short of time like less than a day. Nvm la, not like I will have this kinda chance knocking everytime.

Oh yea, one thing, we never see any leeches in the jungle through out the trip as it was not wet season! It was totally the opposite of what I encountered in Sungai Chongkak few months ago with STACT's members. If you don't already know, leeches are not scary instead they have therapeutic functions like garra fish! Walao eh.