of adventures, ice-creams, and hepaiz-es

Finally, an update on the taman negara trip. Am actually very lazy to blog in detail, but still, i need to produce a report for imu (15 pages apparently) which i've no idea of how to do.

SO! Those who went with me were... min and york xiong. Yes, it was hard to convince my parents for permission to go.

Journey there - Met the guys in pasar seni station around 7 in the morning then walked to mandarin pacific hotel, where the bus was going to depart from. After a 3-hour ride the bus stopped at jerantut for lunch, then resumed another 1/2 an hour journey to kuala tembiling, where the jetty is situated. And due to a tiny glitch, we ended up taking the jeep to taman negara instead of the boat. The jeep ride was extremely bumpy and jolty, but we reached kuala tahan nevertheless, and it was another rm1 boat ride there to mutiara resort.

River crossing. 1.00 cent. wah!

The signboard which greeted us at the mutiara resort jetty.

Mutiara resort, taman negara - The resort looked okay, and wild boars, monitor lizards and monkeys were left to roam freely even within the perimeters of the resort. It took us some time to locate our room, and it was after few more strides along the pavement, laden with our bags, that we finally got to it. Our intial reaction: appalled, and say, disappointed to be given such a room. Uhh, i just can't pretend being nonchalant about the rustic settings sans hot water and what, sink? What we got was a long house kindda thing, which is separated into 2 massive rooms, that has a public-like toilet separated from the long house itself. And the rooms were veryy dirty and dusty. AND the toilet was an eye-sore. We don't even have a sink and a mirror that we've to brush our teeth using the shower itself. Accomodation was free by the way, i wasn't expecting much either. Anyway, it was only after we cleaned the room thoroughly, discarded unwanted furniture, and got ourselves clean blankets and bed spreads that the place finally looked habitable. It's the toilet which was the major letdown for me. During the night, there'll always be moths and all sorts of other creepy crawlies inside, and i've an inexplainable phobia for them. Each time i enter, i tend to remain stilted on the same position for a few minutes, observing the surroundings and scruntinizing every little movement of the insects. And it's only when the coast is clear that i could proceed with whatever that is that i wanted to do ;)

Do you know that you can actually experience close encounters with some of the friendly residents of taman negara just in front of your door step here?

That whole building was ours to live in.

Our room.

Places to go. Who the heck wants to trek 19.6 km? I know, everyone but me.

Meals - We had frugal breakfasts every morning, eating only cream crackers with jam. Whereas lunches and dinners were spent in kuala tahan. Malay food mostly, some of them were good, one of them particularly sucked big time as portions were too greasy and... bland. Argh, not that i love being fussy but my food has to be palatable. Anyway, i think right now i've gotten jelak of them. There were many times when min decided to skip lunch (he must have had a hunger bypass operation or something like that), and even attempted to influence us with his anorexic talk. huh! oOh, and we had LOTs of ice-creams.

There were many floating restaurants lining the river which serve to cater the influx of tourists. And you'll need to negotiate a narrow plank walkway to get to and from the shore.

Jungle trekking + canopy walkway + bukit teresek hike - Ah, i was fine until we finished the canopy walkway, which was when the lethargy kicked in and pretty much waned my confidence (wait, was there any at the first place?). My lungs were burning, my feet were smarting and on the way to the crest of the hill i felt sick and dizzy. I've been trudging for what seemed like hours, but that bloody mountain went on forever. And every time i thought i must have got to the top, i saw another peak rising up in front of me. Gasp... it was a relief to have finally gotten to the peak, and the view wasn't bad. Well ok, to be very honest the scenery here's quite typical, nothing too special. I wasn't entirely floored by it, and didn't give two hoots about the scenary when i got to the peak initially. Could see folds of hills at the distance and all are over-shadowed by the tahan mountain - a stark, jagged outline against the blue sky. And... leeches! They were there, even if we didn't see them at first. The ones we encountered in taman negara are really quite small - a couple of inches long, and about the thickness of a bootlace. Tiny fact which i got from the net: they have suckers at both ends, and they use one end to attach themselves to leaves on bushes or forest debris on the ground. The other end waves around in the air waiting for a victim to pass. And it's true, if you're not prepared, they can ruin the pleasure of a hike since we were constantly on the lookout for them on our legs, arms and socks. I even found one on my leg but managed to get it flicked off before it started feeding.

Taman negara has lots of well-marked treks and at times, metal staircases to ease your trekking woes. Most of the tracks are do-able and shouldn't challenge the average urbanite (unlike me) too much.

Suspended by a web of ropes, wires, cables and wooden planks along the treetops, it is the longest crossing of its kind, spanning 470 meters long and 40 meters off the ground.

As you can see, it's not for the chickens as it's not vertigo-friendly at all.

From yx's 5 meter collection. Once you've gotten up the first platform, visitors are required to walk one after another and to maintain a distance of 5m apart.

la la la. The planks actually swayed lightly to the tune of every steps that we've made and at this level of elevation, this can be rather unnerving.

It's quite fun, at least if you don't have problems with acrophobia.

We sweated buckets in that humid jungle sauna.

The view on bukit teresek. Looks like one of window xp's wallpaper.

Orang asli settlement + cave exploration - At the orang asli settlement we had an insight into one of malaysia's aboriginal people, and were shown around by the batin (the head of the clan?). While we crowd around to gawk at what's being demonstrated, the batin showed us how they start a fire etc etc (wasn't being attentive :p). It was quite an insightful visit although i felt i was intruding into their privacy. Yup, not only were we peeking around their private houses, we were looking at the natives as though they were animals on display. But what the heck, at least trying the sumpit (blowpipe) was fun. After all that, we trailed another 1km or so until we reached gua telinga. It was pitch dark inside. There were stretches where we had to squat, climb, crawl, slide and slither through narrow claustrophobic passages filled with squishy bat guano (ew!). Gua telinga is an accident waiting to happen. Some places need more than just agility to get you through, and you have to know how to push your butt up some passageways. Besides fighting off my fears in the dark cave, i also had to be careful on the slippery stones. Every step taken had to be very very careful. Was more concerned about getting out the cave in one piece, and i actually felt this ridiculous tweak of anxiety and trepidation as i envisioned myself slipping off a rock or something. Practically hung tightly onto every rock or rope i could grip as though i'm balanced on the forty-fourth floor ledge. oh, forgot to mention that we had a snake encounter inside the cave too. It was our guide who first spotted it in the waters and it resulted in us scuttling away to safer grounds. While it is also fun, exploring the tiny cave can be dangerous for you if you share the same body shape as... Now i'm sounding a little discriminative. Not joking you know, if you're... plus-sized you might get trapped under a rock crevice and feed on bat droppings for the rest of your life, hehe. When daylight was finally noticeable and i came out unscratched, i felt a huge whoosh of relief.

Journey there. All excited.

That's the batin briefing us.

Min trying the sumpit. I tried also! But no picture. wuu~

At the entrance of gua telinga.

Bats!

Journey back. All sweaty and yucky.

Lubok simpon - Other than lata berkoh (which we didn't get to go), the only other swimming hole in taman negara is lubok simpon. We took a short 15 minutes walk from mutiara resort on a well-marked path... and voila, a shallow pool filled with cold water. I think i enjoyed this part of the trip the most. As it wasn't strenuous at all, and all we did was swam :)

Yup we're on a sinking canoe. It's just min's pathetic attempt to ape a national geographic shot.

With min.

With york.

Woodlands resort - After having to endure all the um, hardships dwelling in the foc accomodation, and having such unbearable yearning for the comforts of home, we decided to pamper ourselves to the amenity of living in a chalet. So on saturday, we moved to woodlands resort, bringing only clean clothes which were needed for the 3 days stay. We got the junior suite for rm 252 per night (after 40% discount). Well, the room's quite clean plus there's hbo channel whereby we can catch some blockbuster movies while resting in the room. And there's a swimming pool too! But unfortunately for me my goggles snapped right before my first dip so i wasn't looking forward to swim anymore.

They're so gay.

Free time - Most often in the hotel time was spent either sleeping (70%), playing uno cards, watching dvd (yx brought his laptop), or trying to scare each other with ghost stories. It was ju-on which freaked us out most, but there were times when our lurid jokes left us bursting into peals of laughter.

Rapid shooting - This wasn't anything very challenging as all we had to do was just sit inside the boat while the boatman cruises the it. It's almost similar to sunway lagoon's niagara falls flume ride and we were all prepared to get drenched. Yeap, this was where we were met with seven distinct sections of white water rapids which got us all bloody wet. And to make things more exciting, the boatmen would race against one another :)

Journey home - We decided to pay and take the boat ride home just for the experience. Well, it was more like a jungle cruise on a pod-shaped motor boat from kuala tahan to the kuala tembiling jetty. The journey was fun initially, offering some nice scenery along the tembeling river, but it's long (2 hours). And you get off the boat with your butt totally numb and your back stiffer than a board. When we finally reached mandarin pacific hotel, i decided to just hail a cab and get straight home instead of taking the train.

A view on the boat. You'll also get to see monitor lizards doing the breast-stroke in the river.

I came home with bruises all over my legs, and itchy scratchy red blothies everywhere which i assumed are mosquito bites. It turned out to be an adventurous trip and i loved the slumber party feel. Though the accomodation was spartan, yes, we were laughing our heads off, never mind if we were in a room that had dust everywhere and a stinky loo. We shot the rapids, went into a claustrophobic bat cave and polished off all their droppings on our trackbottoms and hands. Yeah, it was definately an experience.