การเดินทาง: Kuala Tahan, Malaysia

Welcome to the Jungle January 1 2012

After an exciting stint in the big city of Kuala Lumpur, I decide to do a 180 and go to the Malaysian jungle. Had I done it all over, I would have given myself another day to recover after the festivities of the prior night, but I seize the day. I need to get to a small town called Kuala Tahan which is the closest town to the jungle, but I’m not sure exactly how to get there. I know I need to take the metro to a bus station, then take a bus to Jarentut, and then somehow find another bus to Kuala Tahan. I don’t know the bus times for all this, but you get good at winging it out here after awhile, so I wing it.

I take the metro with no problems to the bus station. The bus station is kind of a hodgepodge of different buses and little booths with destinations on them, sometimes handwritten. There are small hawker stalls selling drinks and snacks. I walk up and down the rows with a focused concentration like I‘m trying to solve a Sudoku puzzle or something. I don’t see a sign on anyone’s booth for Jarentut. I ask one of the guys in a random booth where the bus to Jarentut is, hoping to get an English answer back. He points to a stall across the street. I buy a ticket and reconfirm a universal lesson: if you don’t know, just ask.

On the bus I glance over and see a couple of European looking folks. It appears I’m not the only one seizing the day! We arrive at Jarentut, unload from the bus, and start scanning surroundings for a bus station and an ATM. I can see the other couple is doing the same so I ask where they are going. They respond with “Kuala Tahan” and we immediately form a team. At about the same time an older Indian gentleman walks up and asks if we are going to Jarentut and offers us a cab for 70 Ringet. It seems expensive at first so we hold off. Me and Stephan walk to the closest ATM and find that it doesn’t accept our cards.
We walk back to our bags and the taxi driver says he will drop us off at a good ATM, so we do the math: 70 Ringet divided by 3 = 23 Ringet which equals about 8 dollars each to get to the ATM and our final destination.

We accept the offer and step into the ricketiest old cab I’ve ever seen. I’m talking like 1974 Toyota corolla old. I look over at the cab drivers seat belt and see that is has broken and has been reattached with a small rope. It’s loud, there’s no AC, and we drive for an hour through palm plantations as we make idle chatter until we get into the town. We pass some monkeys on the side of the road.

We then search for accommodation. After searching for awhile I stay at a pace called the Tahan Guesthouse, my two new friends want to search a bit more. We decide to meet up for dinner later.

All of the restaurants are floating on the river. You have to walk over these little bridges (read: a couple wooden boards tied together) to get to the places. The boat restaurants are tied to trees along the bank by long ropes. As the river rises and falls which can happen quite dramatically, the restaurants float up and down. It’s really cool. We choose the restaurant where the boards stay above the water so we don’t get our feet wet. The food is good, the company is better, and the atmosphere is kind of like you would expect on a floating restaurant in a jungle in Malaysia. There are long-tail boats motoring back and forth, a fisherman throws his net right next to us on the river bank, and we see a couple little kids playing in the water across the way.

During dinner, the Austrians tell me about an old guy working at their hostel who would like to take us out on a jungle trek. After dinner, we go meet him. He is an old guy, long hair, quick to smile yet serious. We learn he has been leading treks into the jungle for over 17 years. He tells us he doesn't take too many groups out anymore, only the ones he likes. I’m sure if this is a clever marketing technique or if he's being completely genuine, but we all seem to agree on the latter. We talk it over and decide that we must do this. We decide on the following itinerary:

Meet at the dock after breakfast, take a long-tail boat up the river for about an hour to a dropoff point, hike about 8 km into the jungle, sleep in a massive cave, hike back out on another loop for 8 km, and then catch another boat back to the town. Should be fun.

Floating Restaurants

Residents of the town

Elephants, Tigers, and Leeches Oh My January 2 2012, January 3 2012

Today we are hiking in the oldest rain-forest in the world at over 100 million years old. It’s older than the Amazon. There are tigers, elephants, gibbons, monkeys, pythons, leeches (more of these later), and a host of other goodies in this jungle. It rains nearly every day, it feels like a sauna, and it’s probably the craziest hiking I will ever do. In New Zealand I had no problem hiking around without a guide, but not here. Not when there are tigers and elephants I could cross paths with. No way.

We all meet up early at one of the hawker stands for breakfast. We have these banana pancake type things called Roti Canai and they are amazing. Our guide (Maan, Mahn, Man, not sure how to spell it) eats with us, gets on his motorbike with a cigarette in his mouth, and speeds off to get the supplies we need for the trek.

We pack up our food and supplies and head down to the river to meet our boat. We pile our bags into the front and get in one-by-one. We ride across the river to get a permit at the office and meet up with a boat that Maan has hired to take us into the jungle. We ride against a rapid current for about an hour. The driver maneuvers the boat around rocks and trees sticking out of the water. A couple boats ride past us in the other direction and I learn that even in a Malaysian jungle it is proper etiquette to wave and smile to the other boats. I’m not exactly sure why people are so friendly when they get on a boat. Perhaps it’s an acknowledgement that they are in the same club, the in-group for those psychology students. Perhaps boats are just fun and everyone is in a good mood on them.

Here are the highlights:
Leeches are everywhere. Mud is everywhere. Water is everywhere. It’s hot, and sweat pours off you constantly. Everything stays wet, and you are in a jungle…a serious jungle.

First, you try to avoid the mud, calculating every step and placing your foot carefully. Then at some you realize it’s a losing battle and just tromp through it.

The guide points out different plants as we go. Some have medicinal uses, some will kill you. Some turn colors when exposed to sunlight, some have spikes, some can be used as cups, and some can be used as jungle drums.

We see a giant centipede, the guide pulls it off the tree, lets us play with it for awhile. It feels weird to have over 100 tiny legs crawling on you.

We find a jungle vine and play tarzan for awhile.

We get to the cave and it’s huge! It’s massive! We all laugh at the sheer craziness of it. It looks like someone hollowed out a mountain. Parts of it must have been 5 or 6 stories high. This is our home for the night.

Our guide starts a fire with the wood we gather. It serves as our stove and campfire.

We go to wash up in a nearby stream before dinner. It feels amazing to wash the mud and blood off. I’m still bleeding from a couple of leeches who had taken a liking to me. When they bite they inject an anti-coagulant and a pain killer. This basically means you can’t feel them bite and you bleed profusely when you pull them off. I see little jets of blood flowing from my leg into the clear jungle water. I trust my immune system to handle whatever microorganisms the jungle has to offer.

Back at the cave at sunset, we see hundreds of bats flying out of the cave opening. They are going out to hunt just as we are about to start dinner; vegetable soup and chicken curry with rice. It was delicious.

After dinner we go back to the stream at dark to wash stuff, and go to the bathroom. All three of us go together which provides only a false sense of safety. If a tiger wanted to get one of us, there’s not a damn thing we could do about it. We wouldn’t hear it or see it until it is too late. The jungle is too thick. We joke about the tigers getting one of us the entire trip.

At some point in the night I hear one of our pots clanking around. I’m not sure if I’m just really tired or if I just don’t want to see the animal on the other end of this racket, but I ignore it for awhile. Finally everyone wakes up and turns of the flashlights to find a giant porcupine eating the leftovers. It’s not far away.

To say I got very little sleep would be an understatement. Sleeping on a hard cave floor with only a thin mat makes it impossible to get comfortable. I toss and turn all night.

We have coffee and toast in the morning over the fire. Maan tells us about the trees, animals, life in Malaysia, politics, superstitions, and everything in between. He is a character. He tells us one story where he was guiding a couple of Dutch women on the same route we were taking. They get to the cave, it rains hard the entire night, and everyone has to swim across parts of the trail because everything was flooded the next day. This would have been an adventure.

Hiking out of the jungle, we follow some elephant tracks. Maan seems to think they have been here a couple days ago. No actual elephants though.

Hiking out of the jungle, we cross an aboriginal campground. Maan tells us that they have left quite awhile ago to hunt in different areas of the jungle. No actual aboriginals though.

We stop at a river for lunch. Maan tells us about the crazy parasites he has caught in the jungle. I look over to see Stephan swimming naked in the river as I’m bleeding from both legs after pulling off more leaches. Jesus.

At one point the jungle starts to beat me. I’ve been sweating profusely for 2 days, my shoes are unrecognizable from all the mud caked to them, my feet are wet, I’ve been fighting off leeches for the past two days, I’m bleeding, I’m dirty, I’m out of water, I’ve gotten about an hour of sleep total, and I just want to get the hell out of the jungle.

We finally reach our pickup point. It feels absolutely great to take my shoes and socks off to clean the mud off in the river. Splashing some cool water in my face is also a winner. As our spirits are lifting we hear the din of a motor boat getting closer and closer. It’s our ride out! I put my shoes on soaking wet but it was such an improvement from before that it was like putting socks on hot from the dryer. The boat ride was great, the first shower was great, and sleeping in a bed was great. Everything in this world is relative.

Trust me you’re not a real man until you trekked through the jungle.