TAMAN NEGARA NATIONAL PARK, MALAYSIA
I’m told “Taman Negara” means “National Park,” so the full name of the park literally translates as “National Park National Park.” Perplexing, but perhaps fitting if you think of it as the park of parks. Taman Negara was, after all, Malaysia’s first national park.
The trip from the Cameron Highlands to Taman Negara National Park took five hours by bus along very good but windy roads to Jerantut plus a further two and a half hours by boat up the Tembeling River to park headquarters – basically all day. I came here because the park’s 4,340 square kilometers of rainforest jungle is the world’s oldest, dating back 130 million years. Unlike other rainforest regions of the world, Taman Negara was unaffected by the ice ages. It has existed continuously since the advent of flowers, which apparently also took place about 130 millions years ago. Modern appearing humans, by contrast, only came along about 200,000 years ago.
In Jerantut, I purchased a park permit for MYR 1 (30 cents) and a camera permit for MYR 5 ($1.50), which interestingly required me to state the make of my camera, a Panasonic, lest I do the old camera switcheroo to a Nikon midway during my stay. I then cruised up the Tembeling and settled into Rippi Hostel in Kuala Tahan just across the river from park headquarters. Dorm bunk-beds at Rippi cost a mere MYR 10 ($3) a night. For MYR 70/90 (without/with AC), I could have had a room of my own nearby, but the thought of spending $3 for my night’s accommodation was just too alluring. Not since 1994 somewhere in Bolivia did I pay so little for a night’s sleep.
After checking in (upper bunk, hot sweaty room) and meeting my roommates (lower bunks, sweaty backpackers), I crossed the river to park headquarters. Although the crossing was inconsequential, costing MYR 1 (about 30 cents) and taking about a minute, it’s a whole different world at park headquarters. The restaurant is expensive (MYR 50 versus MYR 5-10 on the budget side) and accommodation is crazy expensive (starting at MYR 90 for a dorm bed!). I signed up for the night walking tour and at 8:45 p.m. Ranger Lee gathered us up, torches illuminated, and we headed off into the jungle.
The jungle at night is alive with, well, mostly bugs, big bugs. They are so big in fact that when you shine your flashlight at them, their eyes glow red. They are practically animal-sized. The walking sticks were the most interesting of the bunch and are the largest insects in the world, growing to 30cm (about a foot long). They appear as twigs with twig-like legs or, if you prefer, like stick people without stick people heads. If the guide had not been present to point them out, I’d have missed them. The females are quite a bit larger than the males. We came upon a copulating couple: she was about six inches long, he about four inches, and he was resolutely “sticking” it to her. Our guide informed us they would maintain this position for three weeks and then the female would eat the male. I think he meant literally.
We spotted a great many other critters along the trail, including several very large spiders, one a mildly venomous huntsman spider, plus some albino-appearing snails, and lots of beetles and butterflies. The only big animals we saw were some sambar deer feeding at a distance. OK, the sights were not all that thrilling, but the sounds of the jungle at night were an amazing cacophony.
Despite my sweaty surroundings, I slept well and checked out of Rippi the next morning. I provisioned myself and set out on an eight-kilometer hike to Kumbang Hide where I would spend the night. The hides in the national park are concrete and wood “cabins” set on 20- to 30-foot stilts reached by a concrete stairway up to a single doorway (but no door). The hides contain nothing but wooden bunk beds (no mattresses), so you have to carry in your own camping mattress (I rented one for MYR 5 or about $1.50). A night in a hide will set you back MYR 5 plus countless buckets of sweat to get there. I brought 4.5 liters of water and sports drinks weighing about, well, 4.5 kilograms – that’s the beauty of the metric system – (or 10 lbs) and still it was not enough. In the hot, humid jungle, I sweated like I’ve never sweated before.
I was fortunate to have my Rippi roommate, Wilko from the Netherlands, walking with me. The eight-kilometer hike felt like 20. Each kilometer normally would take me 12-15 minutes to hike, but with the hot and humid jungle, the pack, the jungle growth and debris and mud, and the ravines – the cursed ravines! – I was averaging 30-minute kilometers and drinking half a liter of fluids each kilometer. Each ravine – we crossed more than a dozen of them – was a steep (about 70 degrees), muddy descent to a small stream followed by a steep, muddy ascent on the other side. Each made me curse my pack, curse my 10 pounds of drinks, curse my mattress, my first-aid kit, my food for dinner, the damn book I brought to read, and especially curse the topographic-less map I was using.
Along the way, there was lots of slipping and sliding and me grabbing tree branches and hanging vines. After one such grab, I felt a stinging pain on the side of my palm just below my right pinky. I looked and saw a bunch of crushed spiders and their angry relatives plunging their pincers into me. I must have grabbed a nest of them. The family was understandably upset. I hoped they weren’t huntsmen as I soldiered on.
About two-thirds of the way in, we came to a settlement containing bamboo huts. I could see children playing and called out “hello” to them, but they didn’t understand English. A woman walked by, her naked breasts sagging over her chest. These were the Orang Asli people, nomadic aboriginals living off the land as they have for centuries. With no way to communicate and not wishing to disturb (or upset) them, we quickly moved on. A few hundred meters further along, we came upon one of their abandoned settlements. It seemed they moved from place to place, leaving their old settlements to decay and fertilize the land.
Close to the end of the trek, we stopped at the old park headquarters at Kuala Terenggan. There, the decrepit cabins of a prior era sat rotting – roofs collapsing and overgrown with jungle flora. It seemed the perfect setting for a slasher film, with dense jungle all around, a long staircase (great for a chase scene) leading down to a dilapidated riverside dock, and civilization nearly a day’s hike away. We took the long stairs down and went for a swim in the river. Of course I was already wet, drenched head to toe in sweat. By the time I reached the hide, I had already consumed four of my four and a half liters of fluid. And I still needed to get out of the hide the next day.
Nine people found their way to the hide that evening; it slept twelve. The reason we were at the hide was to see wild animals. The hide had no windows per se, just a long horizontal slit in the wall with a bench below so people could sit with their flashlights and binoculars and wait. According to the notice board at park headquarters, the prior night occupants of this hide had seen monkeys, bears, and barking deer. I really wanted to see, or at least hear, a barking deer. What would it sound like, a Great Dane or a Chihuahua?
Since dusk was when the animals came out, we sat around under the hide sharing our snacks and dinners with each other and playing cards as we waited for sundown. Unfortunately, with the fading sun came a distant crack of thunder announcing the arrival of a deluge. We retreated to the hide, where “hive” would have been a better name; about a dozen enormous mutant bees orbited continuously making giant buzzing sounds, landing on our clothes and especially our faces. No one was stung, but the constant oversized buzzing was disconcerting.
We sat at the long slit in the hide like happy-hourers at a bar after a particularly depressing day at the office. We watched and waited, but saw little more than raindrops and large bugs flying into our headlamps and faces. The sound of raindrops hammering the corrugated metal roof drowned out the buzzing of the bees. The only other critter I saw was an inch-long leech on my foot. I let him go, which was probably a mistake, as they move quite fast, and within moments he was gone. To where, I know not. Probably back into my shoe.
As we gave up on the animals and headed to bed, the rain continued to pound, rendering it difficult to sleep. I was asleep by about 10, but then awoke at 3 a.m. and couldn’t fall asleep again. The hides are not designed for comfort, and the mattress I carried in was just too thin for comfortable sleep.
The next morning, I started my hike out at about 8:30 a.m. The other hikers were continuing along a different trail, another 10 kilometers or something. I knew I couldn’t follow them or return the way I had come with practically no water remaining, so I set off alone back to Kuala Terenggan, the former park headquarters by the river just two kilometers away. Just two kilometers – no problem. There I could flag down a boat to carry me downstream to park headquarters, stores, restaurants, civilization.
By 9 a.m., I was drenched in sweat and had less than half a liter of water remaining (although I also carried a small bottle with a built-in water filter that I could fill from the river in an emergency). After a kilometer of walking, I came to a sign that read “Kuala Terenggan, 3 km.” I had walked in the wrong direction! No, I thought, was not going to get lost in the Malaysian jungle. I began thinking of Jim Thompson, the famous American silk magnate who went for a walk in 1967 in the Cameron Highlands and was never heard from again, and decided I was not in favor of disappearances.
And then other thoughts toyed with my imagination: Wild elephants, tigers and bears were known to inhabit the jungle here. I picked up a bamboo stick and began to whittle it to a fine point with my pocket knife. Like bamboo was going to pierce a thick hide! The sound of the jungle seemed to grow louder in my isolation, almost as if it were closing in around me. I walked back towards the hide and about halfway there I found the turnoff for Kuala Terenggan that I had missed. To my relief, about 40 minutes later I was back at the dilapidated cabins of Kuala Terenggan and descended the long stairs to the isolated riverfront.
There I sat, not a soul in sight or sound, just the river and all those imagined elephants, tigers, bears and psychotic murderer lurking among the old cabins. About 20 minutes later, a completely empty long boat rounded the bend from upriver. I blew my whistle (nerdy but effective), waved a few ringgits (25 to be precise), and the boat picked me up. I sighed as I sank into my cushioned seat, the wind on my drenched face and clothes a refreshing and welcome sensation.
* * *
That afternoon, I met up with Wilko at the Nusa Holiday Village about 15 minutes upstream from park headquarters, but an entirely different world. Nusa sat perched in grand isolation above the Tembeling River – clean but old, like a school camp from the 1960s. Again, the dorm beds cost just MYR 10 (about $3) per night, but the atmosphere was much nicer than the hustle and bustle of being “in town” at Kuala Tahan. Malaysian families, not backpackers, seemed to prefer this place, judging from the people settled in the restaurant overlooking the river.
Wilko was a natural naturalist. Although that was not his profession, he had an eye for spotting nature, such as the flutter of a hundred butterflies sitting by the river. We observed how the more ornate butterflies flew away as we drew near, while the ones that looked like leaves, green or yellow, simply froze in place. Each species was drawn to the same place, but each had adapted different defense mechanisms based on their appearance, or different appearances based on their responses to predators. We also did another night walk through the jungle. Wilko was better at spotting wildlife – again, mostly spiders and walking sticks – than our paid guide.
The next day, Wilko set off to a hide and then to climb a mountain. Me, I had sweated away enough electrolytes for one trip. I took the short boat ride to park headquarters, then the two-hour boat ride to Jerantut, and finally the four-hour bus ride to Kuala Lampur. Two days later I took a bus to Singapore and then caught an AirAsia flight to Kuching in Malaysian Borneo.
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