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Taman Negara was wonderful. The trees were amazingly tall and we hiked around enjoying the fresh air and lush greenery. The jungle was humid and hot, but surprisingly fully of life considering we were hiking the well-trodden paths near the resort. Taman Negara is said to be a 130 million year old primary forest.
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To get to Taman Negara, we took a small boat for about 3 hours. |
a mother and child at the river |
floating restaurants at Kuala Tahan, across from Taman Negara |
two women chat |
the river taxi cross from Kuala Tahan to Taman Negara |
the entrance to the park |
| While hiking around in the Taman Negara rain forest, we saw a lot of interesting flora and fauna. |
a butterfly rests on a climbing rope |
Zac pauses at a large tree |
A monitor lizard scurries past |
weird plant |
check out these strange leaves |
this is a type of palm tree |
the ants were huge |
we saw plenty of monkeys |
a lizard |
blue fern |
a stand of bamboo |
poisonous centipede |
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We went on the canopy walk which was suspended 40 meters above ground. It was fun and creeky, but we didn’t see any wild life up there.
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It also rained, as it should in every good rain forest. The problem with the rain was that the leeches came out the next day. Our faithful guide book had warned us about this, but I didn’t see how leeches could really be a threat. But now I know. They stuck their heads up looking for my blood. As we fled through the forest, they crawled on our shoes and we flicked them off as we went.
When we finally got to the stream and took our socks and shoes, I discovered one on my sock, and Zac had one under his sock, already bloating with the fresh blood. Zac went and asked a nearby boat guide for his cigarette lighter to get the leech off. When that didn’t have an immediate affect, the guide put his cigarette ash on the leech, and it quickly let go. So we are now survivors of a leech attack. Don’t underestimate the threat.
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a leech fills up on Zac’s blood |
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After Taman Negara, we headed back to Jeruntut. We had already bought a train ticket to Singapore (air conditioned express train with beds) which left at the ridiculous time of 2:20 am. After Singapore, we came back to Malaysia and spent a few days in Melaka before flying home from Kuala Lumpur.
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