Livin' with the Orang Asli

Long time no post, again! What can I say, I've been crawling under big workload and also I'm a bit lazy... But for those who where wondering about me, good news is I survived the Taman Negara.

Taman Negara is the main national park of peninsular Malaysia. This 4,500 sq. km wild area has been established about a century ago in order to preserve the untouched rain forest of Malaysia: this forest is 130 million years old and hosts some endangered species like the Indochinese Tiger, the Sumatran Rhinoceros, the Malayan Gaur (seladang), the Asian Elephant and the mahseer fish. On top of that, Taman Negara is a perfect place to watch a crowd of colorful birds like the horn bill (my favorite one, it woke us up every morning with its unique fireman siren noise)... Really a nice place, and two thumbs up for Malaysian authorities for the effort they put in preserving the rain forest (unfortunately, that is really not the case in many other places where tourism incomes take over nature preservation).

This trek was among the most memorable treks I ever did. After a looooonnng drive (traffic jam because of Chinese New Year), we finally made it to the Taman Negara. I give credit to Minh, Sandrine, Audrey and Sam (yes, you counted 4 heads) for being cramped on the rear seat of the car during 5 hours with almost no complaining! (yes, traveling on a budget...)

The first view of the park was a bit surprising: having traveled across USA and having enjoyed most of the gorgeous American national parks, I was expecting a huge parking lot with rows of RVs, big park headquarter with plenty of information booth, camping gear stores, hotels, etc... Well actually when we arrive we saw some guest houses, some food stalls installed on floating barges and that's pretty much it!! Cool :-)

We spent the rest of the afternoon checking for a good guide and working with him on the best itinerary. We made it clear that we wanted to go as deep as possible in the rain forest, as far as possible from the so touristy "canopy walk". Well, our guide clearly understood that we wanted adventure, lack of comfort, loneliness, etc...

The next morning we left early and boarded in a very thin dugout for a 3 hours trip upstream the river. I still wonder how come we didn't end up in the river, eaten by piranhas... Congrats to the dugout driver! We had a chance to see some Orang Asli (native people of Malaysia, still leaving in the jungle).

We made it to Kuala Keniam on the far North of the park. As soon as the dugout driver dropped us, we knew that the only way out of the jungle was to walk three days along the elephants path to reach kuala Tahan. This was the non-return point! The walk was very intense. Imagine a thick jungle, a constant moist heat, a swamped path, occasional heavy rain, bugs, hungry leeches (those are the worst of all). But don't give me wrong, in spite of all that I really enjoyed it, we had fun!

And the first night by itself was worth all the pain: we slept in a cave. A really impressively big cave. The kind of cave in which you totally imagine a tribe of prehistoric people living there decades ago. It felt really weird to be in such a place, so surrealistic in the middle of a wild jungle. We made a fire, made some drawings on the walls (just kiddin' for the latter). It would be perfect place except for the bats: I didn't realize at first because the ceiling is like 50m high, but it is packed with bats. And at night time, bats shit... Just on you when you feel asleep after a long long hike day... Not only the idea of bats dropping on you is disturbing, but also when this dried feces hits you after a 50m fall, it really hurts!!!

The second night was a bit less fun: we fought with rats all night long. And by rats I mean monster rats. The kind of rats that look more like a dog. There where looking after our food, and even hanging the backpacks didn't solve the issue because those clever things found a way to climb along the rope. We basically spent the night round robining to chase them with our flash lights.

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