ANA AND ANDY, TAMAN NEGARA, MALAYSIA. 3rd-5th JUNE 2014.

Taman Negara

As a quick aside to any old Chris Moyles Radio One fans out there, Taman Negara fits really nicely into the tune of the Barack Obama song. Ana and I have been singing it (unsuccessfully of course) ever since we left. If you remember it, give it a try and let us know how it goes. Oh, and Nick Grimshaw sucks.

We left the Cameron Highlands and descended back into the hot house that is peninsular Malaysia. Hopped onto a bus to Jerantut, a small town where we were due to switch to an onward boat to take us into the heart of Taman Negara. Literally this means National Park in Bahasa-Malaysia but this park is no ordinary park. This place is a huge rainforest dating back over 130 million years and I was really excited after our hiking in the mossy forests of the Cameron highlands to get into the rainforest and hopefully see some cool creatures!

Tembling River in Jerantut, looks pretty cool - no swimming though or you'll get eaten...

We hadn't even started wildlife watching yet but Ana clocked this chappie hiding in a tree.

All went pretty smoothly and the bus dropped us off on time. We had a little while to wait so went and applied for our national park permits and grabbed some lunch.

I opted for a local Green curry which was really, really gross! I love green curry but this was slightly greenish salt broth, still - it passed some time!

We hopped aboard our boat, a little surprised by how small it was as it was to be our home for the next 3 hours whilst we motored upriver, but it was OK. We were sat on the floor with a pillow and using life jackets as a backrest. We were instructed to wear the jackets for the first few minutes or until we were out of sight of the departure point!

Quite a small boat for quite a long journey, still it was fun

Ana posing with our Asian travelling lifeline - Sugus. They are like chewits and we have been eating them by the kilo on long journeys!

The boat journey itself was great, the boat itself was pretty quick and low to the water so it felt quite exciting. Also we saw loads of birds on the way - at least 7 kingfishers of various types. Things are looking up for animal spotting!

We arrived bang on time into Kuala Tahan jetty which is also  the place to eat in town. The restaurants here are all floating pontoons on the river, we pulled up to the one owned by the tour operator just looking to get off and head to our pre-booked hotel.. We had also heard a lot about the arrival procedure and the program of events and tours that gets pushed as soon as you arrive so we decided to skip the initial sales pitch. One of the guys was pretty rude essentially saying that we didn't know what we were doing and we would come crawling back when we got lost. Ana ticked him off for that - nice one ;) sales pitch avoided we sought out our guesthouse (Abbotts) successfully (all on our own) and checked into our very basic but OK room for the night.

Our arrival point with the floating restaurants, this is the busy part of town! Just across the river is the start of the national park.

Taman Negara national park is actually on one side of the river. We stayed on the other side as the only accommodation in the national park itself is the extortionate (and from what we have heard not all that special) Mutiara resort whilst just over the river you are able to book yourself into a nice little guesthouse or homestay (albeit a little less glitzy) for less than a quarter of the price.

We dropped our kit, and headed out to explore the town which took all of 10 mins, it really is a small place and the only reason to come from outside is to visit the national park across the water. We grabbed some food at one of the floating  pontoons, a place called 'families' which served up some pretty good local grub with a great view along the river and across to the national park opposite. We booked onto a Jungle night walk that evening (the staff were as nice as pie now we were paying them cash - also to be fair, it was a different guy!).

Dinner at a floating restaurant - Nasi Goreng (fried rice) for me - just for a change!

We headed back to the room for a bit of a rest and came back again at 8pm with head torches at the ready - useful things to have brought and a recommended addition to any travellers backpack! 

We all boarded a boat and speeded across the quite quick flowing river in about 30 secs and spilled out the other side to meet our guide. He gave us a brief overview and the standard ' you might not see anything' warnings and off we headed for a short stroll into the very edge of the rainforest on a purpose built board walk. Initially I was a little underwhelmed as this boardwalk is part of the Mutiara resort complex and a little too sanitised for my liking. I very quickly changed my mind as we started seeing some of the creatures that had come out to keep us company for the night.

We saw snakes, some quite intimidating spiders (including the largest spider in Malaysia, the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin Malaysian Bird Eating Spider) some beautiful birds which were asleep (very bizarre being in the presence of a sleeping bird, eyes open and gripping a branch but asleep and not at all responsive to whats going on around it - almost looks fake...) all in all we saw a catalogue of creepy crawlies, some, but by no means all of which, I was able to capture on camera...

The very rare and venomous tiger-eating caterpillar. Not really but it looks cool

And a large stick insect

A real giant ant - you don't want to start getting bites from an army of these guys, each one is about 3cm long.

A sleeping bird, I think a type of kingfisher but they just look fake when they are asleep. I am assured it isn't though.

The huntsman spider - not huge but large enough thanks! This chappy will chase down it's prey.

Ana was brave enough to pose next to him and immediately after this was taken a moth came fluttering by. The spider went for it and we ran away!

I am a stick - nothing to see here, move on!

Butterfly or moth by night

Those giant ants again...

and a crested lizard chilling on a branch above us...

...directly above us!

You need to look closely here. I was not getting any closer to take this, this is the Malaysian bird eating spider taken from the bottom of the 20m tree he was half way up. If you cant see it, you can go and look for yourself!

Just hanging out in the tree waiting for something tasty to come along

The whip spider, its worth looking up - somewhere between a spider and a scorpion, it has a tail and little pincers. Quite cool and a fair size too.

This little chappy asleep in his tree. very brightly colored but he was asleep too so a beak shot only.

Ducked under this one!

Sleeping lizard

We turned back at a hide built onto the boardwalk after spending a few minutes inside and I was now very grateful for the 8 inches clearance between my feet and the hordes of glistening little insects and arachnid eyes reflecting my torchlight form the forest a few feet away. Hanging around at the back of the group was quite an unnerving experience in the dark, I soon caught up! 

The following morning we headed back to the floating restaurants for a slap up banana pancake breakfast and hopped onto a boat ourselves to cross the river and explore under our own steam. It isn't recommended that you go too far into the rainforest on your own as you will get lost/eaten or strung up from a tree, and besides there are some lovely tours that you only need to take a small mortgage out for so why not go on one of those?

Good brekkie next day. starting to wake me up I think.Served with Tea Tarik or 'pulled tea' stewy and strong but served with condensed incredibly sweet milk. Unhealthy but tasty.

Being the intrepid explorers we are now we decided we could head in a little way - besides, the outer trails are well marked and on the way into the forest there is a canopy walkway set up for you to see what is going on 40 metres up in the trees as well as what is happening on the ground.

So off we marched along and very well marked path with boards and steps all the way - feeling a little over protected now the terrors of last night are forgotten in the daylight. It was a steep climb and quite hard work in the heat but very soon we came to the start of the canopy walkway just before it opened in the morning - to arrive before the guided tours clog up the one person at a time route.

We were amongst the first people admitted and walked around the half of the walkway that was open (the other half was closed for repairs) the trees themselves are pretty amazing, but we didn't see too much of the wildlife that high up. Still it was fun and we both enjoyed the adventure playground experience of having the high walkways to ourselves!

Foresty fungus - easy to capture on camera!

Ana trying to be a tree!

A large centipede. As I leant in to take this a local warned me not to get too close. A bite from one of these is very painful.

The start of the canopy walkway, quite a fun network of rope bridges - don't get stuck in a queue.

Canopy selfie

Before the going gets tough - smiley and not sweaty, it won't last!

The canopy was pretty interesting and the views down were pretty cool, sometimes up to 40m down to the floor.

Not a lot of wildlife to be seen from here but a beautiful place nonetheless.

I think Ana may be getting tired of me after so long travelling together!

After the walkway we hiked further up the path to hear a strange noise in the trees followed by something nearly falling on us. On closer inspection it was a woodpecker burrowing into a tree trunk and we were in the line of fire of the bits of tree.

This chap was great to watch, other than being showered in debris from 10m up!

We hung around here for a little while and watched the little guy at work with his bright red head and black body, it must have a very strong neck as it looks incredible painful! Whilst we were here I spotted a small bright green spider - tiny really which looked like it had caught a fly. Not sure why I had a closer look but something was not quite right. It turned out there was a death struggle in progress on a tiny scale so Ana and I watched with morbid fascination as the small fly flipped the spider over on its back and one by one bit off 6 of its back legs leaving only 2 at the front then grasped the spider in its own legs and flew away with it. That was pretty weird, like watching an Attenborough documentary. I dont know what happened to the spider but I bet it wasn't nice....

After our little docu-moment we continued along the path and further up the hill into the forest arriving at the end of the well defined trail and bumped into some other tourists on this well trodden route.

View from the top of the hill was pretty cool

Intrepid explorer has climbed some stairs!

Ready for anything - we plunged into the rainforest on the other side of the hill

Cool twisty vines, they are everywhere and make you feel like your in a Disney movie sometimes.

Proof we made it to the top of Bukit Terisek, wherever that is...

After a quick rest stop, we were feeling adventurous so carried on over the top of the hill and descended into a much thicker canopy with a rope marking the pretty treacherous descent although the path was still quite clearly marked. We carried on into the thicker forest for maybe 45 minutes before deciding it was time to turn around and head back. We didn't get anywhere near real wilderness in the park but it was pretty amazing to see nonetheless

We returned to our side of the river and got back to the guesthouse as a torrential rainstorm started, it was very brief and we chose to duck out when it eased off a little, only to get properly soaked as the heavens opened up 100m form the restaurant again. It rained much longer and much harder this time and we enjoyed the shelter of the tin roof, the noise was incredible and the scenes outside from the restaurant were pretty awesome, every few minutes a boat would come flying past full of saturated locals with someone desperately bailing water out of the boat!

Our sunny trip back across the river back for some food...

Just in time. This is from the floating restaurant we were trapped in for over an hour whilst the storm passed

Some butterflies sunning themselves after the storm - not seen them do this before.

We had a great dinner including a nice plate of satay. I didn't realise but the satay is actually cooked by someone outside the restaurant, under a small gazebo. I felt guilty as I watched the fire started for the BBQ and even more so when one of them donned wellies and an umbrella to bring our order of satay across under an umbrella to the restaurant. The meal was great and the staff quite lively.  A local fisherman sat repairing his net in the corner under cover as the restaurant got buffeted about floating on the fast flowing river whilst the little ramp connecting us to the land slowly submerged. The staff kept adding a rocks to the ramp to provide a route on and off for the customers and the soggy satay! 

After the storm passed we headed back to the guesthouse to get some sleep before heading off the next day, we really couldn't do much more exploring without a guide and we have other places we would like to get to.

Ana confident that a croc wouldn't go near her feet after a trek. I have to agree, I am sure the river life is still recovering!

That evening we were disturbed by a couple of companions. One was our first cockroach encounter which startled Ana a little as we felt him scurrying across the duvet. I am sorry to say, the roach is no more.

Our second roomie was a pretty large spider, I assume (probably wrongly) that she (she was carrying an egg sac) was seeking shelter from the storm. I also think that she was a spider that chases down prey as we watched her sprinting around the wall for a few minutes before realising that neither of us was going to get a good nights sleep with her hanging over or heads. So I got up and as gently as possible trapped the spider in a plastic container and upended it on a laminated fire escape notice. On top of this I put a plastic bucket and on top of that my small rucksack.

The following morning I came to release the spider as we checked out and sure enough she wasn't there. Dont ask me how and I am not suggesting she lifted my rucksack but I am unsure at which point she escaped. Either way - it was time to leave...next stop Melaka and the end to our nature exploring for now.