It only seems right to share the Malaysia Ambient Travel Video at this stage in the blog, in the thickest of rainforest. I quite like this one; rather relaxing, maybe a bit of a classic. Enjoy!

Day 108 – arrival to Taman Negara

We had such high hopes for our minivan to Taman Negara, and it was all going so smoothly till, an hour from our destination, we were unceremoniously dumped at the bus company’s tourist office to wait two hours for a transfer just so they could try and sell us tours before we arrived and the other operators got their mitts on us. That and so we would use their restaurant, most Google reviews said made them sick. So we sat, hungry, in the heat, for no reason, slightly fuming.

More upsetting, the final hour of the drive was through miles and miles of palm oil plantations, so clearly cut out from the rainforest. At least 30 logging trucks stuffed full of thick tree trunks roared past us too. Malaysia has a terrible record for destroying its rainforest, it’s hard to watch or know what to do about it.

Anyway, we forged forth and arrived eventually in Tanah Rata, a village on the side of the river comprising of a few little roads littered with guesthouses, minimarts, tour offices and small restaurants, the best of which are floating on the river itself.

Across the river lies 130 million year old rainforest Taman Negara, full of flora, fauna and fun. We crossed over via water taxi (25p each per crossing) to get our park permit, costing just £1 each for a week. They really should charge more, all the boardwalks are in disrepair, the canopy walk closed due to structural issues… Nobody would blink at paying £10 or even £20 for a week! They’d also be able to hire someone to help spread awareness about the evils of illegal logging etc.

So, the National Park isn’t without it’s problems, but all that just about manages to fade away as you walk through it. We went on a short walk along a slightly sketchy boardwalk and were immediately enveloped in the raucous roar of cicadas, singing freaky songs sometimes sounding like a radio searching for a signal, or a high-pitched keening saw. Macaques made an appearance as did some peacock like jungle pheasants which was exciting.

Day 109 – Rainforest Hike

We’d read that you could do a fairly decent hike to a hill peak without a guide, so were up early to set off across the river for that, before all the guided tours set off. Before we had a chance to have breakfast a magnificent hornbill made an appearance, sitting on an electric cable that passed through our accomodation courtyard. It also flew round 10 minutes later to sit in a tree and watch us while we ate breakfast. Proper jungle stuff, that.

The hike was great. It was boardwalks ninety percent of the way, and the rainforest was just totally mesmerising to be in. We found elephant dung and nearby sections of boardwalk that seemed completely crushed, along with other foliage damage, and decided elephants must have passed as recently as last night (we’re nature detectives now BTW), though we’d heard you shouldn’t expect to see elephants here.

We encountered an extremely large tree which Billie proceeded to hug, as one might expect.

We reached the top and the view was lovely. Not lots of wildlife to see in the thick rainforest but we didn’t mind, it’s more about being in the thick of an old jungle, really. We did see and hear massive hornbills zoom past us near the peak, which was exciting.

On our way back down we passed dozens of tour groups, so were smug at how we’d played it, having bumped into maybe a single other group on the way up.

We rested and recovered in the heat of the day which was quite extraordinary. Billie felt she couldn’t just sit in the aircon all afternoon and valiantly ventured out… it wasn’t long till she returned.

We’d booked on a night boat safari for this evening! As we boarded, we were told that the previous night safari walk had seen elephants, exactly as we’d predicted! Apparently the elephants here do a massive tour of the park and pass through near the tourist area every 6 months or so, and don’t stay long, so this was a very rare occurrence.

Anyway, we didn’t see elephants. We didn’t see much actually, certainly not for the first hour. Just a frog. It was nice to be on the water in a big canoe, our guide shining his torch in the branches. After an hour he eventually spotted a tapir in the forest. We all got a glimpse of it before it trundled off onto the forest. The guide breathed an audible sigh of relief and said “Thank god we saw something” which was quite funny.

They then found us some sleeping kingfishers, just sitting stock still on branches overhanging the water. We felt a bit bad for them as we got too close really, and they shined bright torches at them. We tried to move it along a bit so as not to let them rest and the others of our group seemed to have similar feelings.

Anyway, it was a nice tour even though we didn’t see a lot, and the guide really, really tried his best. Sometimes the wildlife just doesn’t show up!

Day 110 – Rainforest boat trip

This morning tour was utterly brilliant and singlehandedly made our time here completely worth it. We booked a boat tour, again a sort of long canoe with an engine on the back. The route they do (and don’t seem willing to deviate from) takes about an hour and eventually arrives at a waterfall you have to hike 20 minutes to. Wanting to follow the success of our hike, we asked if the boat could leave at 8am rather than 10am.

Well, we had the river and jungle to ourselves. The river was smooth and clear, and incredible, old, mossy trees stretched over it to tangle limbs above.

There was surprisingly little wildlife – again, not a problem – until our guide shouted “elephant!” and sure enough we turned and saw a big elephant’s bum disappearing slowly into the jungle, probably a bit spooked by us. Both driver and guide seemed quite elated by this spot, as were we!

They brought us to another enormous tree – apparently the oldest in the entire rainforest, but I don’t accept they’ve managed to check the entire region, which is enormous. I do, however, accept that it is an old and beautiful tree!

The 20 minute hike was brilliant, and astounding trails of ants, absolutely heaving with them, sometimes in complex two-way streets with junctions, could be spotted all over as we made our way.

And then the waterfall; not particularly high, but a good spectacle and reward for the walk. We sat on a big rock and discussed how beautiful it was and how lucky we were to have it to ourselves.

Sure enough, on the return route, we passed at least 20 other boats coming out for the same tour. We were pretty happy with how well we’d managed to hack Taman Negara by just leaving an hour or two earlier than everyone else seems to.

We rested up for the rest of the day and evening, interspersed with the odd floating restaurant meal. We had walked a lot in the Cameron Highlands and hadn’t been slouches here. We were well aware that four days from now, we’d be beginning a 3 day / 2 night jungle trek in Sumatra and felt we’d done enough to train our legs up, and that they now needed a good old rest to reach peak condition for the big adventure.

But, before we say goodbye to Malaysia and flit off to Sumatra, we have one more stop: Melaka. And that’ll be coming up next. See you then!