The Perhentian Islands & sleeping with a bat

Taman Negara was so much fun that I didn't want my trip to end. Simon persuaded me to change my flights home, and to come to the Perhentian Islands with him, just for a few more days. I'm so glad I did, the island we stayed on was stunning, the sand was so soft and free of stones & coral, the water was clear and clean and turquoise blue.

We stayed in wooden huts, with nothing but a double bed and a mosquito net in them. Not even a light, which was interesting at night as I had only just lost my torch. Simon shared with Matt, and as I had no one to share with I got a hut to myself, which was great.

I had a couple of days of just chilling out, then my last day on the island was pretty eventful. I was woken up at 7am, having had around 4 hours sleep. I opened my eyes and saw a fruitbat staring back at me. I figured I must be dreaming, so I closed my eyes again. A few minutes later the fruitbat started flying around my head, inside the mosquito net. There wasn't a lot of room inside this net, it is designed to cover the bed only, and this bat was going mad. I have no idea how it got through a net designed to keep out tiny mosquitoes. After a few seconds of complete bewilderment (I was still very sleepy), my brain told me that getting out of bed would be a good idea. I stood outside my hut, and was going to call the lads to come and help but realised that was a really girly thing to do, so I managed to get the bat out myself.

I was wide awake now, so I walked over to the shower block. On my way, 3 Malay guys ran out screaming. I went to investigate, and there was a huge lizard in the shower, well when I say huge, maybe around 2ft long, so not that big but quite scary.

I walked back to my hut and sat on the balcony, with my walking boots next to me. Suddenly, I saw about 500 tiny ants crawling all over my boots. I thought it was strange, until I felt the reason - a huge, massive, evil ant, the king of all ants, had just wedged its pincers into my big toe. The pain was tremendous, and when I brushed him away his head detached with his pincers still stuck in me. I had to pull him out, and then my toe was covered in blood. This was all a bit too much for me, before 7.30pm in the morning.

I brushed my teeth, and managed to get a bug to fly straight into my mouth. What the hell was going on, it was like the whole of the animal kingdom was against me today. To top it all off, I lost a contact lens. I was in a foul mood when I met the others for our snorkeling trip. The only good thing about the morning is that I had had two breakfasts, one at 7.30am and another at 9am.

The snorkeling made up for it though: we saw sharks, a turtle, loads of colourful fish and coral. In fact I had done a dive the day before, which was terrible - we didn't see anything on the dive, not even any interesting fish. The snorkeling was 100 times better.

I really didn't want to leave the island, it was hard saying goodbye to everyone. It had to be done though, so I got an overnight bus to Singapore & slept the whole way thanks to the lack of sleep the night before. In Singapore I went back to see Mal, an Aussie guy who runs the friendliest pub I have ever been to, in the middle of one of the craziest places I have been to (Little India), in the middle of civilised Singapore. Last night madness was very good, as Mal gave me loads of free drinks, and it was a great end to a fantastic trip.

Jungle Trekking part 2: Taman Negara

Taman Negara is the oldest jungle in the world, according to the guidebook. I met Simon there, and we stayed in a small settlement on the edge of the river, there were a few hostels and basic shops, and cool floating restaurants on the river.

Simon and I booked onto a 3 day jungle trek, along with 2 Americans (Anton & Matt), a English guy (Steve) and a 53 year old woman from New Caldonia (Francine) who was fitter than all of us. We had a guide, who I thought was a cross between a Malaysian Crocodile Dundee and the Fonz. He was a cool dude, with his sunglasses, huge jungle knife and always with cigarette in his hand.

The trekking was tough, mainly because it was hotter & sweatier here than the Cameron Highlands, but also because we had to carry all our own supplies for the 3 days. My rucksack was about 5 time heavier than I'd take for a normal walk, as it had 3 big bottles of water in as well as sleeping bags / mats / clothes etc. I was constantly soaked through with sweat.

It was so much fun though. We saw a lot of cool things: monkeys swinging through the trees, water buffalo, huge ants & spiders. We saw fresh tiger & elephant footprints, but it is extremely rare to see the animals up close. There was also loads of tasty jungle fruit to try, and beautiful jungle flowers.

All of the guys wanted to be the first to get a leech, I definitely didn't want to be leeched, so of course I was the first to get one. They are weird things; you don't feel them sucking out your blood, so we had to do a 'leech check' every 30 mins or so to look for them on our legs. My reaction to being leeched (it happened several times), was to scream and panic, and run to Anton who was the only person who could flick them off effectively. You can't just pull a leech off, it suckers onto your skin and refuses to budge. Simon on the other hand, got quite attached to his (bad pun, sorry), and let it stay on his leg. It grew to about 5 times its original size before it was full and dropped off. Apparently leeches can live off your blood for up to a year, so its sort of nice to know there's a bit of me still in Taman Negara.

The first night in the jungle we stayed in a cave. It was massive, dark, and full of bats. I kept expecting the bat mobile to drive out at any moment. Steve had been winding me up all day about all the creatures that would come and eat me at night, and that combined with my malaria pill made for pretty weird dreams.

The second day we really got into the swing of things, literally: I had to swing across a river on a vine, Tarzan style. I did this very badly, it took me three attempts to land the other side. We had to cross another big river using a suspension bridge. Unfortunately the bridge had collapsed upside down, so all that was left was a couple of dodgy planks and nothing to hold on to. It was probably the scariest thing I have done on my travels, trying to balance on planks that kept changing position, and that went down to a single narrow plank near the end.

The second night we stayed in a tribal village. This tribe dates back around 50,000 years; they are older than the Aboriginals in Australia. They live in the jungle as nomads, moving round every couple of weeks. They even have their own language. We were a bit unsure at first, as our guide left us on our own, and the tribal people spoke very little English. After dinner we went to talk to them, and one of the older members, the medicine man, produced a wildlife book, which was in Malay with scribblings in Batik, the tribal language. We told him what the names of the animals were in English, and he told us when they see the animals, and which ones they hunt and eat (Monkeys are a particular favourite food). We also played with a blow pipe - blowing wooden darts down a wooden tube, and the lads had a blow-pipe competition (I was rubbish, so I tried to talk to the women instead). Then Simon found a guitar, and started playing which everyone liked. It was a good evening.

Jungle Trekking part 1: Cameron Highlands

The best way to describe the Cameron Highlands is that it is extremely green. I've never seen so many shades of green in my life, the small towns are surrounded by mountains of thick jungle and tea plantations, and it is stunning. The weather is perfect as well, sunny but cool and breezy, a refreshing change from sweaty KL.

The hostel I stayed at was very cheap and cheerful, it only cost me 90p per night, and I got my own room. Well it was more of a corridor - all of the guys congregated at a room at the end, and they had to walk past me to get to bed, but it was nice to have a wall between me and the snores & smells.

Two of the guys; Kai a German who was charming and very funny (unusual for a German), and Simon, a nice English guy, persuaded me to come for a walk with them the next day. When I say walk, I mean more of a day-long scramble through the jungle, over & under trees and up & down steep hills. It was great fun though, and the guys were impressed that not only I could keep up with them, but also I didn't mind getting extremely muddy in the process. We had a couple of days like this, the second day was also a scramble, but we ended up walking through a tea plantation. This was lovely, the smell of the tea irresistable. It is also a good incentive to keep walking, when there is a English-style cream tea waiting at the end. This, coupled with the great Indian curries we ate every night, made it it just like home, only better.