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.