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Alright everyone, its been days and days, but I've got some stories now. When we left off we were on our way to Taman Negara National Park which turned out to be awesome. So I'll start from the boat ride on a stereotypical jungle-looking mega canoe boat that we rode for 4 hours a river to get to the hostel area. It was pretty spectacular. On both sides we were surrounded by lush vegetation, with green reaching towards the sky. Four hours is a long time, especially when the sun is searing you slowly, but overall it was cool. Upon arriving, we were dropped off on the opposite side of the river from the forest, thereby ensuring that we had to pay for several crossings throughout our time there. Later that night we joined up with a Dutch couple and organized our entertainment for the next day which was a night walk on that day, then a 2 day 1 night stay in the forest for the next two days. The night walk was fun, though tame. We just walked along a platform behind one of the nicer resorts and spotted caterpillars, stick bugs, and spiders with the assistance of our guide Najeeb who we came to really like over the next couple of days.
The next morning we rose early and after filling our backpacks with a foam mattress thing, chicken curry, real noodles, ramen noodles, and oreos, crossed the river and headed into the jungle. That day we hiked 8.6 km, no small feat, and though the jungle was beautiful and serene and all that, the most amazing thing we did that day was stop at a cave. Every now and then huge masses of rock would just appear in front of us, and one time our guide told us we were looking at a cave, though an overhanging chunk of rock hid the entrance. To get into it we braced ourselves against the rock while holding onto a rope and scrambling up a fairly steep rock face. Once we got to the top however, everything changed. For those of you who have seen Planet Earth, picture that scene in the cave episode with the bats, guano, and roaches. For those of you who haven't seen it, we walked into a cave with about a foot of bat guano (feces) littering the bottom. It felt like walking on a mattress. You might be asking yourself wait, where did the feces come from? The thousands of bats of course. Completely covering the ceiling, flying around, even gracing us with fresh feces. And as if that wasn't incredible enough, after more closely inspecting the floor of the cave, it was impossible to not notice the thousands of tiny cockroaches skittering on top of and in the guano. They were even devouring a few dead bats. I know that nothing I can type here can adequately describe how amazing that cave was, I just one of us got good enough pictures to approach how amazing it was. Alright, after that we continued our trekking until (surprise!) we stopped at another cave to spend the night. This cave was huge. There were about 30 people other than ourselves who slept there, with plenty of room for five times that number. That night we cooked up the curry and ate it over rice while staring up into the dark recesses of the hidden ceiling of the cavern. I fell asleep, but apparently our guide took the rest of the group through the cave and they found some fairly massive spiders and scorpions in there so thats not comforting.
Before I go further I need to devote some time to our wonderful little jungle friends: the leeches. They were everywhere as we walked around. Fortunately I managed to keep them off of me by ensuring my pants were at all time covering the top of my boots, however my shorts wearing companions all made friends with the leeches at some point. There' just something really disturbing about seeing this little wriggling tube in front of you whose only purpose as a living organism is to sink its little teeth into you and suck your blood. I think the people I'm with still have little circular scabs to remind them of the leeches, all I do is laugh.
The next morning we rose around 10:00, collected our things, and started the 8 km hike we would complete that day. Early that morning we came across the creature that would define that day even more than leeches which strangely enough turned out to be bees. They were everywhere that day and appeared swarmed all over our clothing making me think they were after our sweat. Luckily they didn't sting, but they were big so it was something of a harrowing experience. We made much better time this day than the other due to our experience with dealing with the roots that crisscrossed the path and the different kinds of mud in our path, and we quickly got to a stream where we camped out for lunch. Everyone quickly stripped down and cooled our bodies in the water. While we did that our guide whipped up the ramen with some fresh vegies and also made some tea with a little white fruit whose name I do not know which was ridiculously delicious. While at the stream we were informed there as a rope swing which we took advantage of for about an hour. I even had the best swing with an awkward semi-flip release. After braving the bees which swarmed our clothes, we proceeded to complete the hike.
The last thing we did that day was to stop at the Orang Asli village. Orang Asli translates to "original people," and obviously they are the native people of the jungle. Apparently there are around 1 million of them spread throughout the jungles of peninsular Malaysia which I thought was pretty amazing. While there they showed us how to make fire using limbs of a certain sandpaper like tree and also allowed us to shoot a 3 or 4 foot long blowgun at a target which for some reason had a stuffed Scooby Doo doll as the bullseye. I didn't hit Scooby but was pretty close. Stephen got a pretty cool picture of me while doing it which I'll try to post today. He and I have all kinds of free time because the other people we're with are stuck in classroom all day getting SCUBA certified.
We relaxed the rest of that day, and slept in the next. After eating some delicious rotis (a crepe like bread thing which cost us 1 ringitt (32 cents) and came with delicious curry) we pursued he only goal we had that day which was getting a tube we had seen the day before and floating down the river with a little liquid fun in hand. We found tubes, but unfortunately were not allowed to float on them because apparently two dumb tourists managed to drown a couple of months ago. Instead we saw a group of the locals swimming next to a little sandbar and after they waved to us we joined them. The water felt great and gave us a chance to feel the current which was surprisingly strong. During this soak we got to do by far the manliest thing by far that has happened yet when the locals invite us to help them gather firewood for a bonfire they said would be happening that night (it didn't). We swam across the river to where the wood was and noticed a tree trunk and immediately we knew we had to have it. We yanked it out of the grass and had a little trouble fighting the current with it, but eventually we proudly (with a little help) hauled that bad boy onto the wood pile. It was easily the largest wood chunk.
That night we just sat around and waited for the fire which, as I mentioned before, never happened. The next morning we got up and got on a bus and went back to Kuala Lumpur. This day I noticed that the glands in my armpits and nipples were swollen so I'm thinking my body was having a freakout reaction to something that bit me, but they're pretty much back to normal so no worries. That day was full of good food and relaxation, and I even bought a Tiger beer muscle shirt which I can't wait to rock when I'm back in the States.
The next day we had nothing to do until our flight to Borneo the next evening so we decided to go to Malaysia's national zoo. This turned out to be really cool and was quite possibly the biggest zoo I've ever been to. You name an animal and they had it. We stopped to get food at one point (around 4:30) and decided we should check the plane ticket to make sure the flight time was at 8:30 like we thought. It wasn't. We had a moment of panic when we realized the flight was actually at 6:25. We immediately sprinted out of the zoo (which was sad because we didn't make it to the penguins), hopped in a cab, and booked it back to the hostel first to pick up our stuff. We got to the airport 30 minutes before the flight and thought we were screwed because you are supposed to check in 45 minutes before the flight. Luckily it had been a stormy day and the flight was delayed, giving us time to catch it.
We flew into Tawau and due to our late arrival, around 11:00 pm, spent the night there. The next day (yesterday), we hopped on a bus and traveled to Simporna where I am now. Here we got lodging, scheduled dives, and Greg and Jenny signed up for dive lesson which they are doing over the course of 3 days starting today. We relaxed for the rest of the day and spent some time in the bar attached to the dive shop that night. I think that's about everything, except we did see a 2.5 foot mnitor lizard when we were in Taman Negara which was pretty cool. Next time I'm sure I will have plenty of stories about the dives so see you guys then.
- comments
Aunt Neva Phil, that was awesome. You are an amazing writer. Hope you continue to enjoy your adventures. Much love.
Aunt Becky OMG! What an adventure Charlie! Uncle Wade is waiting to hear about your dives -- I'm waiting for photos! I agree wtih Neva -- you're an amazing writer. Keep it up, I love it!