The well-touristed village of Kuala Tahan sits on the eastern bank of the milk-coffee Sungai Tembeling where it's joined from the northwest by the smaller but equally muddy Sungei Tahan. It's an uncomfortable three hours upriver to get there by wooden motor sampan from the town of Jerentut (itself a few hours coach trip from KL). Though Kuala Tahan consists mainly of lower-end accommodation and floating eateries, it serves as the main gateway to Taman Negara, which is why we went there.
"Taman Negara" translates literally - if understatedly - as "National Park": it's actually "the World's Oldest Tropical Rainforest". I went there with Ray and Jo, and Michelle and Dean (a couple of Jo's friends). Of the eleven passengers in our coach, all but Jo were either Australian or had lived in Australia for years. Small World.
A few hours' coach trip; some lunch; a few hours uncomfortable voyage upriver by motor sampan.
I guess that after reading "boat trip" in the pamphlet I was expecting more of a ferry-like experience: deckchairs, rails and a kiosk, perhaps; on-board toilets certainly. The Tembeling is too shallow and treacherous, however, for a large boat: all along the river floating bottles mark hazards, and our pilots took serpentine routes even where there were no such warnings. At one of Kuala Tahan's floating restaurants we disembarked.
It was late afternoon - time enough to unpack, shower, watch the rain, and have dinner before being taking a boat across the river for a night walk through the near-reaches of the rainforest. The group was a little large and the 500 metres of rainforest path overtrafficked by a constant flow of tourists but our guide was excellent. He explained that we'd probably only see insects, spiders, etc because of how busy the path was nowadays, gave us bits of lore about flowers and plants along the way, and proceded to locate a variety of small creatures including snails, spiders, scorpions, caterpillars, butterflies, moths, beetles, stick insects (very impressive spotting!), a porcupine (briefly) and a [sorry but it's the right word] cute miniature fruitbat. About the only creature that would have been found without assistance was the leech which bit Ray.
We were staying in three different locations - I in a budget 7-bed (but unshared) dorm on the other side of the river, R&J in a single room about 5 minutes away, and M&D in the Mutiara resort on this Taman Negara side of the river. Crossings were made by boat and finished at 11pm, which could be inconvenient. Returning to our side was a close thing - not because of the time, but because thunderstorms upstream were causing the river to flood. The water had already risen a metre on this side of the river, the beach beside the floating restaurants had gone by the time we were over and just after we got back we were told that the river was rising 5 metres in ten minutes (I didn't witness this as I was recovering from faceplanting into dirty water while crossing the boards to the concrete pier).
In the morning, the water had subsided, though much of the beach was still submerged and our floating restaurant was damaged - a log had wedged itself under the ?stern? while the river was still high, and the structure was now twisted. A group - one with a bulldozer - worked to try to remove the log. Our nightwalk guide had given us the tip that we could just do the Canopy + Bukit Teresek walk ourselves (saving us a total of RM170 in the process) so we crossed over. There were longer walks - guided tours into the inner rainforest, but they took too long - we were only gone for three days (more realistically two nights, a day, and travel)
The Canopy walk, another half a kilometre or so along the trail from the junction where we turned back the night before, is a series of ten rope bridges strung from tree-top platform to tree-top platform. Its selling point is that it's the longest in the world. The waiting area was packed - apparently four hundred tourists from Singapore had arrived in KT for the weekend, and quite a number were here.
It started out well: everybody at least 5 metres apart; no more than four people on a platform at a time; no stopping on the bridges. The boards were solid; the ropes were knotted. There were safety monitors on the platforms to ensure flow. A couple of bridges along, the number of safety monitors dropped off. Some of the boards were cracked. Then flow problems started - groups ahead moving slower than they were pushing people through behind. You started getting eight or more people on platforms; people in the group behind started walking more closely together; one of the ropes was unsecured; the ring of a cable end was left flapping with nothing through it... The end result was that it wasn't particularly relaxing to look down at fifteen metres of air, bushes, trees, and thorny vines.
After the crowded canopy walk, we hiked up the deserted Teresek Hill to look at Mount Tahan. On the way up, we stepped over an army of ants that were following a liana out of the undergrowth up to a felled log, then travelling along that log and out of sight. After recovering and enjoying the view, we came back down much quicker. The ants - there must have been millions - carried on one way, and we another.
We had a choice of paths: to go back to the main path via the exit of the canopy walk, or to take a longer but yet-untrodden 1.7 km loop to enter the Mutiara resort from the south. The unseen path appeared more appealing.
"In May 2006 five tourists went for a 1.7 km walk in the Taman Negara Rainforest. Hours later they escaped into Mutiara Resort."
The distance signposted may have been as the crow flies, but it wasn't a realistic assessment of the length of the muddy track. Nor did it appear as though anyone else had walked recently, and when we checked compass directions, I did wonder if we'd inadvertently missed a couple of turnoffs somewhere and were heading into the inner rainforest. The scenery may have been nice. Much like the canopy walk, though, my focus was mainly on getting through the thing. There were leeches galore - more than one a metre spotted in especially muddy patches. Everyone ended up bitten except for me - I owe that to the thickness of travel socks as there were a couple of leeches trying their best, and I'd been bitten the night before through normal socks. Eventually we found the T-junction, and - passing what turned out to be the muddy swimming area - found evidence of civilisation: Steps leading up, some more muddy track, and then a walkway and bridge.
A couple of guys in board shorts passed us - "Is this the way to the swimming hole?". We warned them to beware the leeches, and they carried on regardless. None of us envied them their swim; I remember the crossing of the river in "Stand By Me". Just before we left the walkway, we saw a family wild boar (they were black but smallish - didn't see any tusks) rooting in the mud for food.
Filthy, we sat down for Ice Kacang (Ice, peanuts, corn, syrup, green glutenous threads) at the Mutiara's nice clean restaurant. Earlier, we had planned on exploring Gua Telinga, the "Ear Cave" but it was late and we were tired and lunch and showers seemed more important. So we crossed over to Kuala Tahan instead.
Food (possibly the slowest service ever - well over an hour for all the meals to be served); showers; too much whiskey; an earlyish night (that 11pm last river crossing); sleep; breakfast.
Then a few hours' uncomfortable travel downriver by motor sampan broken only by the need for the pilot to stop the boat and bail water; some lunch; a few hours' coach trip; home.
