Over the last few days we have become leech gatherers (Wordsworth would have been proud). We've just spent 3 days in the Malaysian Jungle at a place called Taman Negara. While we were there we shunned the oragnised tours as being too exspensive and commercial so we decided that we would go it alone.........
The Lonely Planet claimed that there was a jungle Hide 5 hours walk away from the village where we were staying. The idea is that you walk there and stay overnight in the hope that you will see tapirs, monkeys, wild elephants, monkeys etc. We thought ourselves to be pretty fit so we reckoned on it taking under 5 hours to get to the hide - which was called bumbum kumbang!!!! ha ha
7 hours later covered in sweat, suntan lotion and leeches we finally arrived at the bloody Hide! It was really hard work as there was a lot of ups and downs, we had to pull ourselves up and down hills on ropes! Also we convinced ourselves (well I did anyway) that we were lost and I was petrified of it getting dark and us having to try and sleep in a random place - we hadn't seen any other people for about 5 hours. Anyway we made it in the end and once we had picked off any stray leaches we settled down in the Hide for the night.
The Hide was like a big tree house with large holes in the walls which functioned as windows. It contained about 5 sets of wooden bunk beds with no matresses - pretty comfortable! We were th eonly people staying in it, so it was prettys scary! It was so noisy, there was insects making a complete racket and things were scurrying around us. There was also bats in the Hide with us! We stayed up for a bit in the hope of spotting some animals but we were so nackered from our walk that we ended up falling asleep and not seeing much. Oh well, it was an experince in itself.
On the walk there we did see some monitor lizards, monkeys and wild boar and lots and lots of insects - huge ants, spiders etc.
When we woke up in the morning we really didn't want to have to walk the 7 hrs back to the village so we walked to the river and after a while we managed to flag down a passing boat (by this point I was nearly crying with relief!) The boat was full of Malaysians and god knows what they thought of us, we no doubt stunk and looked pretty dishevelled!
Oh well, alls well that ends well.....
Anna
