October 9th, 2005 - Taman Negara
Crossing the canopy walkway
Well, this national park is the stuff of legends!!! (as Lonely planet says) We're talking monkeys, panthers, elephants, weird looking bugs, everything.
We only ended up doing a day trip which was a bit dissapointing... i would have loved to do some serious trekking and spend the night out in the jungle. Leetches are really bad though when wet weather has been recent, so we didn't go too far.
We first went to the Canopy walkways, which is a rope bridge 45m above the jungle floor, the highest in the world. (apparently anyways, but it seems that everything everywhere is the highest or the biggest or the best) It took us over 30mins to complete and was pretty scary, very wobblying, the only thing that kept me going was knowing that 1000s of people do it every month and i haven't heard of anyone falling and dying.
After that we trekked back out again and caught a taxi boat across the huge brown river (all the rivers around here are brown it seems) back to our floating resteraunt/tour hedquarters. They were wankers though they wouldn't sell us water cause we had no small change!!!
Next we took a tour to the Orang Asli Village, which means "original people". It was absolutely amazing. I can't believe people still live like that. They didn't look malaysian either, more african i'd say. The Orang Asli people move around every couple of months, and because monsoon season is comming most of the village had already migrated deeper into the jungle. There were still about 3 families there, including the village leader. (the village leader is decided by the eldest man) They only put clothes on when we come, there is a tour everyday at 3:30pm. None of them speak english and very few of them speak Malay. They lived in tiny little huts made of palm tree leaves, and one of the boys (about 17) that could speak malay to our guide showed us how they make fire, and also how they make the darts that they shoot through the blowpipe to kill animals in the jungle for their food. We all got a go at shooting the blowpipe too, it was really cool. A couple on the tour with us told us about how they were trekking deep in the jungle 2 days earlier and saw a bunch of naked orang asli people hunting, with their blowpipes and everything.
That night we caught the night train to Kuala Lumpur. So far it is a pretty nice city, much cleaner than the rest of Malaysia. I will stay here for a few days to do some shopping, etc, then head back to Thailand. Home sweet home Thailand. I miss it there!!
Write again soon
xo rachel
We only ended up doing a day trip which was a bit dissapointing... i would have loved to do some serious trekking and spend the night out in the jungle. Leetches are really bad though when wet weather has been recent, so we didn't go too far.
We first went to the Canopy walkways, which is a rope bridge 45m above the jungle floor, the highest in the world. (apparently anyways, but it seems that everything everywhere is the highest or the biggest or the best) It took us over 30mins to complete and was pretty scary, very wobblying, the only thing that kept me going was knowing that 1000s of people do it every month and i haven't heard of anyone falling and dying.
After that we trekked back out again and caught a taxi boat across the huge brown river (all the rivers around here are brown it seems) back to our floating resteraunt/tour hedquarters. They were wankers though they wouldn't sell us water cause we had no small change!!!
Next we took a tour to the Orang Asli Village, which means "original people". It was absolutely amazing. I can't believe people still live like that. They didn't look malaysian either, more african i'd say. The Orang Asli people move around every couple of months, and because monsoon season is comming most of the village had already migrated deeper into the jungle. There were still about 3 families there, including the village leader. (the village leader is decided by the eldest man) They only put clothes on when we come, there is a tour everyday at 3:30pm. None of them speak english and very few of them speak Malay. They lived in tiny little huts made of palm tree leaves, and one of the boys (about 17) that could speak malay to our guide showed us how they make fire, and also how they make the darts that they shoot through the blowpipe to kill animals in the jungle for their food. We all got a go at shooting the blowpipe too, it was really cool. A couple on the tour with us told us about how they were trekking deep in the jungle 2 days earlier and saw a bunch of naked orang asli people hunting, with their blowpipes and everything.
That night we caught the night train to Kuala Lumpur. So far it is a pretty nice city, much cleaner than the rest of Malaysia. I will stay here for a few days to do some shopping, etc, then head back to Thailand. Home sweet home Thailand. I miss it there!!
Write again soon
xo rachel