Taman Negara National Forest is one of the oldest rainforests in the entire world. Untouched by natural disasters and left alone by the ice age, this is one of the most intact, well conserved rainforests on the globe. To say the least it was everything I had ever imagined a rain forest to be. It made me feel like I was stepping right into the movie ‘Ferngully’ – if I can even count that as a reference. But I remember watching that movie as a child and thinking it would be so amazing to go to a place like that. And finally this trip to Malaysia and to Taman Negara did bring me to a place like that.
We liked it quite a bit there, as we stayed for four nights exploring the many trails that this well preserved park had to offer. We found some local family run lodging tucked back down a small hill called the Durian (while one may feel a little hesitant by the name), it actually was decent, it had clean bamboo bungalows with nice gardens and landscaping around it. I might have to say that this might’ve been the smallest space of a room I’ve ever stayed in, yet maybe the nicest small place I’ve ever stayed. It did have a bathroom connected, a little porch and mosquito nets draped over real mattresses all for $7/night. Things like that are bonuses when you’re traveling on the cheap… and really, they way they had it all set up was really quite cute and quaint.
The first day we got in, we went for a hike around some of the closer trails. It was nice to finally get out on a hike. I don’t think either of us realized how much we missed going on hikes til we actually got to go on one. It had been a while. And, when I say jungle, I mean thick, lush, green, shady, huge leaves, many vines, tall trees, mosquito flyin, monkey climbin, tropical bird perchin, leeches on the ground floor, canopy covered jungle of a rain forest. Lots of green.
But MAN. The size of some of these trees was just unreal. The buttresses were even just as impressive; and the way the roots jetted out a ways, and you looked up and up and up until you could see the tree tops – it was like you were in a wonderland of its own. That afternoon we took a hike up to one of the hilltops (which that day too, I don’t think we realized how ‘out of hiking shape’ we were til we climbed to the top of a scenic look out.) We sure were gasping for air, holding onto vines on the climb up. But drenched in sweat, we made it to the top for a pretty fantastic panoramic view of nothing but hills of rain forest greenery for miles.
After that, we followed a few signs to the park’s famous Canopy Walk Bridge. It claims to be the world’s longest canopy walk, with a 400m long, 40m high rope-drawn-plank bridge that walks you along the canopy of the forest. It was up there for sure, and I’m not going to lie, my subtle ‘fear of heights’ wasn’t going to stop me from walking across it; yet ‘my subtle fear of heights’ also didn’t cease to remind me that I do have, well… a subtle fear of heights. But yea; we were up there. Even as high as it was, the trees still towered above us, while we towered above everything below us. We even were lucky enough to spot a tropical great horned bill bird from the bridge. It was quite the canopy walk.
After that we started our way back. It was just nice to be hiking around in the forest, as we used to do a bit of it back home.
We went back, had some dinner on one of the floating restaurants on the river that separated the park from the small town; went back to our bungalow, showered and crashed. A full day it was.
The second day we went for a smaller hike…to a small bat cave. On the way we accidentally walked to the edge of a village of native people who live off the land in the rain forest (which the tour guides were charging $30USD to take you there, but we managed to find accidentally on our own). We decided not to draw attention to ourselves and just kept on with our hike. We also stumbled across tons of HUGE ants and termites crawling all over the forest floor. NOT to mention the many, many, Many, tiny leeches. You couldn’t feel the little buggers until it was too late. They’d fill up on blood from your feet or your legs (or somehow my stomach) far before you even knew what happened. Many of them were small enough to weasel through your socks straight to the skin; and then when we’d take off our shoes only to find blood dripping down our feet. To say the least; they were NOT the favorite part of my rain forest experience!??!! However I was able to keep distracted enough by the surrounding scenery which trumped the fact that in a very paranoid fashion I was constantly checking my legs and feet every 7 minutes or so for leeches. (Seriously). Anyway, we hiked on until we found the cave, which was a bit smaller than we had expected. After a few steps in and seeing the bats which lined the ceiling of the cave, I decided that a small look was sufficient enough for me and that I’d wait for Will to scope it out a little further to decide whether it was worth it or not to go any farther. He went in; grabbed a few snapshots, came out and said that I probably wouldn’t like it and at that point I trusted his judgment. He said mostly it was just alotta bats hanging upside down, a rather large toad (bigger than his hand) – some murky pools of water below and a lot of dampness. With that we turned around, hiked our way out, grabbed some lunch and spent the afternoon on a “shoot the rapids” boat trip in a super long motor powered canoe.
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