Taman Negara
The minibus ride along the winding highway from KL to Jerantut was pretty uneventful, though I did have an unexpected moment of nostalgia along the way. At one point, I looked up from my book (On The Road, funny enough) to admire the countryside and was greeted by an expanse of rolling hills and valleys covered in dark green trees. A rest stop with a McDonald’s whizzed by, as did a massive billboard for paintball. Involuntarily, I was transported twelve years back in time, sitting on a Greyhound bus making its way along the winding highways in Pennsylvania or New York as I traveled between college and home. In that moment, the two scenes were almost identical, but I snapped back to reality when I noticed the palm trees everywhere and that all the signs were in Malay, not English. Still, it was a funny flashback to have, especially considering I had just read the part in the book where Sal wakes up in a motel room in Iowa and literally has no idea where he is.
Once I reached Jerantut, I took a three-hour boat ride with other backpackers up the river to Kuala Tahan, a small village that is across the river from the entrance to Taman Negara National Park. The boat ride was uneventful but very memorable; even though the wooden seats hurt after a little while, the sights and sounds of speeding along the water through the jungle never got old. As the afternoon wore on, the sun disappeared behind dark clouds, the chatter on the boat faded, and the whole scene felt almost like Rambo or Apocalypse Now as we continued to make our way upstream.
Kuala Tahan is a Malaysian village second and a base camp for adventure travelers first. The vast majority of the village buildings are restaurants or accommodations, mostly guesthouses and hostels. The one distinguishing feature though is that most of the restaurants are floating barges whose entrances are rickety boards of wood slanting up from the rocky shore. When a boat speeds by and its wake hits the barges, you can feel the restaurants bob up and down a little.
Like most visitors to the park, I planned to spend only two nights in the area, so the activities started right away. After a floating dinner, I joined a dozen other travelers for a guided night walk through the jungle to spot nocturnal animals, mostly insects. From that point of view, the tour did not disappoint, as we saw lots of very large bugs; think ants the size of bees and spiders the size of your hand. More interesting to me though was simply the setting: walking through a pitch-black jungle with only flashlights to light the way, listening to all the new and unusual sounds.
I got up early the next morning and hiked to the park’s canopy walk, the largest in Malaysia. Even though half of it is closed for maintenance, it was still worth the trip, especially because I was the first and only one there. The novelty was lost a little bit since I had done the other canopy walk in KL only a couple days before, but it was still undeniably cool and clearly the biggest attraction of the park.
After a strenuous, mostly vertical hike to a small summit and the subsequent exhaustion-induced nap back at my guesthouse, I set out for afternoon activities of visiting a local Malaysian tribe and a boat ride through river rapids. The tribe (Orang Asli) is nomadic and the people are true original Malaysians, complete with their own language and customs independent of everyone else. One of the elders showed us how they make fire and how they make their blowdarts and blowpipes, after which we all got to try our hand at some target practice. Let’s just say I wouldn’t make a very good hunter.
The boat trip through the rapids was a little contrived (most of the reason we all got wet was because the tour guide was intentionally rocking the boat) but still super fun. He stopped the boat at a random spot on the riverbank and we all got to swim in the muddy river for a while. The ominous clouds, eerily quiet jungle, and lurking in the murky water elicited more Rambo sensations. Normally this wouldn’t be worthy of writing, except that it’s the first time I’ve been able to go in the water on this entire trip since my leg wounds are now finally healed. Here’s hoping my new skin is strong enough to keep out Malaysian river bacteria!
That night, I enjoyed a few hours of loud thunderstorms from the relative safety of the floating restaurants. I’ve always loved watching and listening to thunderstorms (from someplace dry) and San Francisco’s unusual geography and climate rudely deny me that joy.
Cameron Highlands
The next day, I took a minibus to Tanah Rata, the most popular city in the Cameron Highlands. Three hours of very winding roads eventually planted me in a surprisingly cool-weather town surrounded by hills and green fields of tea leaves. I saw tourists wearing pants and jackets in the late afternoon and I myself was a little bit cold in just shorts and a t-shirt. I had found some weather relief at last and it was delightful.
The next morning, I set out on a half-day hike led by Jason, a local tour guide and the husband of one of the women who works at my guesthouse. A native of the highlands, Jason studied, lived, and worked abroad for many years before returning home to do what he loves: explore the beauty of the highlands and introduce others to that beauty. He is intelligent, environmentally and politically conscious, and a fluent speaker of English, making him a perfect guide for the day. We had some candid conversations about Malaysia’s struggle to achieve “developed nation” status and how that often involves sacrificing the environment in the name of financial expansion. The topic of conversation migrated to conservation, pollution, recycling, and McDonald’s.
As for the trek itself, we spent a couple hours ascending one of the jungle hills, paused a bit for some snacks and photos, then spent almost three hours descending through primary rainforest. The trail was narrow, mostly unmarked, and virtually indistinguishable from other paths through the jungle, so I was extremely happy I hadn’t attempted this hike on my own. The jungle was cool, quiet, and very peaceful as we hopped over fallen trees and slipped through the mud. About halfway through the descent, the nagging clouds finally opened up and it started lightly raining. Surprisingly, this was the first real test of my raingear (even after two and a half months in Southeast Asia) and everything was a-okay. Given that I was dry (from the rain, but not from sweat), hiking through a rainy, peaceful rainforest was a really special memory for me.
Once we reached the end of our descent, we spent some time wandering through the tea fields of the Cameron Valley Tea Plantation, chatting with and watching some of the workers (who work six days a week, rain or shine). After getting a tour from Jason of some of the facilities and a lecture on how tea is harvested, we sat down in the plantation’s restaurant to enjoy some conversation, pastries, and hot tea, all of which were appreciated after a cool and very soggy morning.
After returning to town via an impromptu car ride from Jason’s “big sister” (which had humorous undertones of him being a helpless high school kid), I relaxed for the rest of the day and treated myself to lots of food and drink and laptop time in town. The trek was surprisingly strenuous; I ate two full dinners that night just to get back to normal and my legs are still a little sore (three days later).
Ipoh
The next morning, I hopped on a bus to Ipoh, a mid-sized city about halfway between the highlands and Penang, my next destination. Lonely Planet says that Ipoh is a bit of a foodie destination, though after a few days here, I think that’s a very generous label. Given that I’m a vegetarian and not crazy about Chinese food in general, I found Ipoh to be a little bit lacking in food options. That said, I’ve found a nice Western cafe (with a fantastic name), an upscale Indian restaurant, a Vietnamese place, and a Western-style bar that I’m happy to revisit because they serve up some satisfying meals. For about $6, I had a massive feast at the nice Indian spot, complete with multiple courses, cloth napkins, and even waiters in vests and bow ties.
Besides eating, there isn’t much to do in Ipoh beyond walking around Old Town (the birthplace of Ipoh white coffee) looking at colonial-inspired architecture. The “glory days” referenced by tourist literature and alluded to by the various heritage sites are long gone; these days, the city feels dreary, dingy, and lonely. I ended up spending more time here than I should have, mainly because I needed some rest from the fairly active last two weeks and the mild touch of tummy issues I picked up in the highlands. Feeling much better now after a couple days of playing video games on my laptop in my aircon hotel room, I leave tomorrow for Penang, a far more interesting place and a legitimate foodie destination; in fact, Penang is supposedly the foodie capital of the entire country.
Next post: Penang and George Town!
Random thought of the week: Darlie has been my favorite foreign toothpaste thus far, though it’s funny to note that until 1990, it was incredibly racist: it was actually called Darkie and had a pretty terrible picture on the packaging. Not joking.