Taman Negara National Park

The train… we opted for a regular seat (S$ 27 each) instead of the sleeper (S$ 38), and we soon found out why they called the other section “sleeper”. At 11:00pm they turned on some strange cartoon (something with “dawgs” in it), and by midnight they had progressed to pre-WWII Olympic highlights in black and white. We got little, if any, sleep. Our destination was Jerantut, a small town near the entrance to Taman Negara – the largest National Park in peninsular Malaysia and, according to the literature, the oldest rainforest in the world. At 3:30am, someone figured out we had stopped at Jerantut, and we got off with that “where the hell are we” glazed look on our faces. There were a few other travelers there, half of them expats from Singapore. We purchased a ticket for transport to the jetty for RM 6 and the river trip to Taman Negara for RM 8 each, and settled into the uncomfortable, hard plastic seats at the train station for a couple of hours.

At 7:00am, we were taken by mini bus to the Kuala Tembling jetty, where they had a couple of restaurants and a small store. We had breakfast, but didn’t realize that the terrible food there was a sign of things to come – the park food ended up being the worst food we had anywhere on our trip up to that point, and combined with several other factors, shortened our stay in the park.

The two and half hour long boat ride up the swiftly flowing river to the park headquarters (at the time, the only way to get into the park was up the river) was almost enough to satisfy anyone’s expectations of Taman Negara – it was incredible and to this day I have very strong memories of the boat trip. The riverboats were similar in design to Thai longtai boats, and seated about 12-15 people, 2 abreast, sitting on the floor of the boat. Being so low to the river, we really felt as if we were explorers on the Amazon river. With towering trees and dense growth on both sides of the river, and the occasional sightings of monkeys, wild water buffalo and monitor lizards, we felt as if we were thousands of miles from civilization.

We arrived at the park headquarters, which was on the west bank of the river, and had over 100 chalets that were pretty nice looking, but very expensive. They also had dorm beds for RM 18 a piece and a couple of expensive restaurants. There was space for camping and you could rent everything you needed, which in hindsight may have been the way to go. On the eastern bank of the river, across from the park HQ (you got across by waving over a boat driver from the nearby floating restaurants – free if you get there in one piece!) were lots of hostels, mostly dorm beds, and some restaurants and shops. Again, it may have been better to go there – others did and had given fair reviews – but we decided to go further up the river to Nusa camp, a place run by the park HQ that was “more off the beaten track”. The best part of going to Nusa camp was taking the river boat up through some rapids to get there.

Here was a quick rundown of my opinion on Nusa camp – keep in mind we stayed in the dorm rooms (4 beds to a room RM 10 each) as the A-Frames were a little too pricey (RM 50) – terribly unfriendly, terrible food, disgusting showers and toilets, dirty, boiling rooms and the location was not very central to many of the treks.

As soon as we put out gear down, we set off to Abai Falls, an hour and a half jungle trek to a very small waterfall that had a nice, cool pool of water we swam in. It was a great opportunity for Beth and I to have some time alone in the form of a nice romantic hike in the middle of nowhere. The swim was great, but we were soaked with sweat on both legs of the journey, so we weren’t too comfortable when we got back to the camp.

That night, I slept on the top bunk, staring up at a huge spider, hoping he would catch all the malaria filled mosquitoes that had managed to squeeze through the cracks in the walls. Ok, I might have been exaggerating about the malaria, but it was pretty bad.

The next day, we were out of there. We decided to leave Nusa (the only thing keeping us there was the tiny, injured gibbon (nicknamed “Gibb”) that the park officials had swinging from a small hammock in a tree) and head down to the HQ area to try and find something better.

We stashed our stuff in lockers at the campsite and set off to the canopy walk. Just twenty minutes north of the HQ chalets, the canopy walk was a foot bridge suspended up to forty meters high in the huge rainforest. It was pretty impressive, and to some (Beth!), kind of frightening being up that high. We got half way through when we were told we had to wait due to high winds and possible lightning.

It was, I think at that point, when we broke and decided we’d had it with the park. With the prospects of it raining for the rest of the day and finding a new place for the night, we decided to leave. No sooner had we made the decision then we were on the 2:00pm riverboat and on our way.