Taman Negara

After the islands I went to Taman Negara (National Park) to check out the 'steamy interior' of Malaysia. Little did I know how 'steamy' it could be.

The trip involved a 4 am train for 9 hours, then a 3 hour boat ride up the river. It was a long day, but a really nice trip. The train goes straight through the middle of the jungle, so it's a feat of engineering. The boat ride is peaceful (if not a little long for the butt) however, it's calm and nice to just sit back and relax and watch the jungle pass you by. Once you arrive at the park, there is a little town across the river, and you find a overpriced, hot box to share with 7 other people and one fan to attempt to blow around the hot air at night...

The park itself was really nice, however due to my ability to hurt/injure/endanger myself to stunning proportions I was forced to only do a day trip, instead of the two day overnight in a hut trip I had planned...

I woke up early and had a little breakfast before taking the boat taxi across the river and paying my entrance, camera fee, and hut bunk for the night. I had two big bottles of water and snacks to keep me going. I first wanted to check out the canopy walk, and was told to get there early, so I was on the train by 10 am. early meant 8 am. it opened at 9. I was behind hundreds of Chinese tourists, loudly walking, laughing, yelling and talking. It wasn't peaceful at all. Then when you get to the walk, it's a 3+ hour wait. Abort. I took off on my 6 hour hike to the 'Hide" where I'd be staying the night, listening to the jungle. However. 2 Hours into it, and a long, sweaty two hours it was, I took a break to grab some water and maybe a snack.

I immediately felt some things fly into my head, and I smacked them off. then i felt things land on me, and pain shoot down my arms and back. Something was attacking me, and I couldn't tell what it was. I think it was bee-like things, but I found no stingers on me, just marks, unless these were highly adaptive bees that kill people. I think they were. I ran for my life (remember I was stopping because I was horribly tired and halfway up a huge incline...)

In the process of running, i dropped my water down the mountain and into the lost abyss of the jungle. Now, I had a whole other bottle of water, but the amount I was sweating quickly took its toll on me, and that water went fast. Sweating. I sweat, I get it. I know it. But here, my legs were pouring out sweat and when i took big steps, it beaded through my pants. I was soaking wet. With sweat. It was like hiking in a sauna. My other water ran out, and I didn't want to eat snack as Id get too thirsty. This created a dilemma. About 4 hours into the hike I was exhausted, tired, and getting ridiculously fed up with how hard the hike was turning out to be. Lots of ups and downs as it followed the river. And not little ups and downs, but 'hold onto the ropes and roots of trees vertical' ups and downs...

I was walking, feeling dizzy and knew I needed to get out of the jungle, or at least find someone with water. However I only passed one group of 3 hikers on the way, and early on, so I was fine. I was giving up hope when I heard some noise through the jungle in the direction of the river. I found the closest little watershed creek and walked straight through the jungle towards the noise. I walked out on to a little beach with a tree hanging over rocks for a jumping spot. There were two people on a little romantic getaway, and I came out of nowhere (no path or even remotely path-looking) and asked for water and a ride home. They helped and it all worked out.

place of rescue

I found out I was only 20 min or so from the place I planned to get a boat back, but for hours had seen no one, no boats, no access to the river, and had no idea how much longer I had to trek. Little to say I was defeated by the trek and went back home. Luckily the hostel I had had no water, and I sat in my own filth for a couple hours before teaming up with some girls to get a better room with running water. I took the bus early the next morning the hell out of that devil park and back to KL... stupid jungle.

(special note. I'm R. That's 4 strikes in a row...)

In KL I spent another couple days just hanging out, not really doing anything. I met up with my friends again (Gabriel, the couch surfer who stayed with me, and I stayed with him in KL) and we went bowling, and he had a potluck another night with some amazing dishes. Never thought I'd like being in a city so much... but after sweat fest death hike '09, it was nice...

Gabriel bowling

Perhentian Islands

After the overnight bus to Kuala Besut I haggled my way onto a ferry (at a cheaper price) to get to the islands. Luckily, I was the only foreigner on my boat, and had a big group of Malaysians to talk to, but half way there the police pulled us over and turned us back for not having paperwork. Then since I told them I haggled a price (they payed full) I was told to get off the boat and wait for another, as they were over the limit of people (of course). After a grueling couple hours, I arrived on the island and took the first room I found, up a hill for 5 bucks. Dorm room. Fans. Humid.

The island is really peaceful and nice. It's not the drunkard topless party beach like Thailand, and because of that I think I liked it even more. You go to hang out, dive, eat and relax. There is no electricity running through the island, and everything is on generators. This makes it cool because power is limited to nights and during the day you just roam around and drink cool drinks, swim, snorkel, dive, kayak, etc.

The first day I walked around, and talked to some dive shops about diving. I met a girl Holly who 'worked' at one of the shops and liked her attitude and approach, so I checked out their shop and decided to go with them. They reminded me of people from UCSB, and I liked that. So I booked a course with them and decided to move into the Bungalow that was adjacent to them, to make it easier in the mornings.

I took my Advanced Open Water course with them, and also a refresher course (its been nearly 3 years) and also two fun dives at the end.

The dive sites were amazing, and it was like diving in some rich person's fish tank. They had thousands of fish, schooling and swimming around, fish bigger than my torso, and some decently sized sharks. We saw some really cool stuff. We also got to dive two different wrecks and do some deep diving and some technical stuff too.

Dives:

Sugar Wreck- This is a sunken ship, and you can swim through parts of the outside, and even surface inside it (still over 7 meters deep) and have a conversation without the regulator's air. It's got loads of fish and coral and life all over. Probably my favorite dive I did (I did it twice)

Temple- from the surface of the water it's about 1-2 meters of rock just barely poking out of the sea. Below it's a 25m pinnacle teeming with all sorts of crazy stuff, and we even had a big shark circle us checking us out. You see thousands of schooling fish and nemo's and all sorts of really great stuff

Vietnamese Wreck- An old boxy ship that is in an area of current, so if you're lucky (we weren't) you can see some seahorses chilling out (as they have no real fins or means of transport) and use the current to feed.

D'Lagoon- We stayed in the sand doing all sorts of exercises to increase my skill at buoyancy. Mission Impossible drops, floating on your head, swimming though hoops, upside down, flips, taking off your tank and sitting on it like a rodeo bull... very fun

Tombstone- I did my refresher and navigation dives here, and it's a little reef you can dive straight from the beach and has lots of fish. not the best, but its perfect for teaching.

I really enjoyed the islands, and dove during the day, did a little reading and studying for the course in the afternoons and evenings, and went out for dinner a couple nights with people from the dive shop, day dives, or that we'd met along the way. Its a very nice environment, and I can see how people just stay and enjoy the island for weeks and months.

Penang

Alright! Tine to continue to try to blog here, as the longer I put this off, the harder it will be for me to update all Ive done. I'm already over a week behind. So Penang is an island on the Northwestern side of Peninsular Malaysia.

Penang is a culturally rich island, with a strong colonial and trading past as it was up there in major ports back in the day. Therefore, there's a lot of history and museums and old forts you can check out. It's also (and better for me) known as a highly rich culinary melting pot, as it has Chinese, Indian, Malay and Thai ethnic minorities all over the island. Therefore, when in Penang... you eat!


I couch surfed again while I was in Penang with a man names Ang. He's a Chinese Malay, and works part time at the Chinese cultural center, and also other centers around town. This means he's a huge wealth of information on things to do.

The first night, there was a thrown together BBQ for a group of Singaporeans who were traveling through Malaysia on an eating tour. Last minute looked more like 4 days prep, as there was a HUGE buffet of seafood and meats to BBQ, and homemade dishes and drinks and appetizers. Quite an amazing "last minute" party. I got to meet other couch surfers from Poland, California, Germany, and Malaysia, and some expats from Britain and Japan who live in penang. It's quite the network of people, so once you know someone, you meet half the city.

I also had made some friends from the Cameron Highlands (Switzerland, Canada and Brazil) and I met up with them while I was there. It's always nice to be a completely worldly group of kids roaming around. We spent the next day going to a hill on top of Penang, taking a funicular to the top. The problem was when we got there we had a two hour wait, so we walked (hottest day possible) to some temples and then the funicular took 30+ minutes, and then at the top you had to wait 20-30 minutes before the 30+ minute ride down. It ended up being an all day affair.

After the funicular we went to meet Ang and have dinner at an Indian Cultural center, where everything is free and its run on donations (it was packed) and then to a Disabled Home to meet some people Ang does volunteer work with. It was a good day/night and got to see some stuff otherwise not on the tourist trail, which is always nice.

The last day I spent walking the whole of the city with a couch surfer from CA and was sweating horrible, per usual, until we found hidden aircon machines at the historic Fort in town, in the bunkers, and stood directly in front of them for an extended period of time, before running to the next one. Wasn't too bad of an afternoon, and we had a big couch surfing meetup for dinner, where one of them gave me a ride to the bus station to catch an overnight to the islands on the East coast.

Cameron Highlands

After my week staying in Kuala Lumpur, I took a bus with my friend Gabriel (who couchsurfed my apartment in Chiang Mai) to the Cameron Highlands, about 4 hours into the middle of the country.  The best part about it, is that at night it gets cold.  Cold to the point I can wear pants.  That's such a treat after sweating it out in KL for the past week.

When we got to CH we found a room with an English girl we met, and took the triple, as it was the same price as the dorms, which was an attic. We spent our time in CH doing 3 things.

First, we did a 4-5 hours hike up the nearest mountain, which was pretty nice.  It was harder than we though, and the view from the top was not the best, but it was nice to be hiking in a cooler climate, granted I still sweat through everything.  the hike was nice, and it felt good to get outdoors and do something.  

We also spent a day checking out the local "farms". There was a butterfly, strawberry, cactus, insect, tea plantation, and a bee farm... It was a stupidly touristy day, but we ended up having fun anyway, and got to see lots of the surrounding area.




One thing to note is that the food in CH is delicious. We ate Indian almost every night, day and morning and I'd still have more... I'd go back solely to eat more.