Pacific Coast Drifter

The Trip

One of the adventures we were planning for this trip was a jungle trek through the forest of Taman Negara National Park. It's about 200 miles southeast of Penang, and claims to be one of the most pristine jungles in the world. But it turns out that getting there is a real problem. Even though it's only 200 miles away, we have to take a bus to Kuala Lumpur, then another bus to Tembeling. From there it's a 3 hour boat ride to the park. We weren't sure about the details but figured we'd figure it out when we got there. This was one of the attractions of the trip, riding a bus across Malaysia and seeing a big swath of countryside. So Wednesday afternoon we jumped on the bus to K.L., one of those big Greyhound things with air conditioning.

The route followed the west coast, but 20 miles or so inland, starting out flat, but then turning mountainous near Ipoh. It was pretty cool, the mountains were big limestone bulbs, like giant basketballs, quarter-buried with trees on top and caves on the sides. They ranged in size from several hundred feet to a thousand feet tall. It looked like a fun place to spend some time, and on the way back I noticed a big map at a road side rest that showed the area attractions; this is apparently a popular tourist place with jungle parks, hot springs, caves and hotels. We probably should have spent the night in Ipoh instead of the three on this trip.

We pulled into Kuala Lumpur about 7 pm, in the pouring rain (this happened every night about that time). It looked like an interesting town with tall buildings and parks, and we were thinking about cutting our trip short to spend more time there. So the bus pulls up two blocks short of the bus station and lets everyone out in the rain in the middle of the street. We weren't sure where we were, or where the station was, so we jumped in a cab and had him take us to the nearest hotel. It was about a half mile away, in a not-so-great part of town, like all bus station are. But it wasn't bad. The next morning we found out that there was a backpackers hostel right next to the bus station, that would have saved us time and money if we had known. The cab driver probably knew, but we later noticed that they seem to steer customers to friends when customers don't know what they're doing.

We dumped off our junk and the rain stopped shortly, so we went for a walk downtown, looking for something to eat. Several blocks north (I'm guessing it was north), we ran into a highly lit up boulevard with shops, restaurants, bands and people packed on the sidewalk. We grabbed a table in what appeared to be a Moroccan restaurant, and were amazed at how nice the place looked compared to the dirty area where the hotel was. But in fact, this whole section of town was pretty fancy.

We continued walking up the street, past fancy stores, flashy signs, street cafes, loud music, and more people than a good ant hill. Over head was their new elevated rail system that looped around this part of town 20 feet off the ground (though we never saw a train). They also had several jumbotrons playing non-stop commercials, and smaller TV's in store windows playing even more commercials. Most of it was Japanese/American propaganda, for stuff like Levi's, Calvin Kline, Channel and Sony. It was like one of those science fiction movies where people are constantly bombarded by propaganda, as they walk the sidewalk in a glassy-eyed trance. Anyhow, it was loads of fun, but the next morning things went downhill from there.

We needed to find the bus to Tembeling before 8 am so we started walking for the bus station at 6 am. The guidebook said that the bus leaves from the Istana Hotel, but we figured others would leave from the bus station about the same time. Once at the station, the guy in the booth said that no Tembeling busses leave from that station, but they do from the next station down the road. It sounded like he meant right around the corner, but I didn't feel like hiking an unknown distance and direction, so we headed back to the hotel and decided we'd ask the hotel clerk.

About halfway back, we heard a crash across the street, looked to our left and saw a car plow into a motorcycle. The rider was thrown into the windshield, and then the car drove the cycle into the back of a stopped taxi, pulverizing the bike between the cars. The rider was then thrown into the rear window of the taxi, then bounced into the air and flopped onto the road between the two cars. At first he didn't move, but then he tried to get up and couldn't. He leaned into a half sitting position, grabbed his leg and started screaming. He was smashed up pretty good, though it didn't appear that he was actually caught between the cars. We hung around for a minute while a crowd gathered, but there wasn't anything we could do so we kept going - we had a bus to catch.

Back at the hotel, the clerk thought we should go to the same station that the last guy suggested. But a taxi driver who was standing there said, no; the Tembeling bus leaves from the Istana Hotel, which is what the guidebook said. The guidebook also said that we need to buy our tickets the day before, which we didn't do. So the taxi drove us, and our gear, to the Istana, where the security guy didn't seem to know how the busses worked, but was sure that one would come. The Istana was one swanky place. I went inside to find some breakfast, but it was just too swanky for me, so I didn't bother going past the front hall. Although, I did go into the back ballroom, and found a Hewlett Packard (my old employer) convention about to start! I was thinking, maybe I should hang around and see if I know someone and mooch some food. What a laugh, they'd probably have the cops escort me out, even if they did know me.

At any rate, the busses showed up about quarter till eight. The big comfy bus was full (since we didn't buy our tickets yesterday), but the ugly smaller bus had plenty of room. So we pile on in, and Mario Andretti stomps on the gas and didn't let up for the next three hours. We fishtailed into the street with tires squealing, blew through a few hairpin turns and hit the interstate like we were running from the law. Mario was apparently getting paid by the job and not by the hour, and was out to maximize his paycheck or die trying. After zooming out of town on the highway, the road turned into a simple two-lane state route between towns.

This didn't seem to slow him down much at all. So now instead of a high speed four-lane slalom, he honed his tailgating skills by running up on anyone in front of him, no matter how fast they were going. Passing was a little trickier, but that didn't slow him either. If there didn't seem to be enough room to pass, he'd go anyhow, and usually the offending car would slow down and let him in. At one point, there was no way he could pass the car before oncoming traffic got there, so he pulled up beside the car and started inching him off the road! The guy wouldn't budge, so we had to pull back in behind him. The next time this happened, the approaching motorcycle pulled off the road and let us pass, rather than smash us head on. Several times he passed on blind turns, and one of the oncoming trucks we nearly hit was a tanker that said "Oxygen" in huge letters. Construction sites didn't slow him much either; he'd zoom through damaged roads with tires bouncing like basketballs. We sat in the back seats, where we'd have five rows of soft seats between us and the front of any oncoming semi.

We finally came to a stop at Tembeling in a cloud of dust and two hours early. We bought our cabin tickets, which included a free lunch, and kicked back for two hours waiting for our boat. After a while, they loaded up some of the boats with cargo and headed them upriver. They were 30 foot long-boats with a roof and two-stroke outboard motors. They seemed barely able to start and spewed loads of blue smoke when they did. The first group left in a smoke cloud, which disappeared when they got going. And then magically our boat started up with no smoke and we were off. We apparently got the only four-stroke. Compared to Mario's bus, this was a luxury cruise. We turned left at the main channel and headed upstream into a remote forest, leaving behind a village that was already pretty remote to start with.

The Boat

We were zooming upriver at a pretty good clip in a river about 200 feet wide and flowing quick but smooth. Chad pulled out his GPS and let it plot our course for a few minutes. It claimed our speed was 12 mph, which is what I would have guessed - about as fast as I can run. Our seats were cushions on the boat bottom with only space for two side-by-side. I was hanging my arm over the side, dragging my hand in the water and admiring the incredible scenery. The trip was worth it just for the boat ride. The river follows the edge of the park and is buried deep in the rainforest. With nearly no sign of civilization, we were passing through an unbroken valley of trees and forest. An occasional canoe or power boat was moored along side the river, each with a narrow path heading over the hillside toward someone's hidden house.

Along each bank were towering trees overhanging the river, some over a hundred feet high but most a little lower. The trees were all shapes and sizes. Most were narrow bushy things, probably mahogany and teak. Others were smooth 100 foot poles without a single branch except for a group at the top, looking like a knitting needle standing on end. These hung out above the others, and didn't bother wasting their leaves in the darker lower levels. Hanging from all of them were creeper vines and strangler figs, either climbing up the trunks or hanging from the branches. The lower reaches of the forest was small trees and bushes, filling in the gaps so that the whole forest was a wall of green that spilled into the river. And spill they did; in places where the bank had washed away there were trees growing right in the river or on small islands. Occasionally, the washout became a sizeable island with plenty of river flowing on both sides. Quite a few were in the process of being washed out, overhanging the river at an angle that it couldn't possible maintain.

As we cruised upstream, the mountains were getting taller, appearing above the choking forest that had blocked the view. Thick tops of trees covered the hills, making the forest look like trees that were 500 feet high. The whole scene was filtered by a muggy haze, with the hills farther away a misty color of blue. Patches of fog hung at the tree tops in places where the trees were sweating faster than the sun could burn it off. And so it went for three hours: leaning back in our seats while Chad read Time magazine and I jotted notes in the journal, watching the forest float by.

As we climbed farther upstream, rapids became more common. Most were tiny little things, but near the end we plowed through a few big ones that sent water splashing over us all. The river is the main method of transportation in this area and we'd pass by other boats frequently. Some of the nearby residents had boats of their own, parked in the bushes, and occasionally we'd see their kids splashing along the bank. Some residents left their cattle to graze on the thick grass nearby. About half way up, we passed one of the Brahmas swimming across the river with only his head and big horns above the water. He was in no hurry, but then suddenly picked up the pace when we buzzed him at about ten feet.

The Camp

We pulled into camp about 4:00 and it seemed like a nice enough place. After checking in at the desk, we walked past a huge orb spider, across a swinging bridge, and into the cabin compound. The eating pavilion was on the right, doubling as a handy meeting area. Our cabin was farther back on the left, just past a cute little garden bridge.

But the cabin wasn't quite so cute. It's one of those A-frame models, badly worn out from years of unmaintained use, and losing the fungus battle with the jungle. We expected the mossy doorstep and cold shower, but moldy bed frame was a little scary, and in need of a good scrubbing or even a paint scraper. The sheets were clean, but when I layed on the bed it sunk like a hammock. The tin at the foot of the bathroom door was twisted like a discarded burger wrapper, just waiting to hack up a foot in the middle of the night. The lights worked, but the wall fan didn't. It was thankfully bug free, and the mosquito net in good shape, but we didn't really need it. We dumped our packs on the beds and hiked over to the pavilion for a bite. I was suspicious about our location, so I took along our map.

Traveling upriver, the park was on our left, but the camp was on the right, leading me to believe that we weren't in the park. Turns out, we were at Nusa Camp, a private camp about two miles past the park headquarters, and outside the park. This isn't a big deal, but it meant that the trails were across the river and we couldn't just get up in the morning and head off for six hours, like we had planned. Although, when we boated past the headquarters I wasn't impressed. It looked like an impromptu village, floating right on the river, was slapped together to trap tourists. I was glad that someone else got off the boat and not us.

Meals were free with the cabin, so we sat down with an English couple and waited an incredible amount of time for our chicken and rice. We were running into British travelers nearly everywhere in this part of the country, no doubt because Malaysia was a British colony not long ago. Then again, it seems like where ever there's a good adventure, you'll find a few Brits not far away. At any rate, they seemed content enough with the camp. And then, after chatting a bit, a giant bird walked up to the table looking for scraps. It was a Rhinoceros Hornbill, a hawk sized bird with a giant beak. He moped around whining like he was scared, but not scared enough to skip a free meal. The dumb look on his face paled in comparison to how clueless this bird really was. He's the camp pet and has apparently been there for a while, yet he was stumbling around like his feet hurt, banging his head on the table, and earlier, sliding off the tin roof that he must have landed on a hundred times. Or maybe that sad Charlie Brown look was all part of his act, a clever way of getting cozy with monkeys and tourists. Either way, the next morning he was sitting on our porch rail, crapping giant mounds of stale tapioca on our porch, which the ants loved and carted off in a long caravan.

The Jungle

I got up early the next morning and found a band of monkeys frolicking on the lawn. They were in the trees the night before, and came down to the ground only now that the people weren't stirring. A little later, Chad got up and we headed off to the pavilion for some breakfast. The boat would be leaving for the canopy walk about 8 am, so we ate fast then rounded up our gear and headed for the dock. After a five minute ride downstream, we jumped ashore and started hiking up an easy hill. Once into the forest, the muggy air became downright steamy. All those trees and bushes breathing out moist air keep the forest more humid than the river. It was like walking through a damp sponge.

After a short hike up the hill, we came to the forest canopy walkway - a series of footbridges swinging between trees tops, at up to 80 feet off the ground. The ground fell away below the walkway (since we had just walked up the hill), so we only had to climb a short stairs. We were quickly into the tree tops with a bird's eye view of the forest and river below. The walkway had about eight segments, each about 150 feet of planks laying on aluminum ladders, strung between trees with cables and ropes. The whole unit swayed as we walked, but none of it seemed loose.

By the second segment we were eighty feet off the ground, into the tall trees that we had been watching from the river. The distant forest floor wasn't even visible most of the time, but covered with a dense coat of smaller trees and bushes. The top of the forest didn't really look any different from the lower layers, but I suppose if I knew what I was looking at, the bugs and leaves would appear completely different. The best views were downhill toward the river, making the walkway seem a lot higher than it really was. Only two people were allowed on a segment at a time, so we tended to bunch up on the tree top platforms. I went last so I could hang over the side and do some segments twice without slowing down others.

The walkway circled back to where it started and our group then continued hiking up the hill toward a steamy overlook a mile away. It was nearing noon, so the forest was getting warmer and though it wasn't that bad we were pouring out sweat. The plant life was getting thicker as we went. In the background we could hear Hornbills squawking and Gibbon Monkeys yapping, but we couldn't see them. What we could see were plenty of insects, in particular the huge ants. They were big fat things more than an inch long, and always traveling alone. The guide said that they bite, so he picked one up and shook it. When he opened his hand the big guy had a death grip on the guide's hand with his pinchers and his feet in the air. They mostly seem harmless (a website I checked claims they don't bite), but we were seeing them everywhere. I poured part of my water bottle on one, but he didn't seem to notice, and probably thought it was just the normal weather in the rainforest. The others in our group thought it was hilarious.

The other popular bug was the termite. Nearly every hundred feet we would cross a path of 1/8 inch termites, walking in formation from one part of the forest to another. They use fallen branches as superhighways, but then walk on the ground as they cross the trail. Usually the formation was thin but some were pretty big, and in one place we were watching them stream into their tree in a huge formation. It was disgusting and made my skin crawl. We also saw giant walking sticks, more than a foot long, cicadas, leaf insects, and butterflies. We never did see anything bigger than birds, though the guide said that native Malaysians still live in the forest but nobody ever sees them.

After slogging up the muggy trail for 45 minutes we came to a break in the forest at an overlook. The river was 500 feet below and a half mile away. The air was a little cooler, so we took a short break then continued on to the next overlook. This trail was a real rainforest experience and loads of fun, though a few in the group were struggling. The long up hill climb was wearing out the Irish mom, while the Japanese lady spent most of the time in the front with me. It was only a moderate workout, but the humidity made it feel worse than it really was. After about an hour we turned around and headed back to the boat.

On the boat ride back, we passed two groups of people floating down the river on inner tubes. Near the camp are several sets of rapids and the boat drops off the riders a half mile upstream then picks them up a half mile downstream. Once back in camp, they told us that our turn would be sometime after 4:00. So we hung around for a while and by 4:30 I was starving. I was hoping for an early trip, then dinner afterward, so we sat there, and sat there.

By 5:30 I was getting light headed and figured that I'd be risking my life on the river unless I eat first. So I walked up to the pavilion and ordered a sandwich, but before I got it our boat came. I told Chad that there's no way I can go before eating, so they went without me. As soon as he left it started raining like crazy. Just before, a group of locals had gotten off the river in the rain, laughing and having loads of fun, but I thought I'd be better off under the pavilion and out of the rain. So nearly an hour later Chad returned soggy wet and broadcasting about how much fun it was. Apparently, you don't even notice the rain when splashing in the river; go figure.