posted by wtanaka at
12/17/2002 03:39:00 AM
Sunday, December 15, 2002
I'm in front of a computer in a small metal and plywood room in a small village in Taman Negara National Park in Malaysia.
Yesterday, 4:00 p.m., it looks like the path to the hide where I hope to sleep the night goes through the village where I started. So I head back to the village and ask for directions.
Turns out that I have to head back the way I came. I reach a signpost, one that I had taken a picture of earlier, which reads "B. Cegar Anjing 5km." Bumbun Cegar Anjing is the name of the hide. It's 5:00. So I walk. Along the way, my foot gets stuck in a small puddle of quicksand. I was sure I would lose my shoe, but managed to extract it.
I walk through all sorts of mud and across several small streams. The trees and logs that have fallen across the trail seem big enough that I think "this can't possibly be the right trail." I'm heading north, when the map tells me that Cegar Anjing is west. The hide is open to tourists, so the trail should be easier to find. But then they did say that the trail was hard to see.
Around 7 p.m. The sun is clearly about to set, and it's getting hard to see under the tree canopy. I cross a triplet of tree branches that have fallen across the trail, hang my pack up on a nearby vine, and spread my ground sheet over the branches. It's completely dark by the time I lie down and try to go to sleep, except that I can still see by the light of the full moon and four or five bright green fireflies.
Around 11:30 p.m. I give up on sleeping on the branches, they're too thin. I move my ground sheet onto the trail and promptly fall asleep.
I wake up, the ground is cold. I crawl into my sleeping bag.
I wake up, the sun is up, there's rain falling on my face. I grab my tarp and spread it over myself, and try to go back to sleep.
Around 7:30 a.m. I decide that the rain dropping on my tarp are going to keep me up. I crawl into my sleeping bag.
Around 8:00 a.m. I still can't sleep. I decide to leave.
I had wildest dreams. One of them involved wild animal eyes with eye shadow.
But most of them involved imagining that there was a slab of concrete with a roof over it just a few hundred tantalizing feet away.
Tonight I'm going to try to get a spot in the (most likely crowded) hide #6 Bumbun Tabing. Compared to last night, it's going to feel really great.
posted by wtanaka at
12/15/2002 09:28:00 PM
The boat across to the east side drops me off right outside a really small village. I follow the signs past some noisy rattling building into the trees. The first part of the trail is extremely steep, and after only a few hundred meters, I'm exhausted. I ditch my pack on the side of the trail, and the rest of the walk is a lot easier. The trail ends suddenly, the sign says "Pengkalan Gua." I've gone too far. I turn around and finally find Gua Telingga, marked by a huge sign.
The cave doesn't look very interesting, but I've come all this way, so I crawl in. The ground is covered with a brown slime, and my flashlight doesn't help me see very much, but does catch some animals flying past which accompany the fluttering noise of wings.
I've never seen a bat before, so I freeze, not sure what to do. I must have been frozen there for at least a few minutes, listening to and watching the bats flying past my head.
After a while, it was clear that the bats were not going to attack me or land on me, so I continued into the cave. The fluttering and the flashes of wings past my flashlight beam became more frequent, so I pulled out my camera and took a blind shot of a dark area of the cave. Tens of bats hung on a wall above the water covering the floor of the cave.
Going further into the cave looked like it would require crawling on my stomach through water, and I was starting to worry about getting to the hide before it got dark, so I left with only some pictures.
posted by wtanaka at
12/15/2002 09:14:00 PM
I get to Jerantut train station around 11:30 p.m. There's a guy waiting there that asks me if I'm going to Taman Negara and gives me a piece of paper advertising some hostel in Jerantut. The prices seem fine, and so I get in the free transport to the hostel. Some other guy from the U.S. gets in the van too.
I check into a "hostel" room, which doesn't have any other occupants. As promised, I'm woken up at 7:30 the next morning. I have my breakfast (an omlette) downstairs, and fill in a form reserving for me a car ride to the Kuala Tembeling boat jetty, a boat to Kuala Tahan village, return trips, a park entry permit, and a camera license. I pay my money, dump some of my clothes in the luggage room, and we're off.
Around noon yesterday, I arrive at LBK restaurant. I walk up into the village to buy some food to put in my backpack, and take a boat across the river to the north side of the fork.
There, at the center for buying permits and hide reservations, I tell the ranger that I want to see Tenor Trail (the west side of the river fork).
He tells me "it's closed."
He tells me "you need a guide to go there."
He tells me "the boat across will cost you 40 Ringgit." Why? "mumble mumble."
He tells me "the hides are closed."
I found out enough information at the hostel that I knew some of these things were not true. I say I just want to see Gua Telingga and maybe sleep in this hide, Hide #7.
He gives me a hide reservation. Oh, and the boat to that side will actually only cost 50 sen.
I get the feeling he didn't want me to go.
