JUNGLETREKKING NOW!

(its morning... I'm waking up... going to the window)
"KL... Still in fucking KL... When I'm here I wanna be in the jungle, when I'm in the jungle I wanna be back here."

Hehe... So I decided to go to Taman Negara!
At the hostel I lived... excactly when I finished my last post, this american guy called David asked me if I was also going to TN. I said: "yeah sure"... so he suggested that we took the local bus instead of the arranged bus... This was a great idea because it was about 5 times cheaper.
We came to Kuala tahan which is one of the border cities to Taman Negara. David had talked with 2 guys from Holland(Remko and Arnau) that wanted to do some trekking too... we couldn't find them when we arrived. We went around to find out what the prizes and routes for trekking were here, and at last we found a Chinese guy called "Man". He was sleeping in a swing when we found him and we woke him up and asked if he was a tour guide. Man was alot of fun, and very honest about the prize, AND... he agreed to take a trek with us that noone had done in 2,5 years and he had only done twice in the 10 years he had been a guide there. The reason we wanted that was so we wouldn't meet alot of other tourists on our trekking tour.
Man said that he needed some Orang Asli boys to guide us, because they knew the track better than him. Orang Asli(the Asli people) are the aborigines of Taman Negara.
Now we were 4.. but we needed 2 more, or else Man wouldn't get enough salary for the trek... so.. Man found 2 french guys(matthieu and Niclas) that agreed to go on the trek.


Group picture (from left: Matthieu, Arnau, Remko, Niclas and me)













Next morning at 9 o clock we met up near the river, ate some breakfast and packed our backpacks with food and water. We took a river boat down to a Orand Asli village.

Orang Asli kids












There they had a show for the tourists... which was kinda awkward because I don't wanna be that kind of tourist... but it was nice though. They made fire and darts for their blowpipes and we got to try the blowpipes on a target(skydeskive).


Orang Asli making fire













Alrright... LETS GO! We went into the jungle, with 2 of the Orang Asli boys from the village. Orang Asli are africans that migrated to this jungle 50.000 years ago. They are not so tall, actually about the size of malaysians with the looks of africans.
We trekked for 5-6 hours and came to a mountain we wanted to climb... it was 530 meters high, and when I got to the top(as the first) my pulse was 180 I think :D We took a group picture, but one of the french guys was not in it because it was too hard for him to climb it.
Then we went to the camp in the middle of the jungle near the Yong river.
We set up our tent and cooked some food. Then it started raining... heavy rain. We made some dams to lead the water away from our tent and that helped a bit. We were a bit tired, but it was nice to get to a place with no liches.
After our dinner our guide Man almost stepped on a scorpion, so that was pretty amazing... beautiful creature!

We woke up about 7 o clock when the sun came up...

(I love the smell of rotting blood in the morning... smells like... VICTORY... some day this trek is gonna end)

-had some peanutbutter sandwiches and started trekking again. Because there had been rain the day before there were 10 times as many liches. It was a hell... but as long as you don't panic its nothing to worry about... one of the french guys were almost crying in panic... The Orang Asli boys had no problems with the liches... they just took a stick and once in a while removed the liches from there bare legs. I did the same. It worked fine... I only got about 10 bites that day.
We saw a gibbon fleeing in the canopy and then we saw the Orang Asli's that tried to hunt it... I guess we scared the gibbon away.. but I'm not sure. Man knew the Orang Asli, it was a father and a son from the village we went to the day before.
We finally came to the camp... it was next to a waterfall so we bathed, washed our clothes from blood and mud and enjoyed the hole in the jungle with sun.
Lovely evening... then came the rain!!
It rained for 2-3 hours and our camp got flooded... I had chosen a strategically good place to put my sleeping bag, so I didn't get so wet... but some of the other... oh maan... Must have been a terrible night.
Well well... next morning we dried our clothes over the campfire and then went off after breakfast. Last day... so people were really tired. Liches everywhere, wet boots because the rivers were higher than normal because of the rain. Man said that he didn't want to remove the liches this day because it was healthy to loose some blood... hehe... nasty sight.

We came back after an 11 kilometers walk, exhausted... we found a dorm room, got a bath and then went to Man's place to get some chicken satay and yam juice. It was nice finally eating some meat again after 3 days with noodles.
Later same night we went to a restaurant with Man and he ordered some fish. The fish was in the catfish family and lived in the river we were on(floating restaurant). Lovely meal!

Today I'm back in Jerantut... David and I are gonna take the jungle train to Wakaf bahut and from there a taxi to Kota Bahru... there we're gonna stay one night and move on to Perhentian island.

I'm trying to upload as many pictures as possible... but it takes 5-7 mins for each picture and I only have very short time before the train leaves.

Best regards to all of you at home!