Taman Negara National Park, Malaysia – November 2nd – 4th, 2016

We fancied a visit to Taman Negara National Park, so we booked bus/boat transfer through a travel agent from KL to Kuala Tahan, the village just outside of the park. After a 3-hour minibus ride, we putzed around for a few hours before finally departing on a long, skinny, wooden motorboat up the Tembeling river. The boat ride was surprisingly uneventful. The motor problems were likely the most exciting part of the 3-hour trip, although we did spot a couple of monkeys, birds, and domestic water buffalo. We finally arrived and made our way through the quiet village towards the place we had planned to stay. We received a fair room rate, $10/night, and settled in, just narrowly avoiding the monsoon storm. Towards the tail end of the storm, we walked the 10 minutes back to the river for dinner since our “chalet” restaurant was not open during the non-peak tourist season. I again hated what I ordered, surprise surprise. It turned out to be noodles and vegetables in a mostly flavorless, clumpy, corn starch paste soup. Sounds appetizing doesn’t it? Andy’s food was pretty good (am I the only one noticing a trend here?).      

On the way to Taman Negara National Park. The hut in the center is our "chalet".

The next day we ventured across the river and into the park. We are officially incapable of taking it easy, so we hiked all of the trails that we were allowed to do without having a guide. Yes, you read that correctly, all of them. It took us ~9 hours in the hot, humid rainforest and we were absolutely exhausted afterwards. The first trail was a summit up a seemingly endless number of steps to an overlook on Bukit Teresek. It was sweaty work, but the view was worth it. The trail was on a platform walkway keeping you above the ground and protected from the monsoon runoff and snakes. The second trail was actually a canopy walkway along suspended rope bridges. It was really cool! The last trail followed the river through an aborigine village and finally up a narrow roped ridge to the summit of Bukit Indah. To be fair, the last trail was more like bushwhacking than hiking. Overall, the park was nice, but since we were only allowed to be on the trails that hugged the park boundary without a guide, we saw almost no wildlife. We spotted a couple of monkeys and many bugs (notably termites), but that was it. Regardless, the rainforest is some of the oldest untouched forest in the world, so we were glad that we went, although perhaps not being cheap asses and hiring a guide would have been more of an experience.

Hiking in the National Park. 

Since we can’t seem to stay in one place for more than 48 hours, we left on a public bus the next morning (which was super nice by the way – go Malaysia!). We actually didn’t just ride on one bus that day; it took us four buses and an Uber to get to our hotel in George Town. We had actually set out that morning towards a beach town north of KL, but while en route, decided, what the heck, we hate relaxing, let’s just go all the way to George Town, 13 hours away. We booked the hotel from the bus. We should really learn to take it easy.