Taman Negara, Malaysia
Tonsai to Krabi is your basic travelers stone throw away. I sat with a guy who played the trombone for a pretty famous band called ‘Job 2 Do’ on the song ‘Do To Tam’. He got out on the way near where they were playing that night and invited me along but it was out of the way for me and I really needed to pull into the Krabi Grand for 350 Baht/night and spend a couple days writing on a new novel that in some ways scares me even to write because it’s creepy what my mind comes up with some times. The staff knew my face immediately and we had a quick laugh and a plate of fruit together before I even went to my room. It was St. Patrick’s Day and a good excuse to drink green beer at the Chillin Bar and play some pool. I only had a couple days there and spent most of it writing and sorting out other factors of life.
I flew to Kuala Lumpur a day before my Thai two month visa expired so all well there and made arrangements in KL at the Travel Hub where I have stayed before and very close to China town. Travel Hub Guest House, 15A Jalan Balai Polis, 50000, KL, Malaysia. travelhubmy@gmail.com. The rooms are clean, the staff are wonderful and a fully stocked bar with Warren from South Africa at the helm. Writing all the next morning and doing laundry were on the list. I went to the Reggae Bar for lunch and watched a bit of Premier League football and then caught the FREE bus from in front of the Hotel Geo to take me into Butik Bintang area and to the Low Yat Plaza where electronics are the main focus and mine for yet another camera that can withstand 45 meters underwater. I am not impressed with my GoPro quality especially at a distance. Pictures are blurry and close-ups are non-existent. I usually leave the camera setting on ‘film’ because it takes frames quicker and more in focus than ‘still’ photos. I’ll take it with me but it won’t be on my wrist underwater anymore. I found what I was looking for and kept shopping. I figured I could get it on my way back through in a couple weeks. While walking around I noticed many pet shops with numerous birds in cages all skittishly bouncing from floor to perch to wire or wood cage as people passed on the street. It is part of the research I wanted to do on a ‘White Bars’ sequel, a book of awareness for young adults and adults alike and that could be done in Kuala Lumpur and the Taman Negara National Park, a 130 million year old rain forest jungle in the middle of the Malaysian Peninsula mountains. The book White Bars is a comedy about two Hill Myna birds from Burma and their planned escape from a pet shop in San Francisco via a stock market with the likes of the Reptile Federation of Traders. The sequel is their journey back to South East Asia where they are from and where they belong. They can not fly there so they have to find another way.
I spent the first night in the Attic Bar on the top floor of the Travel Hub Guest House, travelhubmy@gmail.com, because they were having a free BBQ, every Saturday night for your information, and I am not one to miss a free meal even if I have to pay low beer prices for it. The night drew on with great conversations, dancing, singing and a balcony overlooking the lit city skyline and then fireworks exploded for some unknown reason. I left a bag of clothes and some odds and ends at the Travel Hub knowing I wouldn’t need a pair of pants, a jumper (sweatshirt) and a polo shirt and some electronic plug-ins where I was going but made a reservation for my return for my next flight out of Malaysia. We will get to that airport when the time comes. Moving on out of KL I arrived at the Mandarin Hotel around the corner at 7:45 am and was picked up by a mini van at 8 with four jovial French. Their laughter, jokes, smiles and well being kept me entertained literally for days. Nice folks. We drove a couple hours to the boat dock in Tembling for a three-hour journey up river to the entrance of the Taman Negara National Park.
We checked into our respective rooms and returned for dinner at a floating restaurant before walking into the jungle for a night walk. We crossed the river in a small boat and walked on a raised walkway that lead off in many directions through the nearby jungle. We ran into a type of porcupine right away but after that we only saw a mouse deer and a load of really big insects.
The package I bought from NKS Tours at the Mandarin Hotel Travel office included; transport, two nights with air-con accommodation that I didn’t want but they weren’t offering fans, all meals were covered, a night walk, a shorter version of the Titan Silara jungle canopy walk and brief visit to an aboriginal village at the edge of the park. A young German couple on their first traveling adventure had the same package so we joined up and spent some time together. They had a lot of questions and it turned out the German woman had read my blog about Koh Phi Phi in Germany before their trip started. The four French had a different package including a night jeep tour and ate at a different restaurant and stayed in a different guesthouse. The last time I was at Taman Negara was on a push-bike, a mountain bike with road slicks and panniers touring South East Asia back in 1988 from Sydney Australia to Bangkok, Thailand. Beside the three-hour boat ride the entrance had changed dramatically with a road to the outside world, guesthouses galore, floating restaurants and no environmentally sound plan for the garbage we as tourists accumulate and leave.
The aboriginal village was pretty neat and the history of them was a sad one. The government wanted the national park and they couldn’t have the aborigines nomadically wandering around in it. In the old days they would get everything they needed from the forest. When the area around them couldn’t provide they would pack up and move on to another area. Another reason they would move is due to a death. If someone died they would have a ceremony and place the body on a built platform high up in the trees and leave it there for nature to take its course. Now, being moved to the perimeter of the park are set in one place, the children still don’t go to school and a traveling doctor comes to visit except for pregnancies, they go to the hospital for that. Now they make 5 Ringgit/person who comes to visit and see their simple life. They use the money for fuel and now rice that they didn't eat before but now that they are out of the forest their diet has changed. They can start a fire as fast as I can pull out a lighter. They still hunt small animals with a blow gun and still live across the river very close to their mother nature.
The garbage is there because we ‘tourists or nomads’ are there. For example, let’s say I’ve been on the road for many years and I drink bottled water because my stomach can’t handle the bugs in the river and stream water but the locals can for the most part. Many locals in many countries also drink bottled water now due to the high influx of ‘stuff’ in the water. As simpler explanation; there are 365 days in a year and conservatively I drink a big bottle of water everyday if not more so I have also left at least 730 one and one half liter plastic bottles in my wake and that’s just plastic bottles. I’ve been out here a lot longer than two years, it’s actually closer to six or twenty and I’ve seen the build-up of waste everywhere including Europe, U.S; the whole world for that matter. Burning plastic and packaging is the norm in many countries across the globe. Other garbage we leave is toilet paper, plastic bags, wrappers of assorted goods, packaging, discarded clothing, shoes, blown flip-flops, sunscreen containers, cigarette butts, razor blades, receipts, tour package pamphlets and program itineraries, beer bottles, alcohol bottles, soft drink bottles and cans, plastic cups, plastic buckets that people drink beverages out of, batteries of all sizes, machine oils and millions of tons of bodily waste yearly into countries that can’t process their own let alone hundreds of thousands of travelers. No matter where we are in the world we make garbage. It wasn’t always that way and we have to figure out how to get back to a more environmentally friendly system or it will break down with us in it. Recycling is a good start but not practiced enough. Biodegradable is by far the favored future. We all need to be aware and think about what we buy and how to curb the on going intoxication of the land and oceans. I don’t eat much beef because I don’t know where it comes from and the U.S. is making it even less transparent than before. I only eat fish in Alaska that I or a friend catch. I don’t eat fish in foreign countries if I don’t know how it was caught, legal or illegal, or how it was handled. Pesticides that are outlawed in places like the U.S. are sold to other countries and then we eat the vegetables and maybe they haven’t been cleaned or prepared properly. I’m sure they weren’t washed in bottled water. Transparency of products has to increase and boycott those that don’t play by the rules. All right, I’m off my soapbox in Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, London, England now. I have been working on a blog called, ‘Planet Garbage, What A Waste’ but I’m not done gathering pictures or information and probably never will without drawing a line in the landfill. Back to it;
With the bigger village at the entrance of the Park and more tourists coming many animals have moved further into the jungle and away from the entrance. Our night walk consisted of searching for insects and snakes. All the larger animals Tapir, Elephant, Leopards, etc. have moved on. Like I did almost 30 years ago I should have not done a package but shown up at the entrance and hired a guide to take me into the jungle for a couple days, that is the advice I give you if you are planning to go to Taman Negara National Park. I spoke with the men at the Tahan Makmur Travel and Tours SDN BHD and once you get to Taman Negara I advise you to go see them. They have lots of options to get you further into the jungle than some of the bigger companies. They are located on the corner across from the mini-mart. Email: tm.tamannegara@gmail.com. They are in a position to do custom tours depending on how much time you have. I liked them and their English is good. We talked about how it used to be for a while and they agreed it is considerably bigger than in the past. Like I said, I didn’t have much time and was interested in doing some diving off the Perhentian Islands and so I moved on.
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