Hanky Panky

    “Do you know when the next bus or boat from Jerantut to Tamen Negara is?”

    A blank stare said he didn’t speak English. It was raining pretty hard now, and lightning flashes in the distance gave me enough light to jot down some thoughts and logistics in my journal. A 3 hour bus ride en route to Jerantut had turned into 4, 5, and then 6 about 20 kilometers ago when one of the bolts holding the wheel to the axle fell off. From Jerantut we had planned on taking the last afternoon boat up the river to Tamen Negara, but that had left without us on it quite some time ago. We had heard of a connecting bus that could also take us there so we would try for that.

I tried the person in the next row, asking the same question: “Do you know when the next bus or boat from Jerantut to Tamen Negara is?”
The man chuckled a little bit.

“Tomorrow”

    I was traveling with just one other person, Amanda (I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no), who planned our entire itinerary, but we hadn’t quite expected this. Jerantut is a quaint little town in mid east Malaysia. Lonely Planet recommends not spending much time there because there is nothing to see. And by the looks of things we’d have to spend the night there, so here’s to hoping that there is at least one place to stay. Our hopes were fulfilled, as we got off the bus a place to stay found us. A man from what was probably the only hostel in town greeted us as we were getting off and drove us to the hostel. It was still raining. We checked into the hostel and asked where could find a place to eat, hoping that at least a couple places would still be open this late at night. We were directed to a small Chinese restaurant filled with locals, probably one of the only places open. As we were walking to the place cars would slow down, roll down their windows, and the people inside would just rubber neck us as they slowly passed. Clearly this wasn’t a place that saw many light skinned foreigners. When we got to the restaurant we were seated with similar glares and pointed at dishes on the semi English menu to indicate what we wanted. First order of business was a 50 cent beer. It had been a long day.
    Where should we begin? Earlier that morning we had taken an 8AM flight from Penang, where the ship was docked, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital. From Kuala Lumpur we were to take the aforementioned bus to Jerantut, and from there a 3 hour river ride to Tamen Negara. We made it to Kuala Lumpur soundly, but once there we were answered with puzzled faces by non English speaking locals from whom we asked the direction of the bus station. One man had overheard us asking someone else and offered to help us out since he spoke English. His name was Ridz. He told us the next bus didn’t leave for quite some time. We got to talking and he offered to take us out to tea, an offer which we accepted, of course. He said we reminded him very much of his American roommates and that we weren’t like the typical Americans he witnesses. This was a good thing. He then continued to tell us, much to our fascination, his theory of race and ethnicity, which was the concept of a book he was writing. This book would investigate the interactions between Asian, specifically Malaysian, and Western cultures. It was his observations that Malaysian women would often ditch their ethics and indigenous culture in order to be seen hanging off the arm of a white boyfriend, leaving Malaysian men out as some type of inferior breed to the white man. It was this interaction that he hoped his book could help elucidate. Reminded me for some reason of The Game, although when looking back I’m not sure why, because the connection between the two is a long shot.We eventually exchanged e-mails and headed out to the bus station for our journey to Jerantut, with the ultimate goal of getting to Tamen Negara by the end of the night. We clearly didn’t make it, and as already discussed, we had no options to stay in Jerantut for a night, eating at glaring Chinese restaurants. I actually really enjoyed the remote honky tonk (borrowed from Sarah Palin’s phrase book) nature of Jerantut, despite feeling utterly out of place.
    Now resuming from where we once left off: waking up the next morning in Jerantut. A van from our hostel picked us up after brekky (AKA breakfast) and whisked us to the bank of the river. We boarded a very long and narrow motorized canoe type vessel, completely wooden, for the 3 hour ride up the river. Three hours of serenity and the noises of nature. Perfect temperature, a nice breeze in my face, with a relaxing pace and just the right amount of a little rocking was a great formula for me at that point in time. Seldomly catching my falls in and out of sleep, I marveled at the beauty of my surroundings. Bird songs gave soundtracks to the lush green scenery. We passed herds of water buffalo bathing up to their necks. On the river there was nothing that existed except me and everything else.
    After 3 hours of bliss and zoning in and out of space and time, we had made it to Tamen Negara. Tamen Negara is literally translated to “National Park” in Malay. It is a sweeping rain forest in eastern Malaysia. It is the oldest forest in the world, having not been affected by the previous ice age or volcanic activities. It is navigated by a network of weaving rivers and waterways. It is the home of several jungle animals such as leopards, monkeys, and even elephants, among other jungle related things and activities, such as night safaris, river rafting, and hiking. In short, it was a European honeymooner’s paradise. Upon arriving, our boat had docked us alongside a floating restaurant that was anchored on the river in front of the main park center. We were starving so we ate at this floating restaurant, which turned out to have amazingly cheap and tasty Chinese food. The dishes were all good portions and only about 5 to 6 ringgits each ($1.50 – 2 USD). There were about 5 or 6 of these floating restaurants along the river bank, and they all had extraordinary food that was great, so we ended up eating all our meals on the river. By floating restaurants, I mean that the restaurants were literally just large platforms floating on the river that were held to the shore by a few ropes. All the food was cooked on kitchens that were on the floating platforms themselves. To get to the restaurants you’d have to hire a boat for one ringgit (about 30 cents) to take you and dock alongside one of the restaurants for you to get out.
    After filling our tummies we headed to the park center and grabbed a key to a hostel where would be staying that night. The living quarters at the park headquarters consisted of everything from multiperson hostels to private multi room bungalows depending on your pay grade and roughing it grade. The hostel rooms were cheap, and they ended up having air conditioning even though they weren’t supposed to, so it turned out to be a good deal. The hostel room we were in had 8 beds, but there was only one other person sleeping there with us, so it was almost just as private as one of the bungalows for an eighth of the price. Not that privacy in the jungle is high ranking on my list of concerns; I was just happy for the free A/C. On the way to put our bags down in our room we met some monkeys who hung out with use for a while. Don’t worry, none were foaming at the mouth.
    After dropping our stuff, we went on a river ride into the jungle by motorized wooden canoe. The canoe seated 4, and we were joined by a honeymooning English couple, who made for good small talk. After about a 45 minute ride up the river, me getting significantly splashed along the way by the combination of minor rapids and having the front seat, we docked in the sand at the base of a jungle trail. After about a 20 minute hike we came to a natural cascading swimming hole where the puffer fish couldn’t bite you because the rapids were too strong for them to be able to navigate the area. There were about 20 – 30 other people there by the time we got there. From the looks and sounds of it, they were all probably European. Maybe some Australians. I swam with the Euros for some time and then a not so great idea popped into my head. Just upstream of the swimming hole was a pretty rough cascading rapid. It wasn’t huge or anything, but there was a lot of water moving down it. How cool it would be, I thought, if I could somehow skip my way across the rocks at the top of the rapid to get to the center of the river and have a triumphant photo taken of me standing atop the biggest rock in the center of the cascades. You can see where this is going.
    I start skipping my way across the rocks upstream, faring pretty well at first, I thought. A couple Euros turned to look and on their faces I saw the same blank glares that I was given in Jerantut. I eventually got pretty close to the middle, to the point where I had only one more rock to cross to, the one with the biggest gap between it. I started to slide my way across and sort of stuck a foot in the water to get a feel for the strength of the water falling between the two rocks. Very strong. But not too strong, right? Right… I sort of jump forward into the water with the hopes that moving water would land me at the bank of the center rock I was trying to get to. Instead, the moving water was so strong that it started to pull me between the two rocks with amazing force. The words “Oh,” and “shit,” repeated in my mind. I made one last attempt to grab ahold of the central rock I was aiming for. No. Sometimes in life you make choices that bring you to a place where you no longer have the ability to make the choices to get you back from that place. This was one of those moments. Down the rapids I went, out of my control, and I feared for the maintenance of my currently unbroken bones, and my life. Thank god for calcium. Or milk, rather. I crashed down to the rocks at the bottom, body completely submerged and rolling through the rapids for a few seconds until I quickly rolled into water shallow enough for me to get my footing. I was definitely too rattled to realize I was bleeding from my foot (and a pretty nice bruise would later appear there) but it was actually quite fun, considering all bones were intact. I stood up to more blank stares from the Euros. How crazy they must have thought I was… Amanda immediately informed me that the entire event was documented on her camera. What a relief, I thought, that I didn’t experience that ridiculousness alone. I asked one of the Euros for some bandages. I was given two band aids when we returned back to the lodge.

    The next day we woke up early for our comped breakfast (on the hostel) and headed out on a hike to the world’s longest canopy walk. We tried to follow signs as best we could, but they were either in Malay or non descript English. About an hour into it we got to the top of a great vantage point that overlooked a jungle valley, but no canopy walk, so we started to back track, we knew the canopy walk wasn’t that far. We eventually found one of the park tour guides stumbling out from an unmarked trail, and he directed us down the side of a mountain which took us straight to the entrance of the canopy walk. When we got there the line was huge, at least an hour and a half long, but by some magical performance by Amanda we were bumped to the front of the line.
    The canopy walk was a rope walkway suspended by platforms built at the tops of some very tall trees. We were walking on narrow strips of plywood that were strewn across horizontally laying ladders. These ladders holding the plywood walkway were being suspended by the rope webbing and the whole canopy walk was about half a kilometer long. And it was high. At one point I looked down and could not see the ground because there was so much foliage from the canopy blocking my sight. When the trees that the ropes were anchored to swayed, the whole walk way rocked back and forth as I jumbled my way across. I got to the end of the track in about a half hour, and upon getting down we jumped in a photograph with a Malaysian tour group before heading back to the lodging area.

    We had heard of a Malaysian elephant sanctuary that was somewhere around Tamen Negara. The national park itself was home to a couple hundred wild jungle elephants but because of increased foot traffic during the years the elephants have mostly retreated to pretty far back into the jungle. It would have taken about a 9 day hike to get the chance to see one of the elephants, so this elephant sanctuary was our best alternative. We just had no method of getting there, as it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. After asking the lodge and other independent tour agencies if they could help us out, and failing to get anywhere, we were finally approached by a Malaysian man who said he was leaving Tamen Negara for some other city and he offered to drive us to the elephant sanctuary for about 200 ringgits (which was an amazingly good deal, by the way). Only problem is that he wouldn’t be able to drive us back. No problem! We headed out on what turned to be a fairly lengthy 2 and a half hour drive through endless rubber tree and palm oil plantations. Our driver had Michael Jackson remixes (not the actual songs) on repeat the entire time. I think I heard Smooth Criminal like 5 times. The beauty is in the repetition. The place was really in the middle of nowhere.
    We arrived at the elephant sanctuary to sounds of roaring elephants in the distance like it was some dinosaur theme park or something. I went to the bathroom and heard elephants snarling in what sounded like the stall next to me. When we got there a posse of elephants was hanging out head deep in a river bordering the parking lot. You know, just chillin. We then went over to the bathing area and watched as the elephants were directed out of the river and into the showers where the staff washed them down. In another section of the sanctuary there were baby elephants roaming around. We borrowed some peanuts from other people and hand fed them, and gave them big elephant hugs. After spending a little more time there we decided it was time to head out.
    There were no taxis, buses, or any type of public transportation leaving the place, so we walked out to the parking lot and stuck our thumbs up. Very ambitious, I know. After no time at all, two Australian women (probably in their mid 50s to early 60s- we found out they were Aussies after their accents spoke to us) walked by us and we asked if they could give us a ride… to anywhere.

    “Oh of course,” they said. Score.

    We waited for another Malaysian woman the two were friends with and the taxi driver they had hired for the day. They told the taxi driver we were their family that they had met up with and we were going back to Kuala Lumpur- about a 4 hour drive at that time of day. All with no extra cost, or any cost to us at all (we offered, no doubt). We got to talking during the ride and we learned that the two Aussies were nurses who were supposed to be attending a huge nursing conference in Kuala Lumpur. The nurses decided to turn that conference into a retreat, so they ditched that day. The Malaysian woman lived in Kuala Lumpur and was a family friend of one of the nurses, helping them hooky their conferences by guiding the two around the country. Sounds like they knew how to have some fun. We talked and talked, and something in the discussion prompted the Malaysian woman to tell us her very personal life story and the relationship with her children. I won’t share it here, because she told us things with tears rolling down her face that she wouldn’t even tell her husband. It was incredibly touching and enlightening, and all I have to say is I love you mom and dad.
    After the 4 hour drive we all made it to the hotel that the nurses were staying it in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian woman, Carol, said that if we waited a few minutes for her husband Phang to arrive they would be able to drive us to Chinatown where we could find a hostel for the night. We took them up on that offer and as they were dropping us off in Chinatown they invited us to go to dinner with them. Phang was a member of the rotary club in Kuala Lumpur and they were having an executive meeting at an extremely exclusive golf resort in Kuala Lumpur. Thankfully I packed one collared shirt. And the hostel had an iron.
    Phang and Carol picked us up from Chinatown two hours later and took us to the rotary dinner. All this was on the house by the way, and the food was probably some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever eaten in my life. We got to meet all the past presidents of the rotary club and their significant others. We were probably the youngest people in the room by at least 3 decades, but we still had an amazing time hearing about all the projects the rotary club puts on for the community and getting to know the people in attendance, who all spoke English fluently. After exchanging e-mails and taking pictures with what seemed like the entire club, Phang and Carol said they would now whisk us about town. (Mom: This is the couple that asked for some Italian recipes, so please e-mail those to me so I can pass them along) They gave us an amazing night tour of the city. Kuala Lumpur is more developed than most western cities, and is absolutely beautiful at night. It has the Petronas Towers, which I’m sure you’d recognize if you saw a picture of them. They are extremely shiny twin towers with a bridge connecting them at the 40th floor or something, and they used to be the tallest buildings in the world when they were completed in 1998. To this day, they are the tallest twin towers in the world, rising to 1,482 feet. All the skyscrapers have amazing architecture. Cool sights and lights are to be seen everywhere. The development of the city all occurred within the last 10 or so years, so all the buildings are very new and sparkly.
    Anyways, Phang and Carol are lifelong members of some very exclusive clubs of Kuala Lumpur- you know the type that only admit one new person every couple of years and cause seniors to brag about their memberships after they’re retired. They said that the only reason they were able to be in these clubs is because they had applied for membership when Kuala Lumpur was a very young city. If they tried to get in now they probably wouldn’t be accepted. They took us to see two of these different clubs, which were pretty vacant since no events were going on that particular night, but nonetheless interesting to see. We drove around the city by night for a few more hours, stopping at key locations for sweet photo ops, and finally returned to the hostel for bed time. I got new friends and a nifty rotary club garment out of the night. And a few great stories.

    The next morning we caught an early flight out of Kuala Lumpur back to Penang Island where our ship was docked. It was the last day in port, and I spent running around the city that I hadn’t yet seen much of, and hanging out with monkeys at the botanical gardens. There are a lot of monkeys in Malaysia. I made it back to the ship by about 1600 to give me enough time to unwind and write postcards before we sailed.

    I’d say that Malaysia was probably the best country on the voyage so far, which was not something I was expecting. For as much as I did do in Malaysia, there was also so much I didn’t do. So much stuff to go back to. It was remarkably developed, the food was great, and the people were the friendliest people I’d encountered thus far. I don’t know if Austin reads this continuously or not, but you should screw backpacking through Europe and start thinking about backpacking through South East Asia. I know I’m already thinking of my plans to return.


Until next time.


Spenser.