Primeval Jungle and Mega Cities

Today marks our two month mark in SE Asia!

More adventures since we last left you in sleepy bay side Cherating. We headed straight from our rest there to Jerantut in the mountainous jungle clad interior of Malaysia, where we prepared for our trip into Taman Negara. It is the largest National Park in Malaysia and protects a rainforest that has been around for 130 million years. To put this in temporal perspective, it is about the time that the first mammals evolved. Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy, first showed up on the scene about 125 million years later! (Sorry for the dorky Anthropological digression, but what else can I use my degree for if not to bore my friends and family).

Once we had dropped our travel gear at a hostel and loaded up on cheap raw food and water for the park, we boarded a rickety bus driven by an insane driver before dawn. We rapidly bumped and swerved our way to Kuala Tahan, a teensy town across the river from the actual park and set out into the jungle.

Our first night was to be spent in a bambun (animal hide) about four miles in the thick of things. We fought off leeches, grudgingly feeding some, the mud, and humid heat to our hide. It overlooked a clearing that was supposed to be a haunt of some of the animals of the area. Before it got dark we decided to hike up to a cave near by and check it out. Turns out that it was dark (of course) slippery, and full to the brim with bats! After wallowing through bat shit for a half hour we headed back for dinner.

That night we stayed up a little waiting for animals. We didn't see any besides some lightning bugs and the ant army collecting crumbs. The rest of the night was spent awake laying on a hard plank bed listening to the LOUD jungle, which was interesting in its way. We managed to not see the apparently huge spider (with 8 eyes and 16 pinchers EEK!) that we heard about from the guest book in the bambun and headed back to semi-civilization tired, very dirty, and feeling like real adventurers.

We day hiked the next day, stopping by a canopy walk suspended 40m above the ground and a hill where we got long distance views of the jungle, which stretched as far and further than we could see. We also ran into some Orang Asli (indigenous Malaysians) walking through the jungle barefoot. Not being overly talkative, they just gave us a wide-eyed stare and continued silently on.

The next day we switched gears entirely and took a long train ride to Johor Baru at the very southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. It is the jumping off point for Singapore. We stayed there at a home stay with an extremely friendly Chinese Malaysian and his cute little son, who loved to open and slam doors more than anything (getting his head caught along the way). We flew through Singapore in one day, squeaking through immigration and busing down to the historic city center. The town is really very modern with a lot of green space, in some ways more so than any western city we have seen. We saw a really cool art museum, the performing arts venue, which locals call the Big Durian, and wandered through a huge park in the middle of the city. We returned to JB late at night thoroughly exhausted.

Next was off to Melaka, a UNESCO world heritage city with lots of colonial architecture from the Portugese, Dutch, and British, as well as the usual Malay, Chinese, and Southern Indian. We found a great guest house and stayed for a few days wandering around and eating. On Halloween we bought some masks from the market and dressed up to go to the night market. Malaysians didn't quite get why a Chinese Opera Actress and Doraemon the cat-like robot were wandering their town, but didn't seem to mind and smiled when being greeted with "Happy Halloween." We also saw some not-so-spooky live music at the cafe associated with our hostel.

Next it was off to Kuala Lumpur, where we are right now. We found another exceptional place to stay and from here have been wandering around, viewing city parks and doing a little shopping. Yesterday we went to see the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin-towers in the world. Next stop the highlands and then to a permaculture farm where we will spend some time (undefined) volunteering. The farm is in the highlands of northern Malaysia, 100km north of Ipoh. The Czech couple that started the farm are working on getting the farm up and running in it's first year of operation. We'll be able to work on various projects that suit our particular skills, Colin will be shoveling mulch and Amanda will be slaughtering turkeys for dinner. More to come on that, till then. . .