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Taman Negara is stunningly beautiful and it is impossible to capture the sights, sounds and theatre of the forest in a picture.  I think that the only way for you to truly experience the majestic beauty of this ‘virgin’ rainforest is to actually go and see it.  If this is not possible then read on and I will do my best…..

I arrived in Kuala Tahan just as the sun was going down and this is the ‘town’ where most visitors base themselves when visiting Taman Negara National Park.  Nearly all tourists arrive by boat having boarded at a town called Tembling which is about 40km downstream.  When the boats arrive, I later found out, there are information huts with people who meet the boats and everything is set up to welcome visitors down by the river.  When you cycle into town, having never been there before, there really is no information and the town just seems a ramshackle collection of ‘army’ style barracks.

I suppose that most people come here on tours and the main attraction is the forest so the accommodation is slightly secondary.  If you want the ‘posh’ accommodation it seems that you need to pay the extra and base yourself in the official accommodation which is across the river within the boundary of the national park.  On my cycle into Kuala Tahan I kept passing boards for Han Resort whose advertising slogan is ‘the largest resort in Taman Negara’.  I definitely wasn’t heading there.  I asked a couple who were sat in the road reading a guide book , yes literally in the road which shows how many cars there are here,  where they were staying and if it was any good.  They said that they had pre-booked it before arriving and it was $50.  I wasn’t staying there.

I cycled down the 3 roads that comprise the town to see if anything took my fancy and as I was not that impressed by what I saw I decided to take a track that followed the river to see what I would find.  After about 1km I came across a hand painted wooden sign that was nailed to a tree saying Durian Chalet.  As this was the first place that I had passed I cycled in and it was like a little oasis of calm – a few wooden huts surrounded by grass and fruit trees.  It seemed a million miles away from the ramshackle ‘functional’ center of town and this would definitely be the place that I would call home for the next few days if they had room, which they did.

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The entrance to Durian Chalet

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This tree is a durian tree.  For those of you who do not know what a durian fruit is it is hard to describe apart from it stinks bad. In most hotels you will see a sign saying ‘No durian’ as it is that stinky.  In smelly food terms then I suppose this could be the Asian equivalent of blue cheese, just much stinkier.

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The large dark green tree is a mango tree and the shack is a ‘siesta’ bed.  When I was lay here every so often I would hear a thud as another mango fell from the tree.  At night, wild pigs from the forest and monkeys would come foraging through the lawn area eating the fallen fruit.

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This was my hut that I would call home for the next 3 days.  The place was really a little oasis and there was nobody there.  The only way that you would know it existed was the hand painted sign along a dirt track.

The place was run by a pair of young brothers and they said that this used to be the family fruit farm but it had now been turned over to tourism.  I asked them why there was such a the lack of ‘touts’ for hotels and tours as nowhere in Malaysia had I seen any touts in any of the touristy areas that I had visited.  It was like people found your place by osmosis if they hadn’t specifically researched it on tripadvisor I suppose.

I will always remember the time, many moons ago, when Deirbhle and I arrived in Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the security guards were hitting the tuc tuc drivers with battens to keep them away from the bus.  The reason that they were willing to get ‘beaten’ to give you a lift into town was that they were nice guys and once they took you from the bus station everybody tended to hire them as their drivers for the time that they were visiting Angkor Wat; essentially if they didn’t get you at the bus station/airport they would have no business.

There was definitely no hard sell going on in Malaysia.  The way that Mohammed, one of the brothers, explained the lack of touts in Malaysia was how his way of life was influenced by his Muslim faith, and the example he used was that you are taught that you should only take enough for what you need.  As long as he had enough people staying for him to feed his family he was happy enough and that there were only so many tourists to go round and so everybody should get a little.  I thought that this was a beautiful way to live and could be the reason why ever since I crossed the border into Malaysia I have been bowled over by the acts of kindness that I have been shown.

An example of this kindness happened the other day when for lunch I called at a roadside restaurant and had something to eat, an iced coffee and stocked up on water – when I went to pay the lady, who spoke not a word of english, just waved me away and wouldn’t take any money.  Then as it was going dark I found myself in the middle of nowhere and a couple on a motorbike escorted me about 5km to a hotel. Again they spoke no english. The following day, I would stay at a hotel that had been prepaid for me by somebody I had never even met that had read about my cycling journey through Malaysia. Everyday I am astounded by the acts of generosity that I am shown in a country that I cannot speak the language and by people I randomly encounter on the street. I am sure that there is a lesson in there for all of us. 

Back in Taman Negara it was time to go and do some tree hugging, I had not cycled all this way for nothing.  I had decided that I didn’t fancy joining an organised tour and to get into the park on my own I had to walk back into town and get a boat across the river.

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As the majority of people who visit the park enter this way then there are lots of floating restaurants on the river and so I stopped to get some food.

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At night these places are rammed to the gills with people on package tours as they get ‘bused’ from their accommodation to the restaurant and back again.  In the evening there is a constant convoy of ‘Han’ jeeps (the biggest resort in Taman Negara) ferrying guests to and from these restaurants.   The food is honestly very good, and reasonably priced, so I can see why the tour companies use them; there is something slightly surreal about eating on a ‘floating’ river restaurant.

Once I had eaten it was time to get into the park and to get a boat was very simple as there are many wooden jetties that you can just walk onto and a boatman will pick you up. The cost is just 20 pence each way.

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When you get off the boat you are in the National Park and you need to register with the ranger service and pay the entry fee and a camera fee.  Again, this is only a small amount and if you wanted you could just walk in without paying as nobody chases you.  As I was going to be hiking alone all day I wanted to register with them as if something happened to me along the way they would then come looking for me.

The first hour of walking is along well trodden paths that the day tourists take, but once you are more than an hour away from the ferry point you essentially have the place to yourself and the trees are huge.

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For most of the hike I was following ‘goat’ paths rather than the main paths and just winding my way through the forest.  I had no idea where I was but I was not concerned as I knew that to my east there was a river which I could always find if needed and follow it back to the ferry point or, if it went dark, I could flag a boat down that I could hear every now and again as it zipped down the river.

The forest may well look all the same but there were definitely distinct areas of vegetation that I would walk through. Some areas had thick bamboo which were impossible to get through, like bars on a cage, and the only way to get past was to go round them rather than through them:

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While other areas had hundreds of vines that had grown into amazing patterns as they formed a crazy maze as they wound their way from tree to tree:

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The path that I had been  following just disappeared somewhere in the vines and I could not pick it up again.  There was only one thing to do and that was to head towards the sound of boats and the river so I headed east knowing that as long as I held this course I would eventually find the river.  After about 30 minutes the noise of the boats was getting louder and I found the river and yep there was a well marched track heading in both directions – upstream and downstream.  Unless I had really gone round in a circle I figured that the park headquarters and ferry point were downstream of me and headed off in that direction.  After about an hour I was back in civilisation as I walked past the entrance to the ‘canopy walk’ (which was sadly closed) and just as it was getting dark I headed back into the ranger station.  There was just one last job to do and I signed out before jumping a boat back across the river.

As the main religion in Malaysia is Muslim the only places that can sell alcohol are licensed ‘Chinese’ shops, and after a days hiking I fancied a beer and went in search of such a shop.  I found one not too far from the ferry point and it was kind of connected to a restaurant that sold fried rice and fried noodles.  Perfect, a beer and some food and then home to my little oasis.

Here is a video of my adventures in Taman Negara National Park:

The next day I had planned to go back hiking into the forest but when I got up I had Durian Chalet completely to myself and instead just chilled out in the garden doing nothing but listening to nature and snoozing in a hammock.  I figured that all that I had seen on the bike for the last week or so were trees and that a day doing nothing was the order of the day.  It was a magical day and just what I needed.

Every now and again the sound of the call to prayer would come wafting through the trees from the mosque on the other side of the hill.

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If you were in the main town area this was loud and if you watched the video above then at the end you will have heard just how loud this was.  On my side of the hill, it was much quieter and seemed to add to the mystery of the forest.

When I was lay there contemplating nothing really I saw that tied underneath one of the huts were blue barrels and for the life of me I could not work out what they were for.  I had seen them under other houses on my cycle to Taman Negara and thought that they could be used for water or food storage and could think of no other reason.

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Later that evening I asked Mohammed about them and he said that the house was a bit like their Noah’s Ark.  Every year during the rainy season the nearby river floods and due to deforestation upstream it gets worse each year.  He pointed to the ‘mud line’ on the roof of one of the buildings to show how high the water had risen the previous year.  When the annual floods come they put all of their belongings in the hut with barrels under it and the barrels turn it into a boat as it floats on top of the water.  When the waters receded they secure the hut back down.  An ingenious way of coping with the floods and keeping your possessions dry, and another reason to live in a wooden house rather than one made of brick.

The following morning I would be back on the bike and heading east to finish a coast to coast cycle transect of Malaysia via The Cameron Highlands, which was one of my bucket list items that could now be ticked.  My short time in Taman Negara had been amazing – not so much for any one memorable thing, more for the whole setting and general ‘theatre’ of the place. A beautiful spot of calmness in the mad world that we live in.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading about my time in Taman Negara and I can only finish by saying that my words and pictures in no way do justice to the amazing forest and tranquility that lies in the highlands of central Malaysia, and it really can only be truly experienced by being there in person – book your tickets now before its magic is slowly eroded by the onward march of deforestation that I would witness over the next few days cycling.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Cheers

Stewart

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Taman Negara National Park (Malaysia)
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