Monday, January 12, 2015

Return to Taman Negara November, 2014




When I think of tropical rainforests I will always picture Taman Negara, the premier national park in Malaysia and the first rainforest I ever spent time in.  Thirty years ago Bucko and I traveled there at the behest of the government of Malaysia to survey otters in this park.  For two weeks we traveled with rangers and boatmen up and down the river on long-tailed boats seeking the tracks, scat and other signs of the two species of otter that most probably lived here.

It was the time of our life, but we were young then, and such things were easier.  Now, with thirty years of age and a similar amount of weight accumulated, I was eager to go back again, expecting the worst but driven to go there nonetheless.

This time there was no government support for my visit and no research to conduct.  Instead I went as a regular tourist on a “3 day, 2 night package” out of Kuala Lumpur.  All details were taken care of.  At 8 AM one morning I boarded a minibus, at 11 AM I was at the boat dock in Kuala Tembeling and by noon I was riding with a group of other tourists on a long-tail boat for the three hour journey up the river to the park headquarters.

The river was broad, like I remembered, the big sandy beaches were devoid of people and the old growth rainforest trees towered high above the water’s edge. On the surface, at least, during the ride upriver, things had not changed all that much. 

So, lulled into complacency I was not ready for the sight of the visitor area in the park.  Where once there had been only a single lodge and campground on one side of the river, now there were scores of hotels, countless guest houses and a dozen or more floating restaurants, a regular city here in the jungle.  But lucky for me it was the rainy season, off-season in these parts, and most of the beds and tables were empty.  Believe me, I don’t ever want to go there in peak season and neither do you!

Even though I was part of a tourist package I was eager to break out of the mold, and the pictures Bucko suggested I carry with me did the trick.  Thirty years ago, like now, I was snapping photos of everything, using slides then, but converting the best images into prints.  And this handful of prints included photos of the local boatmen who accompanied Bucko and I on our otter survey.  Sure enough when I showed these photos to local guides they took me to two of these men, retired now, that still lived in the area.  Although I still can’t speak Malay and they still can’t speak English, the words “memerang” (otters) and Shabrina (my counterpart) were evident in their excited comments.  They remembered Bucko and I and our otter study.  And now they have the photos to prove it.

The second day at Taman Negara I managed to break away from the tour group in another way.  Our group was loaded onto a small long-tail boat and taken to a concrete dock up the river, at the base of 200 steep railing-less concrete stairs leading upwards to the canopy walkway, another bunch of stairs to the top.  This walkway, a series of 10 rope bridges suspended about 1/3of mile in length gave an exciting view of the rainforest and river below and I’m glad I experienced it.  But by the time I climbed up the stairs and up to the walkway, I was beat.  “OK, now we are climbing to the top of the mountain, another 1000 stairs,” said our guide. Not me.  I arranged with our guide to meet them back at the boat dock.


And this was a wonderful idea.  I purchased some soft drinks from a ranger at the walkway, then got the boatman to take me up the river to a local Orang Asli community I had noticed on a nearby beach.  I climbed up the bank to the cluster of huts, called out to alert people, then dropped the sodas off at the entrance to one of them as a gift.  Eventually two children came out of a hut, sipping their sodas and smiling shyly at me, not a tourist encounter at all.
The boatman soon came to pick me up and take me to a place closer to the dock where he could watch for the tour group returning from their mountain trek.  And me?  I jumped into the Tembeling River once again and floated there, fully clothed, alone but for the boatman, enjoying my memories of times gone by.  My visit to Taman Negara was a success!




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