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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