Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur & Taman Negara National Park

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, stumbling off our night bus and blearily wandered into the night to the cheapest available backpackers, at 4.30am on the 21^st January. We had just 5 days to spend in the last of 7 countries we had (rather optimistically!) planned to see in 14 weeks. After a few hours catch-up sleep we went off to see the main tourist sites – the iconic two Petronas towers - tall city skyscrapers towers linked by a bridge used as the HQ of a large petroleum company. It was described on a plaque outside as a: ‘steel and glass monument which weaves together Islamic symbolism with modern sophistication’ although I am not exactly sure how. We also went to the top of the 276m Menara viewing tower which has a design like a spinning top and is on one of the Malaysian Ringgit coins. We ate a variety of tasty Malaysian dishes for lunch and walked through China Town (which city in the world doesn’t have one?) encountered a vast number of snakes and tarantulas (eek!) and a two-headed terrapin (alive) in a reptile sanctuary /zoo, tried more street-food and ended the night having drinks with a Canadian backpacking couple Neil had met in Cambodia. 
 

We set off to the world’s oldest, 130 MILLION year old primary rainforest: the Taman Negara National Park, on the 22^ndJanuary. This was enough excitement for us quite apart from a minor coach accident we had along the way: It was raining, we were going downhill round a sharp bend and the coach just veered off the highway into a wall. No one was hurt. The bus got a bad scrape and the doors were initially jammed shut from the buckled metal but we were just thankful it was nothing worse. We then went on a small wooden boat for three hours which took us up river right into Taman Negara National Park. Before we had even entered the park Neil had already spotted a croc in the river, I saw a hornbill fly right over our heads and Neil handled an apparently harmless wild ‘green snake’ in front an impressed crowd of tourists. We counted a total of 30 different animals over the journeys to and from, and the 2 days 3 nights we spent in the national park.

Neil and I went on our own four hour trek in the rainforest the following morning, including an exhausting climb of the Tohan mountains to the viewpoint at 344metres. We experienced our first ever leech bites (pulled them off immediately even though we both knew full well we weren’t supposed to), saw butterflies, ants, termites, stag beetles, several spiders (yuk) and 2 Crested Pibeck on the forest floor. These are large partridge sized birds, the female in browns and the male black and white with a startling peacock-blue head and neck). We ended the trek with a treetop canopy, at 40m high and 500m long it is the longest in the world. This offered great views across the park and the river and whilst we were up there we even made friends with 2 European girls who were on holiday here. In the afternoon we went on a boat-trip through rapids on the river which got us all screaming and soaking wet! We stopped off for a swim and a rope-swing on the river bank and Neil did summersaults into the water in attempt to win some beers.

The next excursion was to see the native tribes people of the Taman Negara rainforest: the Orang Asli. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I was most surprised as to how they looked. They could have been African. Their skin was black, the women’s afro hair was kept back with wooden combs, their noses flat and wide- they even wore cloth wrapped around them (like you would wear a sarong on the beach) but just like they do in Africa! They carried their babies in a cloth swung across their bodies, and had very small huts with woven rattan walls and palm fronds roofs, outside of which they would gather to sit around, or cook over a wood fire. It was much like a typical Ghanaian village I had been to. There was maybe a dozen or so of mostly women and children who wandered around listlessly, clearly not interested in the group of tourists who regularly came to visit their small community on the riverbank, despite the monetary returns we were assured that they received from the tour guide operators. This ensured that a small group would always stay there for the benefit of tourism and meant they could not live in the depths of the rainforest like the other 600 Orang Asli, all that now remain.

We learnt of how they are a typically nomadic tribe, moving from one place to the next every 3 or 4 months, rebuilding their huts as they go, which takes about a day. The most ritualistic event is if there is a death. The person’s body is carefully prepared then placed in the uppermost branches of tree, the height of which is denoted by the age – the older the person, the higher they go, to as high as 25m off the ground. This is because they believe the spirit leaves the body and rises up to the sky. No one can go within a 2km radius of this tree; if they do, they will die. They tribe must then leave after a death. The men hunt and make the fire, the women’s ‘role’ is simply to cook and to reproduce. They may have up to 16 children, and ‘marry’ from as young as 14 for girls, a few years older for the men. I was fascinated by coming so close to such a hidden away a race, with such primitive ways of life and belief systems, so simple and so far removed from ours.  It was also so special to see people representing an ethnicity with just 600 people remaining – no thanks to the rapid speed of their natural habitat being depleted from deforestation for rubber and palm oil plantations which dominate much of Malaysia’s landscapes.

We were given demonstrations and had the chance to try their more superior/quicker way to make a fire, and even more impressively, how to use the bamboo blow-pipe. This is used by the men to hunt, mostly monkeys. It is a long piece of rare hollow bamboo with a rounded resin mouthpiece which they put to their mouth and shoot out poison-tipped arrows to kill. The source of the poison can vary from the sap of a tree to the poison coated on the skin of frog. It takes 10 days to make the blow-pipes by hand. I was very impressed, having seen tribes from South America to Papua New Guinea use this weapon on David Attenborough documentaries, and I bought one as a souvenir; slightly shortened but nonetheless identical to theirs. That evening we watched a large pack of monkeys including several young, cross around the back of the building where our dorm rooms were into the undergrowth, as close as 5 meters from us. We also saw 2 large tapia’s feeding from right outside the Park’s Information Centre. These are large mammals similar to a hog, completely black apart from a large block of white on their middle – they have a long snuffling snout like an anteater and were so used to people they let me sit right by them and stroke them.

On our second day in the park we decided we would trek to a hide and spend the night there, in hope of seeing larger mammals. So we spent most of the morning preparing, and Neil then went off for a couple of hours of fishing. We set off early afternoon, our small backpacks laden down with tins of fish, beans, sleeping bags and plenty of water. After trekking for 2 or 3 hours we took the wrong path and found ourselves pushing through foliage growing over a hardly used path. Pushing aside vines and scrambling over fallen trees we walked into more spider webs than I care to remember! We finally got back to the original path and then faced our major obstacle to the hide. Crossing a fast flowing, rapid filled river – no bridge, no boats, and we were carrying cameras we didn’t want getting wet. So Neil intrepidly crossed the river first– waist deep and wading slowly using a stick! I managed to cross, very slowly, carrying our shoes and precious water supply whilst leaning very heavily on a stick to support myself – without which, I know that at I would not have managed to cross. I was truly facing the full force of nature, the power of the water surging down the river banks and cascading over boulders in its path made me feel so meek and powerless by this oppression of water. I knew if I fell or tripped, I would be helplessly dragged down and under the water. We managed to cross safely, with all our possessions intact and mostly dry, but the crossing took us about an hour and a half.

We were greeted in our hide by a young European couple and an enthusiastic Chinese man, about half as skinny as me, who presented us with oranges and bid us Happy (Chinese) New Year. After unpacking our things onto the hard wooden raised platforms that were to be our beds for the night, we rustled up some baked bean sandwiches and tinned sardines on crackers for dinner – it wasn’t as bad as it sounds! At nightfall we did glimpse the bright lights of animal eyes across the clearing which Neil believes could have been a jennet cat. We saw a small striped deer through the undergrowth when we went off for a night stroll around the hide, but best of all, a large east-asian porcupine just 10 meters from us, 2 meters from snout to tail, black in body with long white spines from halfway down its back. Unfortunately I had one too many close encounters with some exceptionally large and hairy spiders so I am not sure if I would do it again…..but it was a great experience to be that close with these animals in their natural habitat.

On the 25^th January we took the rickety old train from KL down to Singapore where we stayed for a couple of days with my brother and sister-in-law until our outbound flight to Brisbane on the 27^th. My parents were also visiting for a week so it was brief family reunion, a few thousand miles from my Oxfordshire family home. We shared stories and photos and of course I had to show them my bamboo spear gun! We had a safe and comfortable night flight with Qantas from Singapore, touching down at 7am in Brisbane, Australia. As promised, our friend Heath from Thailand (see Thailand blog) met Neil and I at the airport and us and our luggage and we were off, our Australia adventure just beginning.

Thailand – Bangkok, & Koh Phi-Phi, Koh Lanta & Koh Ngahi islands

On the 6^th January we travelled for 10 hours out of Cambodia and across to the border to Thailand, where we planned to spend much of our two weeks exploring the best of Thailand’s beaches and islands. We had the good fortune to bump into Heath and Lexi who we got chatting to on the 4 hour bus ride into Bangkok. Not your usual backpackers, they are a friendly 33 year old Australian mother and 14 year old daughter travelling for 5 weeks in Asia. We were taken aback when out of the blue Heath kindly offered a room in her house in Brisbane for our first week in Oz as we fly to Brisbane, and had not yet made any plans. She even offered to pick us up from the airport, so we gladly exchanged contact details!

We spent three days in Bangkok from the 7^th – 9^th January and enjoyed a small variety of what the city had to offer. In the daytime we took boat rides down the river and wandered around the quieter shadier streets to escape the tourists and the heat of the daytime sun. We went to the overflowing Chatuchak Market where I bought silver stone-studded jewellery and Neil got shorts for bargain prices. We also visited Wat Pho, which has the largest collection of Buddha’s in the world, including the world-famous 15m high and 46 metre long gold-leaf ‘Reclining Buddha’, complete with mother-of-pearl inlay in its feet, displaying 108 characteristics of Buddha. We indulged in well-earnt foot and back massages and colourful cocktails in the evenings after trudging around the city in 30 degree plus heat. It goes without saying that we walked down the infamous ‘Koh San Road’ - the hotspot destination where backpackers have been heading to for more than 20 years for its purely hedonistic atmosphere. Amongst bright lights and deafening music you will find gaudy bars selling overpriced drinks, bamboo tattoo parlour’s, stalls selling Thai fisherman pants, slogan string vests for the men and tiny bikini’s for the ladies. There are hotels and restaurants and Ladyboys a-plenty. You can buy pirate copies of practically any music or film of your choice; as well as a multitude of smoking paraphernalia and fake ID cards for anything! We refreshed ourselves with fresh coconuts and smoothies and some excellent red Thai curries, but gave the dried grasshoppers and live maggot entree on offer a miss. Buskers, street performers and young kids break-dancing kept us well entertained until the late evening hours.

On the 10^th January we took the night bus and boat ride out to the first of our Thai islands, Koh Phi-Phi, which is located on the South West coast of the Thai peninsula in the Andaman Sea. On first glimpses from the boat the island looked beautiful with rising green mountains, ringed with beaches and turquoise waters, spilling out into the deep blue ocean depths. However on arrival it was much more touristified than we had realised it would be, and we paid sky-high prices for a very budget room a few minutes’ walk from an over-crowded beach littered with well, litter, and young, over-enthusiastic teenagers out to impress. We were struggling to conceal our disappointment, especially when I discovered 10,000 Thai Baht (roughly equivalent to £250) had been stolen from my bag on the night bus. At night time the beach transformed into party central, with fire poi and fire staff performers on stages, clubbing music cranked up to the max, buckets of alcohol for sale and giant glowing skipping ropes outside bars that had seemingly popped out from nowhere. Reluctantly we decided to give the party scene a try and after a few go’s on the giant skipping rope we ended up having a great time and dancing the night away until the early hours.

The next day we did a snorkeling and island-hopping boat tour and went to the truly most stunning beaches and islands – in the world. Turquoise waters, shimmering crystal clear on powder soft white sands fringed with palm trees and tropical fish galore, all under a the beating sun – we were in heaven. We went to the famous Maya bay where ‘The Beach’ was filmed, and monkey island, where I was robbed of my hot, buttered corn-on-the-cob by an apparently fearless monkey. On the boat we met a young, friendly Ozzie couple from Melbourne who invited us onto their private resort’s beach and so spent the next day on a much nicer beach with barely a dozen people on it, and managed to swim and snorkel with a load of fish and wildlife including starfish, moray eels, a sea snake and oh, did I not mention it already..? Black-tipped reef sharks!! What an experience! These inquisitive and people-friendly sharks ranging in size of up to a meter and a half swam right by us, several of them, as they tend to swim up near the reefs for their prey. They are not dangerous and stay close to the bottom of the sea bed so you cannot sight them from above, only below the water’s surface.

On the 13^th of January we caught a boat onto our next island, Koh Lanta. With a 27km coast on the West lined with beaches and chilled out resorts this island had a much quieter vibe, perfectly located to enjoy the sunsets over the sea.  We stayed in three different places on the north, middle and south part of the coast. On our first night in a palm fringed beach hut at Blue Andaman Lanta Resort bungalows, Neil swam far out in the sea and caught a small lobster with his bare hands! Nonetheless, after a few chuckles the restaurant staff cooked it up for us and we ate it with our supper after a beautiful sunset over the rocks. During the day we swam and snorkeled, and explored the island by moped, discovering empty beaches, past mountains and through leafy rainforest. One day Neil spent an afternoon on a fishing boat – deep-sea fishing, and I went out on another snorkeling boat trip where I swam through caves into Emerald Cave and lagoon – an enclosed beach with towering high rocks that apparently were once used by pirates for hiding their loot! It was on this boat trip that I discovered our third and final island we were to stay on– the beautiful, barely touched beach of Mai Pai Bay had just one resort named Paradise Resort on Koh Nghai island (pronounced as Ko-Hi).

We got to Koh Nghai on the 18^th January and completely relaxed for two days. Paradise by name and Paradise by nature it was in a remote location with no other resorts or bars or resturaunts. There was no blaring music, no shops, and barely any other guests. The accommodation was very simple, individual bamboo woven huts with wooden balconies on a nice grassy area facing out to the sea. The dozen or so bungalows were nicely spaced out and just set 20m back from the deserted beach. It was exactly what we were looking for; it was perfect. We put up the hammock and drank from fresh coconuts, whilst watching the sea gently lapping the shoreline. We swam far out past the reef out to the drop-out and snorkeled with hundreds of colourful fish surrounding us. I had an unforgettable experience practically engulfed in a cloud of tiny clownfish who were following me wherever I swam brushing close to my skin and almost blocking my vision with their volume. This was probably one of the very best snorkeling experiences I have yet to have, it was absolutely magical. I described this beach in diary in the following words:

‘It is green, grassy and relaxing. The sun is shining hot, the sea is a shimmering blue and the palm-fringed sands are deserted. A peaceful, undisturbed tranquility….it is everything we wanted! It is silent here apart from the sound of birds, cicadas, the sea and the occasional motor of a passing fishing boat.’

Sadly we had to leave our paradise on the 20th, vowing we would return again and stay for more than just 2 days. We had a full day of travel by boat to take us to another bigger boat, then bus, to take us to another town to end up taking a further three buses, until we finally got our night bus (2 hours late no suprises there) that would arrive at Kuala Lumpa, Malaysia at 4.30am. I am sure you can imagine how well that journey went, and yes we did have to get out of the bus twice for the border crossing (for exiting Thailand and then entering Malaysia). And no we did not get any sleep. And yes I managed to leave something behind on the bus this time – my book.

Cambodia - Choeung Ek, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap & Ankor Wat

The Kingdom of Cambodia, or Kampuchea as it is called in the Khmer language, was our next country. Cambodia has a population of 14 million consisting of 95% Khmer and some ethnic-Chinese, Cham and ethnic-Vietnamese, and a country motto of: Nation-Religion-King. We were here to unearth Cambodia’s history and culture, and to visit the famous temple ruins of Ankor Wat once ruled by Kings, Ankor Wat meaning: ‘Holy City’.

After the peace and tranquillity we found in the rivers and waterfalls in southern Laos, we had to quickly readjust to the populated and newly rebuilt cities of Cambodia; beginning with Phnom Penh, the capital. On our first day we travelled just outside the city to the burial site of Choeung Ek– or ‘the Killing Fields of Cambodia’; a painful but crucial historical site which remains from the cruel regime of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970’s. During their four year reign led by dictator Saloth Sar or ‘Pol Pot’, as he was then known, genocide destroyed the country killing one third of Cambodians, destroying schools, hospitals, temples and scarring the lives of the few who remained. The regime wanted to eliminate all foreign influence whatsoever and return Cambodia to the year zero. Through the most barbaric and brutal means possible, women, children and even babies were not spared from horrible deaths. It was a very harrowing experience to walk around the site listening to our audio headsets retelling the history and individual testimonials. As this is a burial site where three thousand people had been unearthered, teeth, bones and scraps of clothing which constantly rise up from the soil when it rains were present on the ground where we walked, making the experience so much more real than if you were looking at artefacts in a museum. In the centre of the site a tall glass monument has been erected with all three thousand skulls from the site scientifically categorised according to age, gender and so on. Offerings of flowers, prayers and burning incenses are left here. At present, UN High Commission trials continue to try some of the remaining regime leaders for Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes to bring some justice for the atrocities committed.

Whilst Neil headed on westwards to a small riverside town called Battambang for boat rides and bamboo trains, I stayed on in the city for a couple of days to soak up some of the culture, history and religion that Cambodia is so entrenched in.  I met a couple of Ozzie’s in the grounds of a particularly grand monastery which I happened to just wander into, we then went to the newly rebuilt Royal Palace grounds where many beautiful buildings and temples decorated in Hindu-Buddhist style were located amongst fountains and gardens. A faded murial which ran on all four walls surrounding the palace was all that remained from its original site before its destruction under the Khmer Rouge.

We spent New Years Eve on the packed out streets of Siem Reap, dancing to Western music blaring from towering speakers till the early hours amongst Cambodians and backpackers from all over. Siem Reap is a riverside town with markets and traditional dancing and food stalls galore and there is also an excess of Westernised bars, restaurants and souvenir stalls to accommodate all the tourist’ needs. We enjoyed many a fruit shake, massages and Aspara dance performances. But for us, the main reason for going to Siem Reap was to see the ancient temples of Ankor Wat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of dozens of temples sprawled out amongst forests and by lakes and moats, dating back to the 9^th –12^th centuries, only recently discovered by the French in the 19^th century. I found the temples absolutely incredibly, and took several hundred photos! There is a huge amount of detail on every crevice, corner and pillar of the temples that were painstakingly carved in bas-relief (meaning they are raised out of the stone work, almost three-dimensional). Popular images are of the Aspara dancers, (the many concubines and wives of the Kings) bejewelled in necklaces, belts and head-dresses). But the walls also depict battles of war; everyday scenes of village life; the sacred three headed elephants showing the influence of Hinduism; deities and Gods; animals; and intricate patterns ornately decorating walls, ceilings and doorways. The temples were originally lived in by the ancient Kings who once ruled Kampuchea, and are made of stone such as limestone and laterite which vary in colour from shades of grey and brown to orange and even pinkey hues.

We spent three days over the New Year period exploring the temples. On our second morning we rose at 4.30am to watch the sun rise over the ‘magnificent 3-tiered pyramid crowned with 5 lotus like flowers’ of Ankor Wat, beautifully silhouetted against the glowing sky. We saw the towering, smiling faces of the famous 12^th century temples of Bayon; another favourite of mine were the temple ruins of 13^th century Ta Prohm (famous for being the site of where scenes of ‘Tomb Raider’ were filmed). To me this was a magical place where towering trees grew above and over the temples, with big, thick roots and tangled vines intertwining with the stones creating a spectacular synergy of the wonders of nature and man. On our third day we travelled an hour north of the main temple site by rickshaw to the countryside where, after a half an hour or so walk along a path through forest and up hills we followed a stream to the 11-13^th century site of ‘1000 lingas’. By walking closely to the streams banks we saw Buddhist depictions carved into the rocks alongside the river, and ancient linga symbols of pattern and symmetry carved into the stone river bed! We also went to a Banteay Srey, a 10^th century Hindu-influenced temple which translates as ‘citadel of the women’, with pinkey coloured rocks with the probably the most preserved intricate carvings of all of Ankor Wat.