Message Stick

After telling Helen throughout the trip that driving on Asian roads doesn’t look that tough, I finally got to put my money where my mouth was with a trip up to Taman Negara. After a short hop from Langkawi back to Kuala Lumpur and with a questionable degree of planning, we sat in McDonalds at the airport and took photos of Google Map’s calculated route on the laptop screen for later reference. Once we were handed the keys to our shiny 4×4 and received some proper directions we felt a bit more confident that we’d make it out of the city and 200 miles onto Malaysia’s largest national park.

Driving in Malaysia is quite simple for Brits since the road rules are pretty much the same, that is apart from the swarms of insane motorcyclists. With little regard for anything on the road, least their own lives, they dart between the lanes of traffic, often magically appearing in the space you need to move into. But as the saying goes, in S.E. Asia ‘might has right’, so forcing our way across 5 lanes of stationary traffic in our 4×4 was probably a bit easier than it could have been. With KL behind us the traffic thinned out and the roads swept through rolling hills lined with palm oil plantations until this gave out to the beginnings of jungle.

At 130 million years old and untouched by Ice Ages and natural disasters the jungle here is amongst the oldest primary rain forests in the world. We arrived at the start of the wet season and were expecting the place to be infested with leeches and pouring with rain.  We were really lucky with the weather and the sun shone for our entire trip but the leeches did introduce themselves by trying to burrow their way into our feet through our socks.  We thought the attractive look of tucking our trousers into our socks would solve this problem but they’re persistent little buggers.

The suspended walkways were the highlight at 50 meters above ground level it was an exhilarating experience being up in the jungle canopy.  We trudged up another mountain with breathtaking views and spotted a bloody big wild-boar, frogs, spiders and monkeys.

We stayed in the Traveller’s Home a unique half-board hotel with chalet’s in the garden and a communal house where we relaxed in an Ikea clad interior and enjoyed their slightly ropey DVD collection and free range over the fridge.