Goodday. I've been saying I was going to write about Taman Negara... so here it is:
First off Taman Negara is a national park here in the middle of the peninsular part of Malaysia (as opposed to the part on the Island of Borneo). It is a 130 million year old rainforest, which they claim is the oldest in the world... To get there, we took a minibus from the Cameron Highlands and then a boat up the Tembeling River. The boat ride was pretty cool as we were in these long thin boats and it was over 2 hours of cruising along the sides where I enjoyed looking at the jungle and seeing monkeys and some of the Orang Asli (natives).
Eventually we got to Kuala Tahan which is the little village that is probably only there because it is the main gateway into the park. You actually had to take a river taxi to get across and into the park. All the restaurants there are literally "in" the river - floating. It was kinda cool to be eating in these floating restaurants, although the food was basically a bastardized version of Malay food that they think the westerners like. But in fact every single one of the 10 restaurants or so had the same crappy food and there was no other options. But check out the pic below - this is of the restaurants and of Kuala Tahan from the park headquarters.
Hiking in the jungle was cool.... and really hot at the same time. The first morning we did the main touristy walks which was up this one little hill to get some views of the park and then this canopy walkway. I really liked the walkway as you are up to about 150 feet above the ground. This reminded me how much I want to live in a tree "when I grow up". I'm gonna have to make that happen some day.
Overall, there were not so many main points of interest in the jungle to hike to, but what I really liked was seeing all the different plants and bugs and other animals there. We came across vines with huge spikes, monkeys, pigs, leeches (got 2 bites!), huge ants, and ginormous termite colonies where you can hear them chewing on the sticks on the ground. We even found an elephant footprint on the ground! But after 2 days of wandering around in the jungle sweating our faces off, it seemed we kinda saw what there was to see there. Of course there is always the tours where they boat you off to see a cave or a village, but that stuff is way overpriced and we've realized that it never works out to be a very good experience anyway.
So the next day we made our way back to Kuala Lumpur to get our Thai visas and head out of Malaysia. Unfortunately there is not a whole lot to do here that is of much interest to me.... which is why we've been in the food court of the train station just hanging out until we can go pick up our passports. Only one more hour to go! We spent one night in Chinatown right after we got here, and then contacted a couchsurfer and stayed with him for the past couple nights. This has been a bit of a different couchsurfing experience. This guy is a doctor, and is out until 9pm every night, but his apartment is full of couchsurfers. It is almost like a little hostel - he lets you in shows you around, and then leaves you to be and sleep on the floor until you get up and out in the morning. We did at least get to chat a bit with the 3 russians, peruvian, german, taiwanese, and two polish people who were there at the same time as us. It was much less family like and more do your own thing than other times we've couchsurfed so far. He did live on the top floor of his apt building and had some great views of the city though:
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