It's interesting that 'taman' means 'park' and 'negara' means 'national.' So in essence, this is a redundant name. This is in exactly the same way that 'timor' means 'east' in the Indonesian language, so that East Timor is a somewhat unnecessary name. (Except for that pesky West Timor.)
In any case, I was up and raring to go for my time in the world's oldest rainforest. I had signed on for a full-day package that would see me heading up into the rainforest canopy, trekking through the jungle up to a nice view of the surrounding jungle, shooting the rapids on the river, and visiting a native village. I was excited.
After breakfast, I gathered with the group that would be heading out for the jungle trek and canopy walk. Our guide called us all together and put us into a boat for the short trip up the river to the entrance where we would be beginning our trek. We had been previously admonished to make sure that we had our park passes and camera permits. (And once again, I just don't get the whole camera permit business; what person is going to go and frolic in the world's oldest rainforest and not want to bring a camera along? So just make it a park pass that includes a camera permit.) If we didn't have our park pass on us (or if we hadn't purchased a park pass) and there were some spot check by park rangers, we would be faced with one of three options. If the park ranger were in a good mood, we might be told to go and get our pass, or to go and buy one. This would require leaving the group, the rest of whom would continue with the program, not wanting or feeling particularly like waiting for the idiot who had forgotten his/her park pass to correct the situation, and correcting the missing park pass problem. That would mean a one hour walk to the main park entrance, a ferry across the river, the retrieval of the pass, another ferry across the river, and another one hour walk to catch up to the group, who would likely just be completing the morning activities. This would be slightly less if the idiot without the pass just went to the park office at the entrance to the park and bought a new one. Now if, on the other hand, there were a money crunch on, or if the park ranger were in a bad mood, the third option would be a fine of 10000 Malaysian Ringgit fine and up to two years in jail. That would come to about a 3400 dollar fine. And this would all be for the sake of a 1 Ringgit park pass, and a 5 Ringgit camera permit. Or about 2 dollars. Yet, there were still people who didn't yet have a park pass. (I will give them the benefit of the doubt as they might have come in on a public bus and not had the chance to buy the passes yet.) But anyone who would think of skirting the entrance fee to the park for the sake of 30 cents would be insane. In Canada, access to the national parks is around 10 dollars for a one-day pass, more for a week and year. Here it was 2 dollars (including a camera permit) for the entire duration of a visit.
Off we went. We reached our entrance point and began a short hike up to the world's longest forest canopy walk. It's a bit over 500 meters long and gets up to 45 meters above the ground. It was only about 200 or 300 meters to get to the canopy walk entrance from where the boat let us off, but I was already sweating, profusely, by the time I got there. It was very humid in the rainforest. And it was only about 10 o'clock yet. Yikes!
We had to wait for a little while before we could go up. This was a high tourist time for the park and so there were lots of people doing this forest trek and canopy walk. We waited patiently and then our guide told us to come on up. She pointed the way to the entrance and then said she would meet us on the other side. Wasn't she going? No. She was afraid of heights, so she wasn't going. Canopy walkways are cool. You can look down from great heights and you can look down on trees that you would normally only get a look at from below. These canopy walkways were originally conceived by scientists who wanted to be able to go up and look for animals and other things in the canopies of jungles. Then regular people started finding out about them and they wanted to go, too. The tourism potential was apparently too great to pass up and there are lots of them in the world now. Of course, if people want to go up to the canopy to see animals, they need to find private ones accessible only to scientists. The tourist ones are very unlikely to provide viewing opportunities of jungle animals. The reason is very simple. Generally animals don't like other noisy beasts about. When they hear them coming, they skedaddle. And if they know of a place where there are generally a bunch of noisy beasts about, they won't go there. Now as it happens, tourists are generally lumbering bunches of noisy beasts. And every day in Taman Negara, these hordes of noisy beasts climb up the canopy walkway and make their way across to the other end. The two conditions for pretty much ensuring that interesting animals won't be anywhere near the area are met, and so it is unlikely, in the extreme, that any animals will be viewed by anyone on the walkway. There are lots and lots of times when I really wish people weren't so stupid. One of those times is when I do something like a canopy walk and think it would be kind of cool to see a monkey swinging from tree to tree. Alas, I am usually surrounded by people who think that it's cool to chatter incessantly while they are walking on a plank, held by netting 40 or so meters above the ground. But maybe I am strange for thinking it's cool to listen to the sounds of the jungle when I am immersed in it. I wish I could have listened to more of the jungle, rather than listening to the three Germans behind me talking about whatever it is they were talking about.
Yet, still the sights from the canopy walk were quite awesome.
One of the really great things about this canopy walk was how they attached it to the trees. Putting nails into trees is generally bad for the health of the tree. So they found another way to anchor the walkway to the trees. The put wood blocks around the trunks of the trees that were used as anchors and then wrapped the ropes used to make the walkway around those blocks of wood. This made it so the blocks of wood would absorb the rubbing and stresses of people being on the walkways.
I will take their word for it, of course, that the walkway is completely stable and anchored to the trees in a way that won't send visitors crashing to the jungle floor far, far, FAR below.
When we got down from the canopy walk, our guide met us and led us up the hill to a good viewing area. The operative word here was up. Another operative word here was hot. Yet another operative was humid. It was a wet climb up the hill, which wasn't even all that strenuous or difficult. Along the way, our guide showed us some features of the rainforest. She showed us one of the plants in the forest that has lots of water inside for people to drink if they are thirsty (or living there).
She showed us a really big soldier ant. This ant bites and will draw blood from the gouged out area of flesh it leaves behind.
She showed us a hive for bees called sweat bees. They don't bite, but they will seek out people who have been sweating a lot, to collect their sweat (for the salt that it contains). I guess the large numbers of sweaty tourists passing by everyday makes it a very good place to have a beehive, if you are a sweat bee.
And she showed us a tree that the natives use to collect poison for their blowdarts, used to catch monkeys and birds when they are hunting. The poison from this tree is only a paralytic poison. The animals hit by darts with this poison just fall paralyzed from the trees. The hunters then cut out the flesh with the dart in it, not wanting to ingest the poison, and kill the animal. Then they take it away and eat it. Probably a bit gruesome to think about, but there was a time when we all were members of groups and tribes of people who got food this way. We don't think about it anymore because now we can just go to the grocery store and pick up a slab of meat, without ever having to think of how it got there.
Finally, we reached the first viewpoint. It gave a nice view out over the neighbouring forests. Then our guide sent us up the last 400 meters or so to the top lookout. Again she stayed behind. This time it wasn't because of height. I suspect it may have been just to rest. We the foolish tourists could go up and get a nice view, slogging up the hill in the killer heat and humidity, while she stayed smart and rested by not going all the way up. But again, it was a nice view.
Then we headed back down, picked up our guide and returned to the boat for the return to town.
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