Malaysia, Cherating village. I'll be back from Singapore with memories of evenings with Teo, a new camera and a 60-day visa for Indonesia.
Cherating is situated along the east coast of Malaysia, near a long white sand beach where, occasionally, come to lay their eggs in large turtles. It 'a very quiet place where I stop for a few days in total relaxation. There are very few foreign travelers and the beach and 'mostly' popular with Malaysians. Therefore I have an opportunity to observe how you behave at sea in a Muslim country. For children there seems to be special rules: I have seen from fully dressed to fully nude. The men were usually in t-shirt and shorts while women are fully dressed in traditional dress, veil included, and in this way are also the bathroom! Zero exposure of body parts in the sun. I did not expect such a conservative attitude on the beach ...
You are in the jungle baby ...
From Cherating I move westward and reach the interior of the country, the heart of the Malay Peninsula. Here is the famous Taman Negara National Park: a handkerchief of primary rainforest inhabited by tigers, Asian elephants and rhinos, snakes and lots of insects. The park headquarters can be reached after 2 hours of longboat (a long narrow wooden boat) along a winding river and off the water brown, overall, is very "Amazon Adventure".
That we are near a jungle, it takes little to understand, just take a look at the vegetation, impenetrable, which skirts the river, a message reinforced as I try to evening asleep in my bungalow: a terrified shriek the female who knows 'what will' see ... Surely not a snake. I close my eyes and try not to think about.
I have not had the opportunity to explore a rainforest and I am very curious. I decide then for 2 days with 1 night in a hut in the jungle. I leave with a small backpack containing 2 sets of clothes (one for use during the day and one for evening), 3 packages of white rice for meals, to go with cans of tuna, more 'a pack of biscuits and juice 'orange for breakfast. The first day and 'light. Go up the river in a boat for 1 hour until a group of bungalows, now disused, belonging to the authority 'of the park. Greeting the boatman, inspected with the look of the wooden huts almost completely sucked in by vegetation, then I focus on the path in front of me, disappearing into the jungle. I am alone.
The path to the bun-bun kanbun, my refuge for the night, and 'muddy but not too difficult. After 5 minutes 'walk are already' soaked with sweat dripping from all sides. The trees around me are very high and thick foliage forming a natural roof that blocks the sun's rays and forces a dark shadow in the undergrowth during the day. Surrounded by vegetation is easily lost sense of direction is not clear whether you are going east, west, north or south, there are no landmarks to follow and if we are not seen; serve a compass or the 'innate instinct for guidance from those who have and' born and still lives here. I simply follow the path, confident that sooner or later I'll find 'refuge. We arrive after 1 hour and a half and a couple of miles. It 'a small house, built on four concrete pillars over 2 meters high. Inside there are 2 rows of 4 bunk beds, without mattresses, and one side of the room has a large opening to a small clearing in the forest. I choose one of 16 beds, there knoll my stuff, I eat a ration and then I decided to explore the neighborhood. I follow the path from which they come, and I enter even more 'in the jungle. The sound of insects is the background to my feet. Zzzzzzzz a constant and continuous. Listen but I can not see from where comes the sound. The road starts to climb and descend, crossing small streams and gradually becomes muddy. When the shoes begin to sink to the ankle, I decided to go back. On the trunk of a fallen tree I stopped to observe a column of ants and 'an 8-lane highway. In addition to ants that move there are 2 files, on either side of the column of ants that patrol, real estate, the flow of the others. I had never seen so many moving parts. The wonder is interrupted by an itchy back. Put my hand under his back, scratching, and withdrawal. Bloody! Leeches, fuck!
Back to the shed and take advantage of the presence of a water tank on the roof to take a shower. Denudatomi I discover with horror of the blood stains on his underwear. At my feet moving a leech: there 'I had the ass! Ahhhh! I'm coming over being, swollen with blood, and burn it with the lighter. More
'later in the afternoon, get a pair of Dutch trekkers along with a local guide. It will not be 'the night alone. Better that way. The sounds of the jungle were starting to make me paranoid.
We have dinner and we remain a long time to fix the jungle by 'opening of the shed but, in addition to a bird with colorful feathers, we see nothing.
The next morning I wake up aching from a night on the wood. E 'expected return to headquarters - 12 km of jungle - and I will integrate' with the Dutch, by myself I would not have done. Today is' tough. First, you must put back the clothes, still damp from yesterday. Then there 'path: muddy, sometimes steep and rugged.
The shoes are now camouflaged with soil and the amount 'of leeches and' awesome. They are waiting on the dead leaves in the middle of the lane, and when they hear footsteps, attacking stands up to the soles of your shoes. From here, begin to rise, quickly, on the legs in a crack in which I try to slip to reach the skin and begin sucking. I'm wearing it all the time and I have long ceased to see the jungle for concentrami legs and on my personal war against the beast. Basically I spend my time to detach leeches from the body and what is not that nervous. Moisture 'oppressive sweat total vegetation and tons of suffocating mud are not enough? No! There seems no end to the dangers of the jungle, and 'What a hostile environment! Gia ', I forgot ... we have also seen an adder. So in two days, the only animal I see, well colored bird, and 'a snake that could kill me! Maybe the animals are watching me and not me to see them, I see only green and brown and zzzzzz constantly feel like an empty radio frequency.
The only enjoyable moment of the day 'lunch on the shore of a river, stripped to the waist, feet in water and without leeches.
I come to the park headquarters at five in the afternoon, after a grueling, muddy and downs, with one certainty: the jungle is not 'my place.
Rene '
0 comments:
Post a Comment