Seriously craving some nature, we made our way to Taman Negara – literally “National Park” in Malay. Although a popular tourist destination, it’s not the easiest place to get to. We took a bus from Kuala Lumpur to the town of Jarantut where we then had to find someone to take us the extra 2 hours to the town of Kuala Tahan. Luckily, pretty much every tourist that gets off the bus in Jarantut is headed in the same direction so we could just follow the crowd. We made some friends during the journey that we ended up travelling with for the next week!

Taman Negara

We had intended to do a multi-day trek through Taman Negara with a local guide. Unfortunately we, along with almost every other tourist that showed up at the park, were surprised to find out that most of the park was actually closed due to weather and potential flooding. This is what happens when places don’t have a website! We had been talking with the “Jungle Planner”, a local tour organizer in town, about a 4-day trek through the park so we were very surprised to learn that part of the park was closed. When we talked to him later that night he insisted it was not closed and we could still go – but that seemed fishy so we figured we better listen to the park rangers and somewhat begrudgingly cancelled our trek.

So we had to come up with a backup plan quickly, which we were able to do with our new group of friends from our bus ride. And so began the adventures Miłosz (Poland), Benjamin (Chile), Jessica (Spain) and us (the Americans) – whenever someone asked us where we were from it took a while to go through all the different places!

Our first night we went on a “night jungle walk”. We met our group down at the dock to take the boat ride over to the park (the only way to get in). Our guide took us on an hour walk on a boardwalk through the jungle. He set our expectations pretty low, saying we’ll see lots of small things and probably no big things, and he was definitely right. No tigers or tapirs, but the highlights were scorpions, giant huntsman spiders, and a rare sleeping bird (cooler than it sounds). John took a pic of one of the spiders but I refused to get that close!!

The next day our group of 5 decided to take a self-guided hike through the section of the park that was actually open. We went across a large canopy walk that took us 130 feet above the forest floor, hiked up to the tallest viewpoint, down some intense muddy hills full of leeches, and to a little wooden animal viewing structure. John and I were the only two that managed to not get leeches, the others all managed to somehow get them in their shoes through their socks, on their stomachs, and on their arms. All of the employees in the park joke about how the tourists feed the leeches and ask you how many you got when you get back. We were happy to be the anomaly at 0!

The town of Kuala Tahan is tiny and caters directly to tourists. Everyone ends up at the same restaurant every night (Anne’s Kitchen) and we all stay in the same ~3 hostels. It’s cute, but my favorite part of the town was the rare glimpse of the local life I accidentally witnessed one morning. I had to pick up our laundry early so I walked into town at 7am before the tourists make their way out of their hotels. It was like a completely different town – all of the locals were out and eating together at restaurants (restaurants that are closed during the day when tourists are around), there were kids running around before school, and a much more lovely and local vibe. It made me sad that we ruin that for them during the day. I wish there was a happy medium where both could exist at the same time!

Cameron Highlands

Our group of five decided to stick together and travel to our next destination together, Cameron Highlands. We even got a cute 3-bedroom Airbnb together to save ourselves from hostels for a couple nights. Another random benefit of backpackers not booking things ahead of time – you can join forces!
Cameron Highlands is in the middle of Malaysia and is known mostly for their tea plantations. There are a bunch of different tours that will take you around the area, but luckily our group was all of the same budget-conscious and hike-happy mindset so we decided to lead our own tour and hike through the tea plantations.

We took a 7 mile hike around the area, starting with a pretty intense hike up and down through the jungle. It was pretty muddy and on one of the difficult parts going down I hurt my knee pretty bad when I took a very large step down and my back leg decided not to come with me (the start of a string of bad luck over the next couple weeks… stay tuned). Luckily I didn’t seem to tear anything and after a break sitting in the middle of the muddy jungle trail (and debating who in the group was going to carry me the rest of the way) I was able to put some weight on it and ended up making it the rest of the way just fine. I couldn’t put a lot of pressure on it for the next couple weeks, but at least I didn’t get stranded in the jungle!

After our dramatic jungle trek, we ended up in the middle of a valley filled with tea plantations. We had to make our way through a couple villages – and had to ask some locals to point us in the right direction – before actually walking through tea fields and ending up at a tea house. We each had delicious tea at the Cameron Valley Tea Plantation before hitching a ride back to town. Beyond the beautiful scenery through the day, our favorite part was a local dog that decided to hike with us the entire time. We called him Tio, and he followed us for probably three hours and we were honored to be adopted by him. Our favorite Tio memory will be when we walked through a tiny village near the tea plantations and Tio started chasing and trying to kill the chickens – we somehow felt responsible for him and really didn’t want to be the reason these people had their chickens killed! Luckily he somewhat listened to us and we avoided all casualties.

Our nights at the Airbnb were filled with the game fishbowl (or “pequenos papeles” as Jessica called it in Spanish). We also celebrated Miłosz’s birthday and surprised him with a little cake. It was so nice having a group of friends to hang out with for a while!

Luckily we all decided to go to the next location together as well – adventures aren’t over yet!

Christine