Taman Negara

There are far too many things capable of killing me in Taman Negara. Spending time in the rainforest should make you see how vulnerable you are to Mother Nature- I ended up asking around for advice about how to deal with various forest creatures, unfortunately resulting in me hearing five different ways to deal with leeches, so in the event one would attack I would have no idea which method is best to use.  

However the fact that none of the guides, experts or simply more experienced travellers are afraid to hang out with the Huntsman Spiders and Pythons puts you in a weird kind of comfort zone. That, and all of the people that fill the easy-to-reach parts of the jungle make it worryingly easy to believe you are just as competent here as you would be in the back garden.

But the truth is, yes that Slow Loris you saw is really cute and it is very exciting to see him climbing through the trees at night, but that same Slow Loris is venomous and his bite could potentially kill you! I am a little afraid of trekking in rainforests, but that is wise isn’t it?

The National Park has tried to make it very easy for ‘trekkers’ like me though to avoid getting eaten by leeches, snakes and all other nature by putting down boardwalks around the shortest routes. I found it really disappointing to find that my path and ‘trekking’ was so timid. Talking to the people who work here, I found out that in some of the villages on the outskirts of the park tigers are a real problem and people are attacked by the big cats. One man said I was welcome to go and stay in his village if I wanted to see what the real jungle was like.  This was a very tempting offer, as the promise of seeing more authentic jungle appealed to my adventurous side.

This offer is reaching more and more tourists who are sick of the ‘well beaten’ path, meaning that these villages will inevitably become the new places to visit, leaving the old ones where 80% of people survive off of the tourists struggling to cope. It seems to be an unshakeable trend, so is there a way to protect the communities that survive off of the tourist industry?

According to the experts, not really. Taman Negara, and in particular the town Kuala Tahan, really showed how worrying being reliant on one industry can be, especially one as fickle as tourism.