Fifty Shades of Green: The Jungles and Highlands of Malaysia

After a few days in Kuala Lumpur, we left the tall gleaming skyscrapers in search of tall gleaming trees, taking off into the lush landscapes that define Malaysia as much as the bustle and cultures of its cities. For the next five days, our eyes feasted on wondrous palettes of greens, from the neon jungle ferns of Taman Negara National Park to the deep textured rolling hills of the Cameron Highlands, and the sea of oil palms that stretch between them.

Taman Negara National Park

From KL, the two of us and our visiting friend Emily took a bus three hours inland to the small junction town of Jerantut, where a second bus was waiting for us; in fact, it looked like it had been waiting for about five decades. The large rusty blue chunk of metal transported us and about a dozen others for two hours north to the tiny town of Kuala Tahan, the gateway to Taman Negara National Park.

Located in the central interior jungles of Malaysia, Taman Negara simply translates to “national park,” making it feel like the national park of Malaysia. We stayed just outside its entrance along the Tembeling River, at a local family’s guesthouse that sported metal frame bunk beds in YMCA-like cabins that “Mat,” the owner and patriarch of the family, had built himself. Since we were there at the end of rainy season and just before peak tourism started, we were the only guests there, allowing us to each take an entire cabin of our own. The accommodations were rustic, and one of the workers laughed when we asked if there was hot water in the bathrooms, as if that was a bewildering question. We quickly learned that it actually was a silly question—it was so hot, humid, and sticky during the days that it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to even fathom taking a hot shower. (This would be the first of many cold-water-only accommodations over the next few weeks as we made our way through the sweltering Malaysian and Thai islands, which we’ll discuss more later.)

At 130 million years old, Taman Negara is the world’s oldest virgin tropical rainforest, which means that its ecosystem has matured undisturbed by human activity. We were excited to explore the purity of this jungle by foot, and first entered its dense curtains of foliage on a night walk, a popular activity here since there are so many nocturnal animals and insects to spot. That is, if one can see. The night was cloudy, so it was pitch black, and even with headlamps and flashlights, we had to focus most of our attention on the boardwalk ahead of us so that we wouldn’t trip. Mat, on the other hand, while not much of an informative talker, had the eyes of a hawk and was an expert tracker, having been born in a village nearby and spent his whole life in the jungle. Through layers of darkness and dense trees and plants, he pointed out hidden wildlife with ease. He spotted several mouse deer for us, catching the glimmer of their eyes as his flashlight scanned the night. We ended up finding life at each level of the forest: the deer and giant spiders on the ground, foot-long millipedes and mutant praying mantis on tree branches, and gray macaque monkeys up in the trees. While we didn’t see black panthers (the “prize sighting” one hopes to catch while on a night hike…or not, depending on one’s tolerance for meeting large wild carnivorous cats out on the hunt), we did catch something else that made us excited: a slow loris, which Mat somehow saw 100 feet up in a tree, far away from us, in the dark. If you, like us, had never heard of a slow loris before, thank us later for introducing them into your life. Slow lorises are adorable nocturnal primates in Southeast Asia, distantly related to lemurs, and slow-moving like sloths, hence their name (but not quite as cute as sloths).

Our trek the next day brought different sights and sounds. We first hiked to the more popular destinations of the park: the Canopy Walkway and the Bukit Teresek lookout. The Canopy Walkway in Taman Negara is reputedly the world’s longest canopy walkway (though how many are there…?) and consists of a series of suspension bridges strung between tall trees, stretching the length of 530 meters / 1,739 ft and hanging 40 meters / 131 ft above the ground. Enclosed by netting up to our shoulders on both sides, we felt safe tight-roping from massive tree to massive tree (our friend Emily, with a fear of heights, may have felt differently—though she conquered it courageously!). Being up at the same level of the tree canopy provided a unique vantage point, and was reminiscent of ziplining through the Lao jungles a couple months ago, though this time, we were able to go slowly and stop midpoint to enjoy the elevated views.

The views were even better at our next stop. After a short but steep and sweaty hike, the Bukit Teresek lookout afforded sweeping panoramic views of mountains and foothills in the distance and green lushness below. We then opted to hike to Lata Berkoh, a pleasant swimming hole with small waterfall cascades that most people usually access by boat. We had decided to hike instead to get the exercise and, more importantly, to really get to know the Malaysian jungle.

For miles and hours, we, Emily, and Mat seemed like the only people making our way through tiny dirt paths (and often no paths at all), bushwhacking deep into the jungle. The rainforest was unrelentingly alive. We could almost feel it breathe with each step, its hot breath forming the steamy warmth around us, emanating from each rock and leaf and making us feel as if we were hiking through a sauna. Our legs cut through thick jungle brush as we stared up at some of the largest trees we’ve ever seen and side-stepped twisty rattan vines that took on art forms of their own. Entire ecosystems of ferns spawned off of branches; the flowering buds and fronds of giant palms rained over us; massive tree roots reached out from the ground like claws, serving to both trip us and provide support as handrails. We heard the call of hornbills flying overhead, saw large monitor lizards dig for food, and felt our arms and legs swell with the bites of millions of mosquitoes.

After a few hours, about seven miles, and a packed lunch of fried rice along the river, it became clear that our trail—or the one we were looking for—had long been swallowed up by time and overgrowth. Since the peak season had not yet begun, park rangers had not yet finished clearing all the trails. Mat tried to zig-zag us up hills and down ridges, following the river to try to find our way, but the growth was too thick and we did not have machetes on us—only dwindling drinking water and ineffective bug spray. Covered in a layer of jungle grime and salty sweat, we were about to try yet another path when Emily looked down and found splotches of blood on her socks and shoes. Leeches!!

Frantically, she tried to pick them off, but the sticky little buggers would come off one end, only to wriggle around and dig in on the other end. The leeches had gone through her shoes and socks and were sucking away into her skin. As we were helping her get them off, we looked down to realize that all of us had the same! Before we knew it, we were all (well, not Mat) jumping around like hot-stone walkers, trying to remove the tiny vampires from our bodies. As soon as we got one off, another would suction on. If you’ve ever been bitten by leeches before (which Michael had been, in a Laos jungle a few years ago), you know that they numb you such that you cannot feel their bite (part of their biological advantage), and then release a blood thinner into your body so that your blood will flow out more easily for them to feast on. They are mostly harmless, but terribly gross. Standing there with tiny streams of blood pouring out from all of us, we ceased the rest of our hiking plans (especially since we couldn’t find the remaining trail anyway), and waited on the riverbank for a boat to come pick us up.

A small boat with a single sit-atop engine finally came and took us the remaining ten minutes to the waterfalls at Lata Berkoh, where we happily jumped into the freshwater swimming hole—cooling our bodies while doing one last scan for leeches now that we were in bathing suits. After a nice swim and a fun long boat ride back to our cabins, our tired bodies slept well that night despite the lack of air conditioning, with memories of radiant rainforests in our minds—and the puncture of leech wounds on our legs.

Bus Ride Thoughts and Close Calls

The next morning, we left Taman Negara, taking another long boat ride as transit. The three-hour float from Kuala Tahan to Kuala Tembeling passed slow river scenes of water buffalo and monkeys as we made our way out of the rainforest. From there, we hopped into a 12-person van to head up into the mountains toward the Cameron Highlands.

Along this route, just as we had seen going toward the rainforest a couple days ago, we drove past fields and fields of oil palm plantations, blanketing the countryside. The wide fronds of these palms fan a much larger and complicated discussion about palm oil in Malaysia and across the world. Mat told us that Malaysia used to be 75% rainforest—as vibrant and fertile as that which we had just experienced in the preserves of Taman Negara—but is now only 25% rainforest, mostly due to deforestation to make room for oil palm plantations. As a low-cost, high-yield, and easily refined product, palm oil is extremely high in demand around the world, with the demand only growing because it is used in literally everything, from laundry detergents, cleaning agents, and cosmetics and beauty products to all types of food and supermarket goods (even if they are organic and even if “palm oil” is not explicitly listed in the ingredients). And, because oil palms thrive in a rainforest climate with consistent high humidity and high temperatures, about 90% of the world’s palm oil is currently produced in the ideal growing grounds of equatorial Malaysia and Indonesia, decimating the countries’ biodiversity and indigenous forest peoples while increasing CO2 emissions.

At the same time, the palm oil industry is a major contributor to Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s economies, and much of the world’s food, consumer, and energy industries could not survive as they stand today, with their current unit economics, without palm oil. It appears that the Malaysian government has launched a national marketing campaign in favor of palm oil, trying to make it something of which Malaysians are proud, despite all its negative environmental and cultural impacts. We saw many “Love My Palm Oil” signs around the country, and wondered what the local people really thought. We had tried to ask Mat about it, but all he said was that Taman Negara no longer receives funding from the World Wildlife Foundation because WWF does not support parks that sit within a certain radius of rainforest destruction, which Taman Negara clearly is with the oil palm plantations starting right outside its borders.

Outside our van window, we could almost feel the conflict seething up from the waves of endless oil palms, planted in perfect waxy green lines across the hills of Malaysia’s heartland. But as we climbed higher, the oil palms gave way to rows of stubby dark green trees that comprise the country’s other important crop, tea.

The calm roll of the hills put many of us in the van to sleep; Michael was one of the few still awake when he began to notice our van driving head-on toward two motorcyclists coming toward us. Now, it’s quite common for buses and cars all over Southeast Asia to go into the opposite lane to pass, so just being there itself is not surprising nor a cause for concern. But when we didn’t move out of the way even as the motorcycles were getting close, Michael began to wonder if something was wrong. Before he could say or do anything, the entire van was shaken awake as we made a sudden hard swerve to the left to avoid hitting (and probably killing) the two motorcyclists, as well as to avoid careening off the side of the mountain ourselves! A couple of us screamed. We saw the motorcyclists brake and pull over to the side to recompose themselves, probably reeling from the fact that they were seconds from death.

Our van straightened out after the sudden turn and kept driving, at which point we all started asking the driver what happened. It turns out that he, too, had fallen asleep!! Immediately, all of us, which included a couple from Switzerland up front, started asking the driver if we should or could drive instead. He claimed that he was fine, but minutes later, his head started bobbing up and down again as he struggled to keep his heavy eyelids open! We all insisted that he pull over. To his credit, he obliged. We pulled over at an overlook of a gorgeous tea plantation, where everyone got out, breathed a sigh of relief, and enjoyed some views while the driver woke himself up with cool fresh air and a cigarette. Again, we offered to drive, and again he said no, but promised that he was fine. Suddenly, we were missing our old rusty blue metal bus. Luckily, we only had another 20 minutes or so until our destination, and the Swiss couple up front talked to the driver the rest of the time, loudly and deliberately, making him answer questions and keeping him alert. Thankfully, we all arrived in Tanah Rata in one piece.

Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands

Tanah Rata is one of several “hill station towns” in the Cameron Highlands, which sit in the mountains at over 5,000 ft above sea level and where British colonialists enjoyed a break from the heat and noise of the cities. Indeed, the mountains here are beautiful and the weather is cool and temperate—a reviving change of pace after the humidity of KL and the jungle (and the rest of Southeast Asia, for that matter). It even rained while we were there and we all wore jackets and jeans at night, something we had not done in months. After sitting in our own sweat day after day, getting leeched, and almost dying on the van ride, we were similarly ready, like the British, to sit back, relax, and point our pinkies while sipping fragrant tea. Our friend Min Xiu from Singapore (who had joined us for a couple days in KL) also rejoined us here, and the four of us shared a comfortable three-bedroom apartment—another welcome departure from the norm of our travels.

The weather and fertile grounds of the Cameron Highlands make it perfect for tea cultivation. While Tanah Rata itself is a quaint town without much going on, it is an ideal jumping-off point to visit the region’s tea plantations, mountain hikes, and other local sights. We visited the two primary plantations, Bharat Tea and BOH Tea, which were both pleasant and reminded us of wine tasting in California. The manicured tea trees of the plantations make for expansive picturesque views, similar to vineyards. At BOH, we walked through the tea factory to see how they process, dry, and package tea, while at Bharat, we were able to stroll through the actual productive tea fields. Interestingly, both plantations were busy with local tourists (much more than foreigners), and we felt the Indian-Malaysian culture present itself more strongly here (Bharat Tea was founded by an Indian immigrant in the 1920s). The best part of the plantations, of course, was tasting a wide assortment of teas and teatime snacks—ranging from the standard British sentiments such as warm biscuits with fresh cream and jam, to eclectic desserts fusing local flavors, such as Nasi Lamak cheesecake (including dried anchovies and peanuts!) and salted egg pineapple cheesecake.

In addition to the tea plantations, our group enjoyed a scenic jaunt through the Mossy Forest (which was mossy, as promised), a short hike along a mountain ridge (no leeches this time), and a visit to local strawberry farms (offering every kind of strawberry product you could ever imagine, from strawberry ice cream and strawberry chocolate to strawberry sambal spice and strawberry beef jerky). But mostly, we rested, eating long meals, cooking breakfast and practicing yoga in our apartment, and playing cards at night while drinking bad wine. We probably should’ve stuck to the tea.

Karen & Michael

Taman Negara and Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, January 7-11, 2020