Apr. 7-8, 1978 - Malaysia

Took a hot, sweaty hike this morning and refreshed ourselves with a swim in the river.  Learned about tropical rain forests from a nature trail guide.  In the evening we went to a “hide” to look for wildlife but this park is not for wildlife viewing because it has so many tourists to scare away the animals.  Saw a wild pig family: mommy, daddy and babies.  The tame deer near the camp, however, were more interesting to watch than sitting still at a hide.  Some of the people spent the night in a hide but saw nothing.  The jungle sounds are fascinating, though.  There are supposed to be tiger and elephant here but the jungle is too thick to see much.

The Park Ranger had arranged a boat trip for us today.  (We called him the Park Arranger.)  We weren’t too excited because of our sweaty experience yesterday but we decided to go with a Canadian couple.  I’m awfully glad we did.  The river was low so a few times we had to push the small motor boat but mostly we cruised upstream.  After 1½ hours we got out and hiked 10 minutes to a series of rapids and pools.  Spent several hours there swimming, snorkeling and sunning.

This is Bryan demonstrating his vine swinging technique.

On the way back to camp we drifted without using the motor which enabled us to hear the bird calls and river rapids. Extremely pleasant.  Butterflies abound and flitted about us, landing on our clothes.  They particularly liked my tennis shoes.

The jungle is fascinating to drift through. Trees sprout ferns – they are called epiphytes – and take root high on the trunks of trees.  They take their nourishment from the decaying leaves that fall around their roots in their “host" tree – not from the tree itself.  Orchids are epiphytic and they are impressive in the high trees.

We got back around 3pm, slightly sunburned and tired but a shower revived us.  Sat on the porch and watched a monitor lizard about 1½ feet long browse around our porch.  It was very busy poking its little arms in the roots of trees looking for dinner.