Is that a good start or a bad one? Jungle birthday Part 2.

I'll just come out and say it: I was wearing flip flops. Old ones. This may surprise you, given that I was hiking six hours each way to spend the night in the muddy equatorial rainforest of Taman Negara in Malaysia, but I had two reasons.

Warning sign as you leave the boardwalks of the
easy tourist area for the real jungle.

First, previous experience with leeches showed that flip flops allow the best access for removal of the little bloodsucking bastards.

Second, they were pretty much my only option after I retired my (somewhat notorious) oversized sandals after they became Grade A Disease Vectors in Myanmar (don't ask).

They worked well for the first 4 hours on Day One, then their age became apparent, as the anchoring thong in the front popped out with increasing frequency. I bought the things two years ago in Nepal, and they had served me well, but in hindsight, for perhaps too long.

I didn't mind sticking the little plastic plug back in, it was the fact that doing so meant stopping, which gave a much longer opportunity to the vampirous tube-beasts who were swarming around, doing their little head-waving leech aerobics as they smelled the approach of something tasty.

Have you ever seen them do this? It would be cute if it wasn't so sinister. They look like tiny hyperactive Ray Charles impersonators...who feed on your blood.

There was time to stop and admire the scenery on Day One

Since leeches don't spread any diseases or do any real harm, my plan had been to just let them do their thing and drop off when they were done. How very Buddhist of me.

Yeah, no. That plan lasted until I saw the first one squirming out from my ankle, where it had attached and bitten through the skin. But the leeches weren't the worst thing.

This was the world's oldest rainforest, where intense competition has driven evolution for 130 million years (the area is just slightly above the equator, so even the ice ages didn't disrupt things). What do you think rules this forest?

Elephants, monkeys, or tigers? Only on the postcards. All of these are reportedly found in the park, but to my eye it was clear who dominates this dense world where a single hectare holds 14,000 plant species, 200 mammals, and 240 types of trees.

One of the construction workers
alongside the normal workers

Ants rule this place. Mean ones.

I stopped to take a picture of the first river of tiny black bodies, but by the tenth I was just stepping over the glossy stream. It was when I got careless that I learned more about them. To my disappointment I have been unable to find exactly what the little buggers were (hell, maybe they were termites!) so I'm going to make some shit up that makes sense to me.

There were tiny workers in superhighways half a dozen lanes wide and stretching for unbelievably long distances, which I learned when they commandeered a guide rope left to help me climb a steep slope.

Don't grab that rope.

Don't grab that rope

Then there were the construction workers, unbelievably larger than the workers. At first I thought these were soldiers, and feared them mightily, but now I suspect their job is to clear fallen leaves and sticks that obstruct the path. They seemed to pace the edge of the stream, and they're not the soldiers because those, I definitely met.

The soldiers. Assholes! I took off my sandal the first night to find four or five ants stuck to its edges, legs waving furiously. Curious. They were much larger than the workers, but not nearly as big as the construction workers. It took me a minute to figure it out.

They'd bitten my sandal, and they weren't letting go. I flicked at them. Brushed at them. Still there. I flicked harder and the bodies fell away...but the head stayed put, anchored into my thin sole with insectile tenacity.

So when my sandals would come off anywhere near an ant stream? (And everywhere is near an ant stream.) It hurt. They're good at getting you right in the tender spot on the bottom of the arch too. You have to lift your foot and rip them off, sometimes coming back for the head.

I wasn't enjoying this process much as I started walking through the mud. Then I reached a nice clearing by the river. It was pretty...and I definitely hadn't passed it on the way out.

Crap.

I backtracked, took another path and came to a wide shallow river...that I also did not cross the first day.

My sandals had given up completely and the thong was coming out every couple steps in the sucking mud, so I had to just take them off and go barefoot. In the jungle. Where billions of members of two particular species were very ready to go right through my skin, and I didn't know what else.

Someone left these bloody footprints in the hide
after their own meeting with the leeches

I backtracked. Bled. Sweated, stepped, and slipped. And bled some more.

Getting lost in the jungle sucks. Especially during the daily Leech Feeding, which is 24 hours long.

The girls and the German were long gone, so I was very much on my own, and sound just doesn't travel in vegetation that thick anyway.

I tried another path and ended up at the stream again, mirrored by tiny red seeps from my feet. I considered walking out via the water, trusting it would lead to the main river, but if that didn't work then I'd have a hell of a time finding where to start looking for trails again.

I turned back again and started jogging to give the biters as little chance as possible. Left hand on my shoulder bag, bulky with camera, journal, long pants and raincape thing, my right held the quickly-decaying plastic bag that held the remnants of my food, and my elbow pressed the water bottle pressed against my side.

When I slipped down a slope it gave the leeches a chance to climb all over me, but I think I escaped unscathed. I kept running. I was pouring sweat, feeling incredibly stupid, and lost in the jungle on my birthday.

Is that a good omen or a bad one? Whatever it is, I decided “Screw this, I'm taking the boat.”

I finally found the right path, jogged down it, and half an hour later reached the river at Kuala Trenggan, but instead of a village I found abandoned houses with broken windows. Not stopping to think about what would happen if it was totally deserted and I had to start the six hour trek back, I headed to the water...

Where I found the girls. They were surprised to see me. Literally within a minute or two the boat showed up. If I hadn't jogged, had gotten lost once more or fallen a few more times, I would have missed it and there was no way to call for another. But I made it.

THAT, I'll take as a positive omen for the year ahead.

Just your average jungle birthday

I'm not sure when midnight snuck by in the near-perfect darkness to officially begin my birthday, but I'm guessing it had already started when I got up, back sore from the bare wood planks of my bunk, to chase the cute little rodent out of our food bag.

I listened to the multi-layered cacophony of insects outside the large wooden room, knowing we were surrounded by them in our hide, about 30 feet up into the canopy of Taman Negara in Malaysia, the world's oldest rainforest. A 130 million year old forest has a way of putting a human lifespan into perspective.

Knowing it was pointless, my eyes rolled over in the direction where I'd seen the massive spider before going to bed. As always in jungles, it was the size of my open hand, and hairy, but this one was interesting since three of its legs were skinnier and shinier.

Arne-the-German and I agreed that it had probably lost the legs somehow and was growing new ones. Amazing little undoubtedly venomous beastie. After a day spent hopping leeches and various skittering things, the backs of my eyelids were a montage of insectile legs, half-seen as they skittered about.

But since I was awake now anyway, I used Arne's bizarrely powerful flashlight to look for critters in the semi-open space in front of the hide. A few days ago some bird watchers saw a tapir at 3:00 AM.

But no eyes glittered back at me, just fireflies drooping around the thick foliage, like stars on listless vacation from their nightly performance, so I lay back down on the bird-poop-spotted boards. My head on the meagre pillow of my rolled up shirt, I could feel the gap in the boards against the back of my head.

It was silly of me to wait for the second rodent visit to move the food bag. This time Arne woke up, sitting half upright on his luxurious 1 cm mat, to look into the eyes of the little fella, about two feet away from him.

“Vas is das?” You only speak your mother tongue when you're that sleepy.

His question woke the two English girls on the other side of the small room. “What's going on?” The nervous one asked.

“Nothing. Just a little mouse. No worries.” I reassured them. “It's all good.”

Apparently I was soothing enough, because even the twitchy one went back to sleep until morning, when we shared the remnants of our backpacker buffet for breakfast. My peanuts were a big hit again, both roasted and spicy-something coated.

We avoided the crackers, given how thirsty they make you and the fact that they were drinking shallow-creek water, which was pretty murky even after purification and clarification tablets. I was more worried about purifying the healthy bacteria right out of my system, so stuck to the water I brought.

We decided the two styrofoam containers of noodles that the girls brought were no longer a safe bet at their ripe old age of 24 warmly humid hours.
We were each taking different routes back to civilization, so we fared each other well and set off.

Just a nice easy walk back to town now...

The kind of thing you tell everyone

As soon as the pale child approaching on the jungle path saw me he wanted to know “parlez vous francais?”

As I have since my mother taught me the phrase when I was 7, I answered, “Non, je ne parle pas francais,” and added the newer “je comprends un petit peu...” I want to say that I understand a bit because I speak Spanish, but I've never asked how to say the second part of that. My brain, trying to be helpful, falls back to Dutch, but I don't think “want ik sprek spaans” would help this kid much.

But he got the point. And he looked disappointed about it. But he had something to say, and wasn't going to be put off so easily.

“You 'ave 'ad ze...” he made a wriggling, creeping, crawling, inch worm sort of motion with his finger. I was pretty sure what he meant.

“Leeches?” I offered.

Triumph lit his face. “Oui! You 'ave 'ad ze leeches?”

I looked down at my feet, which had been bare for the past couple hours, past few miles. “Not yet.”

The triumph blossomed yet further as he pointed a small pale finger at his older sister. “She 'as!”

Leeches are like that. They're the sort of thing you immediately want to tell everyone about, unless maybe you're an adolescent and they were on you, then they (as everything on Earth) are a potential source of embarrassment.

I am not an adolescent (a fact for which I give thanks daily) so I will let you know in a couple days what I find. Because tomorrow morning I am taking the “jungle train” from Kota Bharu down through most of peninsular Malaysia to the world's oldest rainforest, at Taman Negara.

The rumors speak of deep dark rainforest, hides in the jungle where you sleep among the beasts, and, most of all, leeches. It seems to be a given that visitors will feed the little creepers, and the only question is whether your hide is one of the ones that gets overrun with them at night or not.

So that should be fun.

And if I do get them, there's always the response I gave to the little French boy and his sister. She was showing a perfect adolescent blend of irritation at her little brother and embarrassment at his revelation, until I replied “I think that means you get dessert tonight.”

Her face cleared with a shy smile, while her little brother's showed crestfallen shock. I hope she got her ice cream.

I know I will!

A nice day hike around Pokhara, Nepal.

The skyline above Pokhara is normally dominated by the epic snow and stone bulk of Machapuchare, one of those incredible Himalayan peaks that are unbelievably...themselves.  We caught a look at it one afternoon when the monsoon clouds parted, and the word "breathless" comes to mind.

The rest of the time though we were locked in monsoon downpours, which filled the streets, air, and ear canals with rainwater and its various associated beauties, although day by day the frequency of wafting mildew smells increased.  I fear for the redeemability of my raincoat...

With the skies both high and low filled with gray clouds, the role of landmark switched to a white dome that sits on one of the steep jungle-sided ridges above the lake.  The World Peace Pagoda was built and destroyed and built again over the course of 30 years, and is intended to serve as a focal point and inspiration for peoples of all faiths, races, and creeds to come together and move towards world peace.

Inspired by meeting Gandhi, and after seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Buddhist monk from Japan named Nichidatsu Fiji decided to build 100 of them to help bring about a prophesied change in consciousness.  The one in Pokhara was number...um...71 I think?  Wikipedia says as of 2000 there were 80 of them worldwide.

There are three ways to get to the one above Pokhara.  The easy way is to take a taxi to just below it.  The middle way is to row (or be rowed) across the lake then climb the stairs/trail up, which takes about an hour.  The scenic route goes through the jungle and takes about two hours.

This week our peace and tranquility received a boost from a nationwide taxi and bus strike (except for those who needed buses and taxi's, whose tranquility was additionally challenged) so the easy route was out of the question (although we didn't know it at the time, not looking the gift horse of taxi hustler absence in the mouth).

Some other friends wanted to row around the lake, so we rented a rowboat and crossed together, then I climbed the stairs with two fantabulous Welsh co-volunteers named Gareth and Louise.  The first part was in hard sunshine, and after 45 minutes of steep climbing I was a pretty sweaty fella.  There is a pre-top viewpoint from where we looked down over the valley, and doused ourselves from a hose sticking out of the hillside.

We resumed climbing and quickly met a descending family of intensely likeable Indians.  The lead member was a holy man (I assume) in the full orange robes.  When he saw Gareth's rugby-player physique, adorned by a tasteful amount of tattooing, he reportedly said "wow, look at you!" and asked to take a picture.  When he came around a corner and met me he said simply "sweaty."

He sees right to the heart of things.  I responded that some of it was water, and he amiably gave me advice on how much to drink to ensure proper digestive health.  It was an awesome conversation to have with an awesome person in an awesome place.

We finished the last 10 minutes of the ascent, during which it began pouring again (I love a well-timed shower) and viewed the pagoda in warm rain and solitude.  You could dimly see the town below through the rain, and the sky blended into the lake in one thick pewter band.

As we headed for the 2 hour trail back down to town, we met a pair of Japanese men who counseled me to put my sandals back on since they had each been bitten by a leech on their way up.  I put my imitation teva's on and begged a big scoop of salt from the restaurant up there.

We followed the trail down through beautiful jungle, listening to light rain on the leaves above us, alternating between the slickness of wet clay and the sponginess of water-logged soil and leaf-matter.  The afternoon was getting a tad dim when the trail ended in jungle.  Oops.

We backtracked to a side trail that I had advised against since it looked to me more like the water runoff path than the actual trail.  It soon dissolved into jungle too, but I stubbornly resisted, pushing through verdant growth and remarkably thick and numerous spiderwebs to see if the trail continued below.  I finally admitted that it didn't and turned around just as the first leech took a bite of my ankle.

I scraped him off and we started backtracking again.  I had a second bite before we regained the original trail, and when I paused to remove it, I could see the jungle floor begin to come alive once I held still, little tubes of bloodsucking intent inchworming their way at the bare skin of my feet with impressive speed.

Louise was less than enthusiastic about the prospect of the little feeders, and I wasn't too keen myself, so we set off again towards the pagoda at a healthy pace.  The prospect of climbing all the way and spending the night in my wet Tshirt in the sparely appointed guesthouse there wasn't ideal, so when I saw something maybe possibly resembling a trail again, I offered to explore it to see if it was valid.  I think there was at least one thought behind me along the lines of "WTF are you doing, American, that is jungle, not a path" and was about to give up when I saw the regular line of a real trail a bit ahead.

We forged across and made the trail in time to salt a few more leeches off our ankles.  The bites keep bleeding after the little buggers are gone, and my half dozen holes were making the soles of my sandals sticky with blood.  I had one bite between my second and third toes, and that one in particular was seeping pretty good.

I had my fake teva's, so had good foot access and visibility, Louise had flip-flops, which made walking difficult and traction impossible, but response-time quick and thorough monitoring much easier, and she escaped fairly close to unscathed.

Gareth had a pair of low canvas shoes, and after walking for a bit said "I think I have one in my shoe.  I can feel something."  That stretch of trail was relatively clear clay, so we stopped so he could check.  He took off the shoe to reveal a half dozen of the fatest specimens we had yet seen, all contentedly bleeding him dry.

When you put salt on a leech, nothing happens for a second, then they hunch up and you can feel their little stabbing part retract from inside your skin.  You have to flick it off quickly then, or they will simply bite again.  When you do this, they leave enough anti-coagulant gunk in the hole that you keep bleeding for a good little while.

A little blood doesn't bother a rugby player, and after some foot tilting to give my salt-applying fingers access to his unauthorized passengers, he was bare skin and leaking blood, and we got ready to descend again.  It only took a minute to get rid of his feeders, but when I looked at what had previously been clear clay ground, it was a roil of soft little bodies charging at us from all sides.

We made it out of the jungle eventually, still feeling the phantom tugs and pricks of leeches, especially from places where enough blood had pooled to clot, which then felt as slick and lumpy as the leech who created the phenomenon in the first place.  Luckily none of the spiders seem to have discharged biting plaintiffs.

From the pagoda, there is a path to the southernmost part of the tourist town along the lake, called Damside, and another path to a local town farther in, whose name I don't remember.  Turns out in our jungle adventure time we crossed from the former to the latter, so when we eventually emerged from the depths of green leaves and gray bodies we still had a good long walk ahead of us.

We managed to kinda sorta get a bit lost again, giving us additional claim to the scenic route, through towns that stared at us as exotics, though after all being placed in host families and local schools, none of us really noticed.

We had made plans with the rowers to meet up at 7:00 PM for dinner, four hours after leaving them on the lake.  When we rocked up almost an hour late, they took one look at us and their irritation dissolved like a blood clot in the shower.  We went back to our respective hostels and guest houses for a quick wash, then went to get a restorative dinner.

Gareth had met the heartiest feeders, and his puncture wounds were still seeping steadily.  The waiter was peering at our bloody feet and ankles, and when he heard the word leeches he said "Leeches?  Did you walk to Peace Pagoda?"