Morning
What I saw when I first opened my eyesI woke up at 7am, three hours later. It was already light, and the jungle was awake with activity, marked by a certain noisy something screeching on my left. "Stupid white-handed gibbons!" I murmured, from a flash of memory of the description of the trip in the CS KL forum.
I lay in my sleeping bag, undecided of what to do. The Italians were still asleep, but the guides were up and I could hear their conversation punctuated by chuckles and rustling of equipment. I could continue to lie there pretending to be asleep or get up and be collectively ignored by another bunch of people. With a sigh, I chose to get up, since I didn't pay RM300 to pretend to sleep in the jungle. (Neither did I to be collectively ignored by a bunch of people, come to think about it.)
Grabbing my toothbrush and toothpaste, I made my way to the stream one minute away, smiling at the guides and "selamat pagi-ing" as I passed them by. With the toothbrush stuck in my mouth, I followed Fadhil to a better part of the stream and brushed my teeth there as I watched the clear river water flow downstream where the fishes did their circles. The morning was looking up already.
Upon return to the campsite, Razali hailed to me and planted me in the guides' tent. "Bagi Jun kerja lah (give her work)," he said to Pak Man who was stirring the pot of Milo boiling on a camper gas. I was assigned a papaya and a knife and the task to peel it. Around me sat a wild assortment of men, including two bankers, an Art teacher in a secondary school, an ex-police warden, a couple of ex-Special Forces, two IT guys, a 13-year old puffing away on a cigarette and some guides. Most were just trekking kakis and not guiding.
Of course I didn't know all that when I was shyly sitting there, clumsily shaving too much flesh off the papaya, just soaking in the conversation around me. I also didn't know that the papaya was a prank, and after a laborious ten minutes which saw only half the papaya peeled, someone took over and coolly split the papaya into six pieces without peeling the skin off the remaining half. Pwned.
The Canadians and the Italians woke up eventually and crowded around for breakfast, i.e. kaya with bread, Milo and papaya. After that, we set off, with parangs attached in a purposeful fashion to our belts (or in my case, a vine that was tied around my waist) towards the direction of Upper Trong Falls.
To the Waterfall, Pelanduk and Leeches
I was in the first group, walking after Uncle Guide, whom I attempted to talk to while trekking. He was a man of few words, and I didn't get much out of him at first. I'm really sorry I didn't get his name though, because after I got past his cool and reserved exterior, he was one of the guys who really took care of me during the trip.
"Tengok tu (look at that)!" He stopped in his tracks and beckoned to me.
"Apa? Apa? (what? what?)"
"Pelanduk (a mousedeer)!" He pointed with the tip of his parang.
I squinted through my misted glasses and stared beyond the tip of his parang. "Mana? Mana? (where? where?)"
"Tu (that)!"
I squinted some more and saw a flash of movement. "Ah!"
Later he told some others that I saw a pelanduk and I was very "ong" (lucky). I didn't have the heart to tell him I only saw the rustling of the leaves as the pelanduk fled, no doubt scared away by my vigorous squinting.
The trek to the waterfall was not too difficult (or maybe I've grown in fitness - who knows) and marred by only the pesky little bloodsuckers. There are two types of leeches in this jungle. One is small, brown and stealthy; and the other type is bigger, greenish with stripes (giving them their name "tiger leech") and their bites hurt. Previously irked by the tiny brown ones found in FRIM, I found the tiger leeches overwhelmingly scary, especially when they move up your pants.
To describe how they move - there are suckers on both ends of the leech's body. One end has teeth, the other does not. How it moves is it stretches the front sucker (with teeth) to its body length, sticks it on the surface, and then moves the back sucker beside the front sucker (folding its body), and the front sucker goes again. I haven't found the word to use for leeches moving yet. But you get the idea.
Tiger leech that hitchhiked in my pocket for godknowshowlong sticking on my hand phoneBanker Lee, who had cut my position as the second in line, would object to my violent thrashing because he said that the flung leech might land on him. In order to dispose of a leech, you're supposed to roll it with your thumb and index finger so it is unable to bite on you, then you throw it away. I know this in theory. In practice, it would take all of the three days for me to learn the trick. On the last day as I was walking down from the camping spot chatting with Uncle Guide, I was notified of a leech climbing up my thigh. I plucked it off, rolled it for two seconds and flicked it nonchalantly into the bushes, all with my left hand (I had got two splinters on my right thumb hence it was unfit for any leech-rolling activity). Talk about personal growth.
At the Waterfall
In the meanwhile though, the leeches were coming on fast and thick. Banker Lee had plucked 62 leeches off himself before he lost count when we reached the waterfall. When I took off my hiking shoes at the waterfall, to my utmost horror, there was a host of four or five leeches stuck at the sole of my right sock, seemingly united to chew a hole and get to me. AAarrrrrggghh I rolled the sock off me in record speed, and ended up with an overturned sock full of leeches. And then utilized my limited stock of femininity to get Banker Lee to de-leech the sock for me.
Obligatory waterfall pictureWhen the others had tired of the waterfall I slid down the natural rock slide three times into the pool and laughed at the two bankers' confinement to the baby pool area. Being the noob in the group I had to fully utilize any opportunity to laugh in the expense of others because they didn't come easy. Hahahaha so big already also don't know how to swim hahahaha.
After that I sat with the guides and other trekkers and cooked instant beehoon with them. Albert, another Chinese guide, made chopsticks out of young bamboo shoots. Cikgu Halim the art teacher, myself and the 13-year old Kid opened up packets of Thai-brand beehoon and dumped them into the boiling pot of water. Razali amused himself by popping by and casually slipping a leech or two into the soup as I stirred it. I made sure my batch of beehoon was leech-free. And this is why you should always help in the kitchen.
By the waterfall I got my first leech bite on my wrist. As I type this I am also suppressing the mad urge to scratch it. Bloody leeches. The lazy afternoon flew by as I sat around chatting idly with the guys, and soaking my feet in the cool running water. When we were about to leave, we felled two palm trees (didn't get the name) for ingredients of the soup we were going to cook for the night. That was the only time that I used the parang, to help fell the tree, and although I had an ungodly fear that the parang would slip, be flung backwards and chop off someone's limb and boomerang back into my face, I think I did pretty well at chopping the tree. 45 degrees. Brute force. Hell yeah.
[i took a video of the tree-felling but it's 50mb so you'll have to imagine it]
Then we trekked back to the campsite to gather firewood for cooking lemang (bamboo rice). In the evening, the two bankers left along with two Canadians who were too terrorized by the jungle the previous night and had to leave.Cooking Lemang and Campfire Fun
Lemang is not difficult to cook, but it takes hell lot of patience. You fill the bamboo shoots - lemang - (bought from some kedai) three quarters full with glutinous rice, then fill it up with coconut milk. A makeshift rack is built from tree branches, on which the filled lemang lean, near a blazing fire. Then you periodically turn the lemang judging from the burnt extent of the exterior. I didn't quite keep track of the time used, but it must have been at least two hours and more.
Halfway through it started pouring, so a makeshift tent had to be built over the fire. Now adopted by the guides' side, I stood by the fire and made easy conversation with them, along with the Italian girls, while the Canadians huddled miserably in the cold, leaking guides' tent. Tracking mud all over the tent, I tutted along with the guides. Tsk tsk.
It was apparent that the camaraderie among the guides and trekking kakis were built on years of good-natured teasing. Everybody had something, anything, that could be poked fun at. With my half-past six command of the Malay language I understood about half of the jokes, but that was enough to keep me in constant chortles of mirth. For instance, when I mentioned that I stay near Sri Sinar, Razali told me in a deadpan face to never mention "sinar" in Pak Man's face. "Dia sensitif," he said. The second morning he beckoned to me mysteriously, I assumed, to show me some spectacular natural phenomenon. There stood Pak Man, beanie off, with his head gleaming merrily under a ray of sunlight that bounced off the shiny bald surface. I laughed till my sides hurt.
My guilelessness and general ignorance also made me the butt of many jokes (such as not recognizing that Iran was not beside Bolivia; and not comprehending what Mat Telanjang meant - 'Naked Mat'), and when I finally spilt that I was doing my PhD, my Permanent Head Damage gave me my defining bull's eye. I didn't mind though. If anything, I was glad that they liked me enough to kacau me.
The lemang cooked, everybody crowded around to eat it with the chicken dry curry and the soup made out of the palm tree amidst the subsiding rain. It was good. After dinner, the Canadians and Italians retired to their campsite respectively, and the Malaysians went to bathe in the river. I was contented to continue stinking in my clothes and stayed by the riverside and poked the campfire.
Watched as a tiger head in the fire spurted flames from its roaring mouth. Stirred up the embers among the ashes and observed their glowing edges. Attempted to spread the fire to other unlit parts of the firewood. It had been a long time since I've been so at peace, thinking of nothing at all. Lately even the KTM commutes from KL to Singapore have started to become infested with worries and work-related stress, and I was contented to toast my face, play with the fire and think of nothing more important than balancing the peanut shells on my wooden staff and sending them into the furnace. To their fiery deaths.
While deep in thought of nothingness and fiery kacang deaths, I was interrupted by one of the guides spreading his wet socks to dry by the fire, who pointed behind me. I turned and found myself face to face with a red checkered object with two eyes and two chunky arms spread out in an imposing and menacing manner.
"Wooo!" Red Checkered Object went.
"What the?" I exclaimed, and burst into peals of unstoppable laughter. Simply priceless. A full-grown man with a sarong over his head, pretending to be a scary ghost. Tak tahanlah hahahaha Razali the joker. Managed to wreck my zen-like mental state just like that. With that, my night ended on a cheery note, went to bed around 10pm. Also snored like an entire zoo, as I was teased mercilessly the second morning, but that's for the next post.
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