Taman Negara Malaysia, one of the world's oldest rainforests

After a bus ride that made me wish I were wearing a sports bra, and three hours in a motorized wooden canoe traveling upriver past monkeys playing in the tree branches and water buffalo cooling themselves in the river, I arrived in Taman Negara, which, at over 130 million years of age, is said to be the world's oldest primary rain forest. Planning to do some hiking, I bought a cigarette lighter which I was told was necessary to remove leeches which are of the huge biting variety that can fall from trees and begin to suck blood on any part of one's body. I also bought some long socks and rented a pair of high topped leech resistant hiking boots. And a man in a camera store cleaned my smeared lens for no charge.

One might think it's lonely traveling alone, but actually I am seldom by myself. At least once a day I tend to be joined for a meal,either by a local or by another traveler. On the way to Taman Negara I was joined by Tom, an 18-year-old Englishman who I met on the bumpy bus ride. Tom has been traveling alone for the past six months, in New Zealand and Asia. We shared a delicious meal of roti canai, a flat bread dipped in tasty curry sauce, for U.S. $1.50.

In Melacca I ate dinner at an outdoor riverside table with the cafe owner, a Malaysian named Bert who had worked for JR Reynolds Tobacco Company in Borneo for many years before returning to Melacca to open a restaurant. I ate lunch with another Malaysian, who explained that he was the son of a Seek father and Indian mother, and had spent several years in Japan while training to be a Christian missionary. He lives in southern Malaysia but returned to Melacca for the Chinese New Year holiday.Above: Me with Ming Wei

On the boat ride to Taman Negara I met Ming Wei, a banker from Malaysia's capital, who, along with 20 friends, was visiting Taman Negara for the first time in her life. I mentioned to Ming Wei that years ago I had made my first backpacking trip with my good friend Eileen, who is Malaysian, and that in Mexico Eileen had tried to teach me to bargain (I wasn't at all good at it!), and had introduced me to my first mango. As we parted, Ming Wei gave me a wonderful fresh persimmon, one of my favorite fruits. Although persimmons are now grown primarily in Asia, the word persimmon comes from the Powhatan language, and persimmons were first cultivated by Native Americans. What a global world we live in!

In Taman Negara I shared several meals with Tim, an American investment banker who quit his job a couple of years ago and has been traveling ever since. He visit every country in South America before heading to Southeast Asia, and plans to travel for yet another year!

On my first night in Taman Negara I joined a guided night walk in the rain forest, during which I learned to spot spiders at night by aligning my flashlight with my eyes, which enabled me to see the spiders' eyes glowing. There were thousands of them on the trees and on the ground, and I saw several huge hunter spiders waiting for their prey. Rather than using a web, hunter spiders use the style of hunting dogs.The rain forest is alive and vibrant at night, and I saw stick insects, a cricket, a cockroach on a tree, giant ants, a huge millipede, scorpions hiding in nooks, sleeping birds (from the bottom), a wild pig, and deer. Best of all, I saw a slow loris slowly crossing a wire above my head. Although it seemed scared when everyone was looking it it, it continued to cross the wire, very slowly.Above: Slow loris

Upon returning to my bungalow, the Durian Chalet, I sat outside in the dark for 30 minutes listening to the beautiful medley of jungle sounds, which seemed to include crickets, cicadas, birds, frogs, and many more sounds that I couldn't identify. I chose the Durian Chalet in part because it's next to a durian field, and I really want to try that odorous fruit, but alas it was not in season. The other reason I chose the Durian Chalet is because it's a fifteen minute walk outside of town, which I detested when I was lugging my heavy backpacks in the humidity and heat but which I loved during the night when I heard all of the jungle noises through the open window of my room, including a wild screaming at two a.m., which I first thought was cats, and later thought was children, and hoped might be jungle wildlife.

Later during the night I heard an animal inside my room, jumping. I could hear it as it hit the floor, making a suction cup sound, and I immediately guessed that it was a frog. I turned on the light and removed a small and very scared frog from my room. And before dawn as I walked fifteen minutes in the dark past a rubber and durian field to town I heard a startled rustling and snorting in the brambles, most likely a wild boar.

Above: tapped rubber tree

Trying to get an early breakfast I walked to one of the floating restaurants on the edge of the river, but found the restaurant closed and the staff sleeping on the floor. Most of the workers in the village come from the surrounding area to work in the tourist industry. I had a nice chat with Aiyu, a 25-year-old Malay woman who works at one of the travel agencies in Taman Negara. She is from a village two hours away. Her parents work as rubber tappers in the rain forest, and care for Aiyu's five-year-old daughter while Aiyu and her husband work 12 or 13 hour days for the travel agency. Aiyu goes back to her village to visit her daughter a few times a year. She speaks English well, and told me that she completed one year of university but couldn't afford to continue.

Above: floating restaurants

When I walk through the rain forest, I can hear leaves falling from the canopy high above. I hear them as they reach the lower forest levels, like the sound of raindrops, and occasionally they tumble down further, finally reaching the jungle floor. Although I didn't see any leeches, my morning hike in the rain forest proved to be harder than I had expected, due to the heat and humidity, but I managed to reach the canopy walkway, a hanging rope bridge made of wooden planks and ladders which allowed me to see different levels of the rain forest up to 45 meters above the ground.

On the way back, I sat under a tree to eat my lunch and listen to the jungle sounds, some coming from high above in the canopy and others right around me.

I didn't see many of the larger animals that live in Taman Negara, such as the Asian elephant (endangered), the serow, the Malayan Tiger (endangered), the black panther, Malayan Tapir, civet, the wild cattle-like gaur (protected), yellow-throated marten, Asiatic golden cat, red dog or dhole, or the mouse deer. And of course I didn't see the Sumatran rhino, which is extinct.

Scientists believe that Taman Negara, now a national park, is the oldest rain forest in the world. Taman Negara is protected, but many of Malaysia's other rain forests, especially, those in Borneo, are threatened by logging, agriculture and urban encroachment. According to the United Nations, Malaysia's deforestation rate is accelerating faster than that of any other tropical country in the world. Malaysia's annual deforestation rate jumped almost 86 percent between the 1990-2000 period and 2000-2005. In total, Malaysia lost an average of 140,200 hectares—0.65 percent of its forest area—per year since 2000.

Sitting in the rain forest, a recurring thought that I first had while visiting the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest came to me. Life must have been more comfortable before humans built cities, which trap and reflect the heat and destroy the natural shade. In the rain forest there is no need for sunscreen or a hat, as only a few speckles of sunlight reach my skin. The rain is not really bothersome, since it is filtered by the trees, down to their roots. However, journal writing in the rain forest is definitely not easier. None of my pens worked in Taman Negara, whether due to the humidity of the pages in my journal or the stickiness of my hand I don't know. My notes consist of barely legible scribbles on my journal pages.

Children walking to school

Melaka, Malaysia, and "Enduring Beauty"

When traveling, I usually ask the bus driver to let me know when we reach my stop, and sometimes I ask another passenger. In Melaka, Malaysia, better known worldwide as Malacca, the passenger sitting next to me not only advised my of my stop but also got off the bus with me, before he had reached his own destination, in order to help me find the guesthouse where I had reserved a room. I half expected that he would try to follow me in, or show up later, but he just kindly said goodbye, advised me to walk slowly so as not to tire in the tropical heat, and I never saw him again.

I left my shoes at the entrance of the Samudra Inn before checking in to my $3 per night room with a fan and a shared bathroom, complete with a water hose to be used rather than toilet paper.

Since it was Chinese New Year, many local people were traveling and the inn was full of Malaysian travelers rather than foreigners.

Malaysia, slightly larger than New Mexico, is populated by a beautiful mix of cultures including mainly Malay, Tamil Indian, and Chinese.

This cultural mix produces some wonderful hybrid cuisine! This photo shows an Indian grocery. The man in the photo was a recent immigrant from India.

Malaysia gained independence in 1957 after centuries of colonialism under the Portuguese, Dutch and then British, with a brief period under the Japanese during World War II. Singapore was initially a part of Malaysia but broke away in 1965.

Before it was first colonized in 1511, most of peninsular Malaysia was first a Buddhist Malay kingdom, then a Hindu kingdom and finally a Muslim Sultanate. During the Muslim period, Malacca became a regional trading center with Chinese, Arab, Malay and Indian merchants. This rich trade attracted the European colonists.

I visited a reconstructed Sultanate Palace, the Portuguese fortress, Catholic churches built by the Portuguese and Dutch, the residence of the Dutch governors, Chinatown, and several mosques and Chinese temples.

Melaka Sultanate Palace and Cultural Museum is a replica of a 15th Century Malay palace.

Christ Church, built by the Dutch, was converted into an Anglican church by the British.

St. Francis Church, built in 1849 .

Kampung Kling Mosque, with Sumatran architectural features, is one of the oldest mosques in Malaysia.

I also visited The People's Museum which, in addition to displays on the cultures of Malacca, had an exhibit called "Enduring Beauty." This exhibit explored the things people of various cultures do or have done to their bodies in order to appear attractive by their cultural standards. "Enduring Beauty" is a double entendre meaning lasting beauty and also referring to the pain people must endure in order to achieve this "beauty."

The exhibit included piercings, lip ornamentation, tattoos, neck elongation, head flattening, foot binding, and the European and American focus on a woman's waist.

Since the 14th and 15th centuries, from bodices to corsets to hoop skirts and other garments which didn't allow women to sit down, European and American women have had an obsession with the "wasp waist." This obsession obstructed free movement and, in addition to much discomfort, caused deformed and cracked ribs, weakened abdominal muscles, deformed and dislocated internal organs and fainting due to an inability to breathe properly. Seventeenth century American feminists opposed clothing which restricted women's movement, and proposed bloomers which were ridiculed and never caught on. It was not until World War I when women who needed to move freely in order to enter the workforce began to abandon the use of corsets.

But the Western obsession with tiny waists has not faded, as evidenced by the prevalence of eating disorders and the occasional women who still strive for the wasp waist.

During the 1930s through 1950s, Ethel Granger was famous for having the world's smallest waist, at 13 inches.

From an American perspective it is easy to assume that an emphasis on the female waist is universal, but I don't think that is so. Traditional Japanese clothing such as the kimono completely obscures the waist as a focal point of beauty.

Other forms of "enduring beauty" currently prevalent in the modern world are high heeled shoes, cosmetic plastic surgery, and some types of hair removal.

While on the topic of style, I should mention head scarves. Malaysia is the first primarily Muslim country I have visited. Sixty percent of this ethnically mixed population is Muslim, and the Muslim women wear head scarves. Americans tend to view head scarves as an onerous restriction on women, but I was surprised to see that Malaysian head scarves are quite beautiful, brilliantly colored, in several styles and sometimes beaded.

I saw them fashionably displayed on mannequins in shopping malls.

I enjoyed seeing Malacca along with a handful of Dutch tourists and many Malaysians who were home for the holidays. From Malacca I headed up to Taman Negara, possibly the world's oldest rain forest. Blog entry coming soon.

Trust in Southeast Asia

I arrived in Singapore at 1 a.m., planning to sleep in the airport and then take the first available bus to Malaysia. Instead, using the airport's free internet, I found that there was a train leaving for Jerantut, Malaysia at 4:45 a.m.

While I was considering my options, a smiling local woman wearing a Muslim head scarf and with a handful of kids in tow offered to give me a ride to the train station, saying she was going that way anyway. Picking up a good vibe from the woman but reminding myself that I should be leery of strangers who offer to give me a ride at 2:30 a.m., I thanked her and instead found a shuttle bus to the train station.

At the station, I ate a bowl of laksa (a spicy noodle soup combining Chinese and Malay elements) and waited for the ticket window to open at 4 a.m., only to learn that all tickets were sold out until the next day.

After sleeping for an hour on a train station bench, I went outside in the dark to look for a taxi. I found a row of taxis but no drivers. When I was about to give up, three men walked out of the train station and got into one of the taxis. I ran up to them and asked where I could find a driver, saying that I wanted to go to the nearest rapid transit station. The taxi driver told me that he had just finished a 12-hour shift, and was taking his friends home, but that he would take me to the nearest rapid transit station for free, since it was close.

After I got in he told me he would take me all the way across town to the bus terminal, for free, and I started to worry about his motives. In some places in the world, taxi drivers are known to rob people, or worse. But true to his word, he took me all the way to the bus terminal, gave me good advice for my journey, and refused money when I tried to pay him.

As a solo traveler I have trained myself to be wary of people and to be ultra cautious for my safety, but time and again in Southeast Asia the locals shower me with kindness and prove my wariness unwarranted. No doubt I could have safely accepted the ride from the woman in the airport, too.

In many places in the world, travellers must be very vigilant to not be overcharged or short changed, but in Malaysia when I accidentally handed a teenage waiter two bills vastly larger than what I owed, obviously mistaking them for smaller bills, the waiter was quick to correct my mistake. He could have easily kept the money, which might have been a week's pay for him.

In Melaka, Malaysia, the toilet attendant was fast asleep but moments after I took this photo a customer walked up, left her payment on the table next to the sleeping attendant, and walked into the bathroom.

Whenever I leave Japan for a country that uses the Roman alphabet, I am always stunned at how different life feels when I am once again literate. The primary language in Malaysia is Malay, but street signs are always bilingual in Malay and English, and English is widely spoken along with other languages including Chinese and Tamil.

In the past Malay was written in an Arabic-type script, but under the Portuguese colonizers in the 17th century, the alphabet replaced earlier scripts, making travel in Malaysia very easy for westerners like me.

I really enjoyed the way that words adopted from English are spelled in Malay, using a spelling that seems to be more simple and phonetic. For example, "minit" means minute, and "polis" are police. Other easily-recognizable words I saw written in Malay are kampus, karnival, butik, texsi, arkitek, projek, struktur, kaunter tiket, bas and domestik.

Since Malaysia is a Muslim country, most of the population doesn't drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or eat pork, and many guesthouses prohibit these activities on the premises. Because there is a high tax on alcohol, a cocktail costs about the same as a night in a hostel bed, about $3. To save my ringit (Malaysian currency), I decided to do like the Malaysians do, and I refrained from drinking while in Malaysia.

In Malaysia I visited the historical trading port of Melaka (Malacca), on the Straits of Malacca, and Taman Negara, one of the world's oldest rainforests. But I'll save those for my next posts.