Once upon a time in Malaysia we decided to visit a really nice old jungle. We booked our bus tickets and arranged for somewhere to stay for two nights. With that done we enjoyed Kuala Lumpur and went to the Cameron Highlands for a few days safe in the knowledge that everything was arranged ok and that nothing should go wrong.

But, of course, something did go wrong. We forgot what time our bus actually left. It turns out that it left about 30 minutes before we had decided to get up that day. Whoops! We only realised when we were about ready to leave the hostel and head for the bus.

Fortunately for us, it didn't take too long to put things right again. We were quickly able to rearrange our bus ticket (amazingly at no cost) to Taman Negara (the jungle) and our bus ticket to Penang for after we got back to KL. Our hostel was happy to let us stay another night and all our other accomodation was easily changed too. Talk about lucky!

So, that left us with a small amount of time left to something in KL. We had been told about a shopping mall called the Low Yat Plaza the previous night by an English chap staying in the hostel. The mall was an IT sort of mall and well worth visiting for all sorts of bargains. The English chap who mentioned it though had turned out to be a bit annoying and I was careful not to mention that we were definitely going. We didn't want any company.

At the mall we got several of Claire's films developed and had a good look round some shops. I found several that were willing to sell me all of Symantec's corporate software for just 70 pence. It made me laugh!

That night we spent a while doing some washing, watching The Bourne Supremacy in the hostel and trying to avoid the annoying English guy. He was away from home for a month and seemed concerned only by drinking beer, eating McDonald's and watching TV. His justification for the latter was mumbled and sounded something like TV being a window into the Malaysian culture. Aside there being more to Malaysia than the TV shows, it was interesting that even though he said what he did, he only watched channels with English (mostly American) language programmes on. I'm sure that there's a Malaysian saying for someone so full of rubbish - I'd like to know what it is.

We got up in plenty of time the following day for our bus. We were out of the hostel at 7.20am with a small subset of our luggage and we arrived at the bus pickup point ahead of time. The Hotel Istana was very shiny, all decorated in marble and granite and chandeliers. Although the bus was already there, we had to wait until after 8am to be let on by the driver as he didn't have a list of who was supposed to be on the bus, the lady with that was running late. The driver didn't go to any great lengths to hide his feelings about that - body language is universal!

The bus journey was about 3.5 hours long and a bit too cold, even for me. When we arrived in Kuala Tembeling, we managed to be first in the queue to pay for our entry into the national park and first to visit the counter for our accomodation. The nice man from Nusa camp paid for our lunch because we were first. Most unexpected. For a while we resisted his attempts to get us to buy one of their packages for our stay because we were only staying for two nights. Eventually though it sank in that the package was for three days and two nights and not three days. Doh! It was written in plain English in front of us! It must have been the heat!

Having opted for the package (it worked out a lot cheaper than paying for stuff separately) we hit a small snag, they didn't take credit cards and we didn't have enough cash. The solution was to leap into a cab and nip back to Jelantut for some cash. A fine plan indeed, I just never realised that someoe could drive a Proton so fast! Two cash machines later (the first didn't like our cards) and we had enough to pay our way.

To get into Taman Negara national park itself, a boat journey is necessary. We knew this before we went there, I just expected the boats to be a little bigger than they were. Instead we found ourselves one of a dozen passengers in a little boat that barely rose above the water line. For nearly three hours we headed up river (and occasionally through some rapids) to the little town of Kuala Tahan and then a further 15 minutes on to Nusa Camp.

Our room / chalet was pretty basic but then we weren't expecting any mod-cons in the middle of the jungle. The bathroom had a very large supply of mosquitos but we quickly dealt with them! We also had come prepared with many anti-mosquito things; DEET, a mosquito plug and our unused mosquito nets. The nets went up quite easily with the help of some cuphooks that we'd picked up in Australia. We were protected.

After a basic but pleasant dinner, consisting of a couple of different curries and some fruit, we were taken on a night safari of the area. As it had become dark, all of the insects had started making noises and at times it was like being in a shop full of pagers, mobile phones and alarm clocks that all kept going off one after another all with different sounds. Our safari guide showed us everything that he could find on our walk. Some giant spiders, several inches across, in their webs. Giant ants that were about an inch long each. A black scorpian, fireflys, some crickets and a snake were among the many things we saw. Although it was quite dark and had cooled down a bit, I was very... uncomfortable shall we say. But then, that's what the jungles is about really.

The next day we took a short boat trip down to the canopy walk. There we walked among the tree tops along suspended walkways that were at times 45m above the ground. Being quite early it wasn't too hot but it was still hard work. On one of the many trees between walkways, we saw a very long ant motorway - four lanes of ants marching nose to tail (except that ants don't have tails of course) down the tree. As in every society there is always one crank and ants are no exception - there were a few ants walking the wrong way and disrupting all the rest.

At the base of canopy walk, our guide showed us a tarantula that he'd found. It had been stung by a bee or something and was half dead as a result and so it didn't put up too much of a fight when he poked it a bit. He seemed to want to nurse it back to health, although I think he might have been bending some park regulations a bit.

We went back for lunch at the camp after a very exhausting walk up to a viewpoint. The humidity made the view a little bit hazy but it was still pretty good. We had time in the afternoon for a lightning visit to Kuala Tahan, an unusual place for sure. Some of the town was up on the river banks while another portion of it was in the river. Mostly restaurants and small shops that floated near the river banks. It was quite freaky.

Our last activity for the day was tubing. Since the river had a current, some bright spark had tried floating down it on an inner tube from a bus or lorry. It was great fun. One of the river boats took us upstream a little way and dropped us off. The water was surprisingly warm and we just sat there and let the current take us back to the boat, someway downstream. On the way we had to go through several sets of rapids, bobbing around on the water, completely helpless. I'd recommend it to anyone who has even the slightest bit of coordination. Unfortunately for the two Japanese girls with us, they didn't. They couldn't quite get the hang of paddling in the right direction. They also didn't catch on to our guide's plan when he asked if they could swim or not. Two minutes later he tipped one of them over. Being a spectator can be fun!

We didn't do too much that night, my stomach was playing up a bit and we'd both become engrossed in our books.

The following day was mostly spent travelling. Two hours back to Kuala Tembeling, three hours on the bus back to KL.