TRAVEL IS EASY IN MALAYSIA'S PARKS

Travel is Easy in Malaysia's Parks
by Lenora Hayman

Family Outing

If you want top-notch national parks, where the travel is easy, then the east coast of peninsula Malaysia on the South China Sea is for you.

Our 2 p.m. traditional long boat took 3 hours to go 60 kilometres ($5:50US each way) up the Tembeling river to the Taman Negara Resort.

Accommodation here ranges from chalets with hot water and electricity($58 US) to a hostel($11 US) per night with excellent food and BBQ.

The 4,343 sq kms of Taman Negara Park straddling Pahang, Kelantan and Terengganu provinces is one of the world's oldest tropical rainforests that has never experienced the ice age.

Armed with flashlights, mosquito repellent and Baygon sprayed shoes to ward of leaches, 10- year- old Amirul and I joined a night jungle -walking group, viewing a flower that only blooms at night, fluorescent fungi, caterpillars with poisonous hairs, stick insects, giant ants, scorpions, glow worms and fireflies.

Lenora Hayman on canopy Walkway

We also saw the world's longest hanging bridge. The canopy walkway is 45 metres high 500 metres long, with 9 bridges and 8 platforms strung from the tallest rainforest tree, the Tualang, which produces flowers only once in 10 years. Although I saw rattan palms, sexual fern plants with male and female spores, bamboo and rubber trees, the larger animals such as wild ox, barking deer, tapir, tigers, sunbears and Sumatran rhinoceros were present but are rarely seen.

Lenora Hayman & Michael McAteer

The tree canopy over the Tahan river provided a tranquil 8 km passage to the Lata Berkoh Cascade where water gushing between rocks provided a natural Jacuzzi.

The Orang Asli or Batek an aboriginal nomadic tribe living at the water's edge still use blow pipes and place their adult dead on platforms in tree branches above ground before moving on.