Malaysia – Railways & Jungles

By Rough Guy'd

27th July 2009 - After leaving the bustle of Kuala Lumpur, I decided that it would be fun to take the Jungle railway.  Other than the exotic sounding nature of the trip, it seemed to take me to parts of the country that I had always wanted to visit.  However, trying to take the Jungle railway from KL proved to be a lot harder than I thought and I ended up taking a bus to Mentakab with hopes of taking the train to Jerantut.  Arriving in Mentakab, I found out that there was effectively no train leaving and so I took the bus the rest of the way to Jerantut.  This part of the trip also helped to highlight to me that even though travel guides are good, they do go out of date incredibly quickly at times (my guide was published in Nov 2008) and sometimes it is easier to go with the flow.

Jerantut itself proved to be not very interesting and the best that could be said is that it wasn’t KL.  One night there was plenty for me and meant that I was up bright and early the next day to take a combined bus and boat trip to Kuala Tahan, the park headquarters and also the most convenient way to get to Taman Negara National Park.


This is the biggest rainforest in Malaysia and one of the oldest in the world.  The boat ride was amazing as it gave you a taste of a more rustic Malaysia where electricity is not the norm and herds of wild ox graze and drink by the water’s edge and was a perfect introduction for what I would find and encounter in the jungle later.  By the time we arrived in Kuala Tahan, it was lunch time and chances for going deep into the jungle (which was only a one minute boat ride across the river from the village) were over for the day so instead I had a quick lunch, booked a night safari and with towel in hand, went through the jungle based on some advice to go to a good swimming spot.

Though I consider myself a person not easily spooked, walking through the jungle solo (even if it was on a wooden deck two feet above the floor) is an intimidating feeling.  At times it gets incredibly dark (even in the afternoon) and the absolute stillness and quietness is unsettling.  My mood was not helped by all the signs stating that panthers were known to be around but not to worry since they didn’t attack humans in groups (I was alone).  All of this, I had going through my head even though the distance to the swimming spot was only five minutes at the most.  The swimming spot itself was a disappointment. 


One thing that I failed to realise is that the majority of Malaysians can’t swim.  As a result, anything classed as a swimming spot has to be taken with a grain of salt as most are probably safe for non-swimmers and in this case, it was only knee-deep.  Still it was a good chance to cool off and relax for the night safari I had booked later that night and that turned out to be quite the experience...