High Above The Trees

MONDAY 21 APRIL 2008


I had LOTS of FUN today ... well ... until someone puked on me. The day started bright and early for us as we had to be ready for the tour bus to pick us up at Tanjung Aru Shangri-La Beach Resort at 07:30am. We got there early at 07:15am-ish and we waited and waited and waited and waited more ... They eventually came at about 8:00am. I should've remembered that we are in Malaysia and people are never really on time. It didn't really matter as it was a nice resort and we weren't rushing for time anyway.

Our tour guide (can't remember her name LOL) was quite good. She spoke very good english and the mini bus took us for a tour around the city first before taking us us to Poring Hot Springs. The music they played on the other hand in the bus was um ... relatively bad (bit of a laugh really).

It was important for us to leave early in the morning as the mountain tends to get covered by clouds later on in the day. The road to the national park is pretty much a continuous uphill race for the number of mini buses carting tourists like us up to the mountain everyday. A truck with what seemed like a drunken driver also decided to join in the race this morning. It provided us with a bit of entertainment, following behind it and we were ready to see either a big head on crash or him driving off the road at some point. He eventually gave up and drove into a dirt track off the main road. Lucky bastard!

Not too long after the crazy truck driver show, we finally got to see the mountain

We took a brief photo stop and I was also brave enough to visit this high class toilet ...

It was surprisingly CLEAN believe it or not. I was more afraid of big scary spiders jumping on me rather than the cleanliness actually. I did see a massive one by a shack just right outside eeeeeeeee!

We drove past the mountain and headed off to Poring Hot Springs first (not that you need a hot tub soak in this weather). I was more interested in running through the rainforest, finding waterfalls and walking the tree-top canopy walkway. I was expecting the weather to be cooler because we are in an area that is relatively high above sea level but when we go to Poring, IT WAS STINKING HOT! We also had to climb up the track to get to the canopy walk. My shirt was soaked when I got up there (about 50 meters above ground?!?) but the experience and the view was totally worth it.




A few tourists did poo their pants while they were walking it because it is rather high off the grounds.

I also found a small but nice waterfall close to the hot springs....The big one is about 4kms away pass the BAT cave which I wanted to visit but did not have enough time.


It was nice to see nice crystal clear water after seeing all the brown muddy rivers that you see in the city.

I used my very foreign sounding Malay to buy souvenirs and then went for our expensive and crappy lunch at some crappy food stall that was included in our tour.

The driver went off wondering while we were having our crappy lunch and found out for us that the Rafflesia (largest flower in the world ... very very hard to see apparently) was indeed BLOOMING at that moment. He asked us whether we wanted to see it or not and being such a tourist that we are, we HAD to go see it. The lady at the little table outside the entrance to some random bush/forest area wanted to charge us RM$30.00 per person. That nearly killed us. After some more barganing and convincing us that we are ALL MALAYSIANS (which we are apart from the brother in law), she accepted RM$30.00 for all of us. Talk about money hungry village people!!



While I was wondering around the lady's very expensive forest/bush, I also found a very strange pineapple...

and a condom tree ...

Overall, the trip to Poring was rather interesting and somewhat educational. I studied and did an Eco-Tourism presentation about this area not so long ago so it was nice to actually be there, see the things I talked about.

The butterfly farm was closed for some strange reason which was disappointing. I did get to see this large stick insect though. Also didn't see any giant spiders, leaches and earthworms which the area is famous for.


Thats Poring for you!