The jungle Train home

Sitting on the platform we were watching a beautiful kindfisher.

The train arriving to take us home to Singapore. We decided to pay the extra and have an air-condtioned carriage and it was worth the couple of dollars to do this.

The night walk

The snail has its shell on the side, not standing up.
Spiders as big as my hand.
A whiptail scorpion.
A cricket - not a weta - we thought it was a weta.
A cave centipede
An orange spotted tree frog
A leech, Wayne thought they were caterpillars and tried to put one back onto a leaf. When we got home I found one on my leg and I did not like the feel at all...all of and squishy...and I bleed for about 2 hours afterwards. They are not nice.
Believe it or not this is a scorpian hiding. It was the closest we could get to a real scorpion.
We were very lucky to see a slow loris...it is a nocturnal mammal and very small, but absolutely adorable.

The Tree Top Walk in Taman Negara

This was the most scary tree top walk I have ever done. It was way up high and it wobbled and it swung. When we looked at it closely it was held by nylon ropes, fishing net, wire ropes and aluminum ladders under the planks.
As the end of each of the 5 the bridges approached, I raced to get off. Each bridge had a sign to say how far apart, you had to be, from the person in front. This varied from 5 to 10 meters. I was following Wayne and he just wouldn't get off quick enough for me.
All the platforms allowed only 4 people on and they were attached around a tree, like the one above.

Wayne was ok on the bridge and he took too long for me so I kept rushing him to hurry up and get off the bridge

This was an aluminium ladder that you had to walk up to the next bridge. It was quite scary and seemed to go on forever, it was about as tall as a house to walk up.
The platform goes around the tree and is only wide enough for one person to stand side by side.
Isn't he cute...well I think so.
Wayne was brave enough to hang over the edge and take this photo looking down to the forest floor.
This is what is called a Strangled Feet...it is a vine that strangles the tree it is growing around until it reaches the top and then it takes over the trees place.
This is a sweat bee...it doesn't sting, it makes honey and likes to drink peoples sweat.
Our lovely guide showed us many things on our walk up to a viewing place. here he is holding one of the longest leaves in the world. We were lucky enough to see a skink and it was much bigger and very beautiful.
The view from the top of the hill was worth the walk.


We had such an amazing walk with our lovely guide and then to finish of the day he took us in the long boat to shoot the rapids...the rapids were only little but he got us very wet.
The long boat trip home for lunch and then a quick change and we were back into the long boat for 'shooting the rapids'. We got so very wet but it was quite fun.

and the Leeches

We booked out of our hotel and went to catch our bus to Taman Negara...and then relaised that we were never going to get there intime to get the boat up the river to Nusa Lodge. So we hired a taxi to take us the 70 kms, we negotiated with the driver 200 ringgit (less than $90) for the 2 hour plus ride. The bus was going to take 3 1/2hours. We finally got to Jerentut and then caught another taxi the last 70 kms. We know this was extravagant but we thought it was worth the experience. The drivers talk and give you lots of inside information.<
From the jetty we had a 15 minute long boat ride to Nusa Holiday Lodge.
We were shown the different places we could stay in and after a short consideration we decided to take the Malay House

Wayne was keen to have a swim in the river to cool down...I thought the water was terribly cold...Not only was Wayne hot, so was this pretty bird...it flitted around like our fantails.


Everywhere you go you see people posing...so Wayne thought he would show us his pose.

Wayne sset up his camera to take a photo of the inside of the house...we had some fun.

Beaches

We left Singapore at 10.20 pm on Konsortium Bus bound for Kuantan. We were expecting to arrive there at around 7 am...we arrived before 6 am and there was no way we could check into our hotel room so we found our way in the dark down to the local beach and hung around till the sun was up.The beach looked quite lovely in the morning and was great to see the sea but we were disappointed that there was so much litter on the beach.
Relaxing on the beach was a great way to start the holiday. After checking into a room at around 10 am we got a taxi into Kuantan town - at a cost of 35 ringgit (about $15). We were hanging out for a yummy coffee and found a Starbucks.
This is the view from our hotel bedroom window. It certainly made the resort look lovely and it was just that it was a bit run down but then it was very cheap so we aren't complaining.
We did find this lovely little bar at the beach front...it was well Worth the short walk down there to partake a few g & t's and ales.

The Hermit crabs were everywhere at this part of the beach.
This is my favourite photo for the moment...the sun was just in the right place for the cloud. What do you think?
Cherating Beach was beautiful. The sand was clear and the water was too. There was some rubbish but not as much.



We hired a car and drove up the Cherating and then through some palm oil plantations. One of the highlights was getting to see some turtles at the Turtle Sanctuary. We couldn't get over how beautiful the markings were.

Besarah Beach is where you see the beautiful coloured boats. We heard that use bullocks to pull the fish baskets and nets off the beach. Unfortunately we didn't see this.


Palm oil is a big industry in Malaysia, you see plantations all over the place...a bit like our pine forests back home.

These are the seeds that they process for the oil...much bigger than what we thought they would be like.