Later, I will tell you about midnight and the mad pig attack; they strike, pigs, when you’re at your weakest, and there’s nothing much you can do about it. But first we have to get there, to Taman Negara and the long crazy river, with its tigers and tapirs and aborigines skulking in the undergrowth with blowpipes and poison darts. A satisfyingly arduous and exotic journey by today’s standards; how many other places, in 2007, are seven hours and a boat journey away from the nearest airport, pretty much inaccessible by land? And yet it wasn’t that difficult to do, in the end. Not much more problematic than when there’s engineering work at Basingstoke and you have to change for the bus to Woking. And a lot prettier.
I’d wanted to come here for a long time. This is a land of superlatives and statistical extremes. The largest national park in Southeast Asia, 4,000 sq km of rainforest, mountain and riverbank located bang in the middle of peninsular (or West) Malaysia – a country that even beyond the borders of the national and state parks contains a stunning profusion of wildlife. For example, for 40 miles south of the park, you get the same unspoiled scenery, with its population of gibbering monkeys and baleful, obsidian-eyed snakes, hooting hornbills and silent, purple herons. And north of the park, stretching up towards Perak and the raw Thai border country, there’s the majestic Belum Forest valley, with its big cats, perpetually nervous deer and cool breezes.
Taman Negara, which means “national park” in Bahasa Malay – they are nothing if not a literal people, the Malays – was created in 1939 by the British King George V; and yet it is virtually unknown to the descendants of his subjects. When Brits want Malaysian wildlife, they tend to head for Sarawak and Borneo, perhaps because these places sound as if they’re very wild. Taman Negara is wilder and older too – the oldest rainforest in the world, dating back more than 130 million years. Older than that big jungle stuff they have by the side of the Amazon, for example. And Malaysia is a lucky country and well managed. Its population density is but a fraction of those countries that surround it: Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore. With just 20 million or so inhabitants, and a land mass substantially larger than Britain’s, the animals and birds have room to breathe and to live. And there’s been an environmentally friendly culture, which has prevented the horrendous over-development you see in Thailand, or Bali. There are no prostitutes, condos or beggars.
You can take a bus from Kuala Lumpur if you wish to reclaim your lost youth and pretend you’re a free-spirited laid-back hippy kid who just, like, goes with the flow. Or you can do the sensibly decadent thing and hire a taxi for the four-hour journey; it’s not much dearer, for three of you, and a load more comfortable. First you’ll pass through the casino-bestrewn Genting Highlands, to the tiny riverside village of Kuala Tembeling in the state of Pahang. Then past the endless, undulating, palm plantations, where they allow Chinese common cobras to keep the local rat population down (no, really, go in – take a look. It’ll be fine). You finally swing sharply right and see this vast brown river happily trundling along in front of you. This is the Tembeling, a broad, shallow tributary of the mighty Pahang, swollen with rain from the monsoon season, carving its way through the jungle-clad limestone. And it will be your home and your friend for the duration of your stay in Taman Negara. When the jungle itself gets too hot and sticky, head for the river. The boats leave Kuala Tembeling for the 45-mile trip into the reserve every day, on the dot of two in the afternoon; your luggage is conveyed down to the harbour on a buggy by an ancient and perilous funicular railway, held in place by an unwisely grinning man who one of these days will fall off and break his spine. You, meanwhile, must walk. If you’re like Ken, the photographer, you’ll clamber down the endless steps to the jetty looking back all the while, distraught and crying softly at your expensive equipment hanging in midair over the river, defying gravity, on its decrepit little railway, the man waving at you unconcernedly.
