Saturday 31st March 2012 - Taman Negara

Last night the Swedish girls (Malin, Frida and Rebecca) and I had planned to rent the room I was staying in last night to store our bags while we were in the jungle. The man that works at the company we booked the trip with said he would store our bags behind his desk but that didn't seem very secure!!

The girls met me outside my room at 8.45, dumped their things in my room and we proceeded to the restaurant where the tour company was based for breakfast before our trip.

Whilst sitting at our table the guy that we booked the trip with introduced us to our guide - Shafiq. This was the man whose hands our lives would be in for the next 3days and 2nights. First thoughts - he smelt like a pub!! He smelt like he had been drinking and smoking all night! He was short, looked pretty young and was wearing a straw hat. He didn't look serious and I didn't trust him!!! He was kinda cute though and very cheeky.

My rucksack was full but when we got to the restaurant there were stacks of things that we were expected to carry into the jungle-food supplies which consisted of packet noodles, tinned chicken curry, tinned mackerel, three bottles of water, cookies. Also other essentials such as a sleeping bag, mat, a spoon, fork, plastic plate and a cup.

I had to take loads of things out of my bag and leave them behind the counter. The man at the counter thought it was absolutely hilarious that I had a bikini with tags on in my original bag of things to take into the jungle.

Once we were all packed and decided on the most important things we were taking with us, we hopped into a boat which took us to the other side of the river to the tourist office to buy an entry permit, a camera licence, and to declare all the belongings we had with us - this is because apparently tourists have been known to leave things in the jungle but this is not allowed. The climb up the stairs to the tourist office alone made me exhausted and had me already questioning how I was going to survive three days of this!!

We got back into the boat and then had a nice relaxing hour an a half journey to our starting point. During the journey we were given our lunch - a paper package containing rice and a little plastic bag which had sauce and chicken in it. It was quite spicy and very flavoursome - probably the best food I've eaten here so far.

Once out of the boat we climbed yet more steep steps where there were several wooden huts and in the distance we could see another group. This is where we had our first introductions to what the next three days were going to be like. Shafiq asked us if we needed to go to the toilet, we all said yes. Shafiq said ok, go over there somewhere - jungle toilet! We were thrown straight into the deep end. We all walked towards the back of one of the huts and used the jungle toilet - which was basically wherever you wanted it to be and consisted of you just crouching down and letting your butt say hi to the jungle!! Talk about an icebreaker to the jungle and each other!!! After the jungle toilet we were waiting for the first group to leave so that we could leave, and Shafiq opened his hand to show us some nasty looking bug. It was a chakeeda - like snakes they shed their skin so this was just the skin. Chakeedas apparently live in the ground for like 18 years, come to the surface, make some crazy loud noises for 5days and then die - i knew this from Max but had never seen one. Shafiq then asked us if we knew about leeches. He told us that we were likely to see a lot of them in the jungle and if we saw any on us we could pull them off or burn them but that once they bit us it was best to let them suck your blood until they were full then they would drop off by themselves. According to Shafiq, pulling them off before would cause you to bleed more. I had so many questions and tried asking Shafiq but he refused to say anything more - he just said I know what I am doing. This infuriated me as the only way I was ever going to get over my fears was to know as much as possible but Shafiq had seemingly taken on this macho, self assured role, and had knowledge that he wasn't willing to share because he was going to be there to protect us. I knew then we would have problems!

Our trek today was going to be 8km to the cave where we would be sleeping.

Last night I stayed at a guesthouse in the local village but I couldn't sleep very well as it was raining like crazy all night and was very loud, also I felt really anxious about my upcoming adventure. But to make matters worse the rain had made the jungle completely muddy and there were ditches everywhere. It was quite funny to see the transformation from the start of the trek where I was jumping all over the place to avoid the ditches and water streams, to the end of the trek where I literally was running on zero power and didnt care anymore so just walked straight into everything.

Throughout the day we bumped into other groups. Whenever the guides got together they all had what they called jungle medicine - they smoked weed!! They were all bloody high as a kite!

There were four groups in total that would be sharing the cave with us.

With regards to insects and wildlife, other than leeches I didn't see anything! I had been so busy focusing on leeches on my feet and trying not to fall that I hadn't taken any time to look up or around.

By the time we arrived at the cave, not only was I covered from head to toe in mud from falling over 6 times, I was stinky, sweaty and had such sore feet. I had never felt more exhausted in my whole life. Luckily I hadnt been bitten by any leeches though - I had many climb on me but luckily got them off before they bit me.

Shafiq took us to the jungle shower and made us take our empty water bottles to fill up with the stream water for cooking. The jungle shower was a shallow stream filled with the other groups that arrived earlier than us. At first we were reluctant to get in the water incase there were leeches but eventually we gave in and got in. We used this time to rinse our clothes, shoes and ourselves. I had stripped down into my underwear and was bending down to wash my clothes when the girls calmly said, ermm Natalie, you have a leech on your back! Argghhh!! I was like I don't care if I bleed, take it off!!! According to the girls it was a big one - once they took it off my back wouldn't stop bleeding.

It was muddy everywhere outside of the stream so there was actually probably not much point in trying to get clean in the stream as on the walk back my flip flop got stuck in the mud!

Once back in the cave, which was huge, Shafiq laid out a mat for us to chill on. We had a side that was for cooking and a side that was for our mats to sleep on. The girls chopped up the vegetables while Shafiq cooked the food on a camping gas stove. The food consisted of chicken curry, rice and vegetables. To drink we had tea from Cameron Highland. The tour guides had made the dark cave really cosy by lighting fires and putting candles all around. Regardless, you still needed to take a torch with you wherever you went. The toilet in the cave was a little cave within the cave. I was too scared to go alone but luckily Frida needed to go too so she came with me and went in first. She peeked her head cautiously into the little cave and looked around with her torch and advised me not to look up when I came in as there were huge spiders. I didn't want to go in but after a couple of minutes I took a deep breath, bent down and climbed in. I kept my eyes and torch facing down but it was no good as there were spiders on the floor too. I kept my eyes fixated on the one closest to me, did my business and ran out so fast. Frida was so lovely and said if I needed to go again during the night I should just wake her. I needed to go at least five times during the night but went towards the cave entrance instead as it meant I didn't need to wake anyone as it was just literally just around the corner from where we were staying. The only wildlife we saw was a porcupine. I kept waking up during the night, everyone else seemed to be sleeping nicely. I looked over to where the guides were sitting around in a circle and saw they were passing a bong around!! It was so surreal!!

Despite sleeping on a really thin mat on the floor a cave, I slept surprisingly well - the only thing showing was my face, every other part of my body was tucked safely away in the sleeping bag and my face was slathered in mosquito repellent!