Taman Negara

During the last week of the school year, all the year groups at the Alice Smith School have “Trips Week”. Each year group goes on a different trip. This year, the year 8’s were off to Taman Negara and I was asked to go along as a member of staff.

Taman Negara is Malaysia’s largest national park covering 434,000 ha (for those who are like me and useless with numbers - 7 Singapore’s!) of mountainous jungle. Within its borders is Gunung Tahan, the highest mountain on the Peninsula (2187m). It has been covered in jungle for 130 million years making it the oldest rainforest in the world and two long, lazy meandering rivers - Sungai Tembeling and Sungai Tahan, surround it! A pretty special place – so you can imagine why I was keen to get on board!

I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the week that was to come. 86 noisy, hormonal, pubescent 13 year old boys and girls. The year group was dived into groups of 10, each group having a member of staff assigned to them. My group was the bomb – “Yerrow Crackers” were their name. Not 100% sure why! Made up of 7 girls and 3 boys. Loud, but a great bunch of kids!

Monday and Friday were designated travel days, Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with activities, which the groups rotated on, and Thursday was community service day.

Day 1 | Monday

We left the school at 8am and what was meant to be a 4-hour coach ride, turned into a 7-hour epically slow journey. Don’t you worry, the extra 3 hours on the bus did not curb the enthusiasm of the kids, they only got louder. I think it was the Mc D’s we stopped at for morning tea, the KFC we stopped for at lunch and the numerous other massively sugar loaded products they were vapourising on the bus.

Once we arrived we had to walk a way to river where we had to get onto long boats and be ferried across the river to our “5 star” hotel accommodation (there is only one option for accommodation!). Up 60 real steep stairs and we had made it! I was dying. Carrying my two backpacks, my handbag, my lunch bag, a first aid kit – my shoulders were killing me!

Day 2 | Tuesday

After having the most horrendous sleep (no air con and fan which kept tripping the power)– I stumbled into the breakfast buffet room only to hear the other visitors to the resort complaining bitterly about this group of school kids who had arrived on mass: “so much for a nice quiet relaxing week away” said one Germany lady as she was waiting in the 20 person deep line for the pancakes!

My group was down to do the jungle trek and the canopy walk. The canopy walk is about 40m above the forest floor and 530m long. I was looking forward to that, but the jungle trek, not so much. Especially after I got told we were going to be walking fro about 4 hours!

I thought it was going to be ok when we started, it was nice and flat and pretty easy going but it quickly turned into a walk from hell! It had rained very heavily the night before and the boardwalk was under renovation so that meant we had to bushwack our way through the jungle with a guide. It was so slippery, steep, hot and so so humid. I was cursing and swearing most of the way but had to keep a positive attitude up for the students! I was missing my Nate terribly as he is normally my Sherpa, my encourager and generally just makes life more pleasant! I had a backpack on with a first aid kit which was so heavy it felt like I had a mini hospital on my back. It started to rain during the trek so on went the plastic poncho’s which only make you sweat even more! It’s not my idea of a good time – not even the views made me think otherwise.

This was the easy part of the walk!

Beautiful views

View from the top - in the distance is Gunung Tahan mountain

We ended up at this stunning riverside beach where we all had a welcome swim! This was probably one of my favourite moments of the trip – it reminded me of my youth with my family, spending days on the Umkomaas river and up at Cobham in Underberg, tubing and just having a great time.

My favourite part of the day! 

Day 3 | Wednesday

After (1) having to remind a boy that he needed to have a shower and change his clothes, as No, its not okay that he had been there for 2 days, jungle trekked and still had not done the above… (2) told 3 moody teenage girls that yes, you can still walk when you having your period so no, they could not bail on the trek… and (3) walking into what I though was a small horse with a blanket on (turns out it was a tapir!) It would be safe to say I was starting to loose my sense of humour! Thank goodness my group was on white water rafting and team building for the day. Team building meant that I could do my own thing for the morning - I tried to catch up on some much needed sleep!

Tapir

The ‘white water rafting’ was great, even though there were no rapids in sight! All the groups got onto long boats and we got taken up the river and whilst we were going the locals splashed us – whooo! Yeah! We spent the afternoon swimming and having mud fights on the banks of the river, it was fantastic.

My extra cool group

Day 4 | Thursday

The whole year group got together for the Community Service day – we picked up litter and visited the native tribe to see how they lived off the forest (never mind the empty cartons of pot noodles scattered everywhere and the Nike tee shirts hanging on their washing lines!). We then visited Kuala Tahan primary school where they did a show for us. I took a video clip which is below.

Some of the students at the school

Day 5 | Friday

I was totally and utterly pooped. Seriously. I was so so keen to get home! All that stood in the way was a dam bus trip. You would have thought the kids would have been so tired by this stage and thus the noise levels a bit lower. NO WAY! I am so glad I packed my headphones!

All in all it was a great experience, not one that I will rush back for that’s for sure, but it was so nice to see something I don’t think I would have gone to see.