Born to be Wild

Is Taman Negara or the National Park. I was but a sophomore back when i was on a plane heading home from England and i chatted casually with a couple of Malay dudes (later i found out they were members of Royalty, but I can't remember which house) who recommended that i throw out a few days of summer vacation at Taman Negara in Pahang state. So me and my ageing uncle both bought tickets and we went on the trip up the Sungei Tembeling to a clearing in the jungle where they had built comfortable traveller's chalets complete with a cafe and air-con units for the better-heeled travellers. I booked into a "bumbun" jungle hut for a night with some Danish students (all girls) and spent the night in the jungle looking out our bumbun (strategically nestled on a tree top) at the salt lick below where the animals came out at night to get their daily portion of salt and drink while we busied outselves staying awake all night to spot them. We saw a mousedeer, a small bear but there was not a tiger in sight. The next day i trekked out alone on the jungle trail and my legs were full of leeches which didn't bother me much except the bleeding and itching when you pulled out the leeches. Leeches were everywhere - they were under the fallen jungle leaves and they even swam in the clear running jungle streams. It was spooky too to trek in the jungle alone, sometimes you had the feeling that the jungle was watching you. The jungle can swallow you up - no one can hear you scream in the jungle. Snakes slithered here and there (no worries, they're more afraid of you than anything), a mousedeer on the run (very hard to spot them as they are so tiny and so fast!), a small snake swallowing up a frog, jungle tree tops obscuring the sky almost completely.
Back at base camp we had all the creature comforts - oh yes, even ice-cold beer and hot-cooked food. My uncle who was a bird/nature-lover stayed at base camp and busied himself studying the hornbill who had made itself a permanent roosting place on the lower branches of one of the tall "tualang" trees. Not far from our base camp along a hiker's trail there was a nice Rafflesia flower in full bloom. They say it pongs at night or something. There were also wild colorful ginger flowers (you can eat the wild ginger roots but it probably doesn't have the same sting/spicy-ness as the commercial ginger we buy at the supermarket), also some kind of wild jungle tree fruit that has the fleshy taste of rambutans and about that size too but its covering skin was yellowish and the fruit less sweet, i can't remember now what the guide told me was its name. The guide fellow was a slightly-built local Chinese man in his late 30s. Asked what was most challenging for him, he told me: "sometimes the loneliness can be crushing".
But if you have a bunch of like-minded pals, a trip to Taman Negara would be quite refreshing. Back to nature and as cliche as that sounds, it's good for your soul. You could even trek right up to Gunung Tahan, the tallest mountain on Peninsular Malaysia, if you were more adventurous (have to pay the orang asli guide to bring you there). Whatever, I thoroughly recommend it.

flowers blooming

Last weekend i bought some fish to prepare for my infant daughter's porridge. It was good expensive fish, "Or Her" (in Hokkien). Normally my wife would prepare it by scooping out its flesh and packing it in bite-size portions using clear/transparent plastic wrapping. This time i decided to give it a go myself. It was hard work scooping out the fish using a steel tablespoon and my hands smelled heavily of fish afterwards. After i was done, there were some leftover fish skin, bits of flesh, bones and fish head. Instead of throwing these away, i decided to bury them in my potted plants as fertiliser. So using my bare hands, i buried bits and pieces of fish skin flesh bones and head in 4 selected potted plants. That was about 5 days ago. Today when i inspected the 4 potted plants i was gratified to see that they had ALL sprouted tiny flowers as if to show their appreciation for the fish fertilizer. It has been raining for a few days so by now the fish remains would have putrefied and its juices mingled into the plants' soil. Everyone of the plants now have tiny flowers starting to sprout out and they will bloom into beautiful flowers not very long from now.