Mutiara's Little Monsters
A MACAQUE’S SCREAM IS UNSETTLING AT CLOSE RANGE. Far enough away and you could mistake it for a bird, but when it’s right outside your chalet door, and is accompanied by rustling branches and objects pelting your roof, you begin to wonder anxiously if they have learned how to open the windows from the outside. Something about opposable thumbs?
While macaques are generally harmless, the last thing any western traveler wants is a monkey bite when they’re nowhere near western medicine. Just last week we saw a struggle between a woman and her map (monkey won, realized it wasn’t edible, chewed it up anyway, I think out of spite), and a man and his orange soda.
Aggressive…yet still adorable.
Checking in at Mutiara Taman Negara, after a ferry across the muddy Tembeling, we were warned of the monkey nuisance around the park and told to tuck anything edible inside a bag when walking the complex. Their footsteps were a regular sound on our thatched roof, and our porch furniture was used more by them than by us.
As a rule of thumb, when you encounter a macaque: no eye contact, no smiling, and if they catch you holding something sweet or colorful, it belongs to them. If they assume you have something they want and begin following you, show them your empty palms, and pray that gesture is sufficient. It’s all pretty funny, until you’re forced to give up your possession…but unless that possession was your passport, give it two minutes and it’s funny again.
Get off my lawn!
Macaques aren’t the only wildlife encounter we had while in the park. Geckos slipped in and out of the room and were welcome as they snatched up the tiny bugs before they could climb into our ears. A grumpy log of a monitor lizard roamed the grounds on day one, his snake-like tongue flicking in and out sensing prey. He didn’t like to be watched, but we still witnessed him catch his lunch one afternoon. Visiting the “Taman Hide” tucked into the forest, we caught a male Malay Fire-Back Pheasant in full display, defending his less-flashy female and their salt mound from a barrage of less-triumphant suitors.
During a night jungle hike our guide requested we turn off our headlamps while he dug around for something with a blacklight. A few minutes later a nightmare-sized scorpion came barreling out of its burrow in full attack-mode, its exoskeleton illuminated by the blacklight in an eerie glow.
Sorry in advance…
A tributary feeding the Tembeling is the pleasant, rippling River Tahan, filled with Kelah fish, a dark scaly delicacy. Seated in a wooden longboat, we zipped upriver skillfully dodging polished stones and fallen trees in a cool afternoon rain. Soon the boats pulled over at a rocky shore, and we hiked through the jungle, tracing the riverside until we came upon the babbling cascade of Lata Berkoh. Golden brown boulders moshed with the rushing current, and a calm pool perfect for swimming formed just past their noisy circle pit.
Conditions were ripe for leeches, so we paused for a quick check back at the beach. Examining Fernando’s back with my eyes and hands, I caught a glimpse of what looked like a skinny erratic fiber on my own middle finger, and once it contracted its blubbery body, I could tell it what it was. Anchored by its rear, it had not yet sunk in with its sucking mouthpart, so it was difficult to remove, but did not leave a mark. One pulled off the top of my foot, and one scraped off Fer’s ankle wrapped up the pre-boarding removal, and another telling red dot on the inside of my middle toe shows we had missed one that must have been messily removed in-shoe on the ride home. At dinner that night the only sign of our struggle with those gelatinous parasites was a small bit of toilet paper stuck to one of my still-bleeding leech bites. Seems I had gotten a full dose of the anti-coagulant they inject before feeding, so healing took a little longer.
Once you finally get the bleeding to stop leech bites leave a mark for a few days (make that weeks - revised more than a week later).
Our quest for Lata Berkoh had begun the way some of our unexpected best memories have, with one of us crabby or uncomfortable, primed for a change of heart. The verdant scenery at the river’s edge dripped with heat and rain. Ancient palms shot up from the forest fray here and there victoriously, their smooth, skinny grey trunks hoisting that tuft of greenery high above, winning the plant world’s constant battle for sunlight.
It was here I forgot my discontent and sat back, face to the lush green, living ceiling above me, and was grateful.
VERDICT: Mostly Harmless - except for all the monsters.
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LINKS:
Mutiara Taman Negara: Resort tucked just inside Malaysia’s Taman Negara National Park at the junction of Tembeling and Tahan Rivers. 87 units, restaurant, massage center and mini mart for provisions.
