South East Asia Ki Ai! : Taman Negara-Malaysia's National Park

Finally getting ourselves out of the bustling city of KL, we decided to visit Malaysia's beautiful national park-Taman Negara. It was a long trip to get there, first we took a three hour mini-bus ride with a speedy driver, who, when asked to slow down, replied "ten years, no one die! I driver, you calm down!" We then arrived in Kuala Tembeling where we took a small canoe-like motor boat for a three hour ride before reaching Kuala Tahan, the village across from the national park where we stayed that night.

Unlike many tourists who were staying a few days at the park, we had only a quick 10 hours to try to fit in as much as we could. Despite the speed, Taman Negara was one of my favorite parts of Malaysia. We took a 2 hour night tour to see some of the jungle animals- snakes, huge spiders and ants and then the next morning we went by ourselves on a hike up to the top of a hill overlooking the river. What could have been a difficult and slippery hike was made much easier by a boardwalk and steps all the way to the summit-but my legs were definitely tired of stairs by the end of the day. We also managed to be the first visitors of the day to the world's longest canopy walk- 45m high and eleven bridges long. It was fun and scary to swing among the high branches. We made a quick stop to a secluded river near the entrance of the park and then were back to shower quickly before a mini-bus, bus, monorail and mrt took us back to our hostel in Kuala Lumpur.

We spent our last night in kl exploring a new neighborhood called Bukit Bintang, their sprawling hawker food street, and the famous Petronas Towers. The towers were very cool to see lit up and to look up at the buildings that once were the tallest in the world.

After a challenging travel morning-who would have guessed that the Malaysia airport would be divided into two terminals (one for budget airlines and one for not) a 15 minute drive away from each other? - we have made it to our flight and are off to our fourth country of the trip- Cambodia!

-Chiara