Giedre tyttö Ozista

What could exhaust you more than holiday?

Another earthquake stroke and we missed it again! We must have been in the train taking us from Malaysia to Leijonakaupunki. Now when I think about it, there was a moment when the train swinged a bit more, but hei, trains always shake a little bit. So no.. We don't have amazing stories of apocalypse this time either..

The trains are actually really ok in Malaysia. Reasonably clean, reasonably organized, not so fast though. As I mentioned earlier, the Leijonakaupunki has hard feelings about this foreign railway in the heart of their country. My colleagues at work were warning that "they don't take care of it properly", "there's bugs and deseases crawling to our clean country", "its not safe". Well, it definitely was less organized and up-to-date than many other modes of transportation here, but I became quite nostalgic. Taking the night train reminded me of school trips... And all these signs all over the place were quite funny...

I'm late with updating my blog, because we have Taina and Mika visiting. I can tell you, its tiring.. We eat so much and drink so much of beer all the time! :) But its great, we have 2 (new) pairs of ears willing to hear about our trials and tribulations... I'll write a story about them when they leave.. He he.. So that they can't take counter-action...

Our trip to Taman Negara was very nice, but also very tiring. I'm getting quite depressed with traveling in Malaysia, because you have to spend at least 5-6 hours to get anywhere. And when you get there, there's only island/beach or forest or city. One thing at a time, never a mixture. So this time we had rainforest/jungle. It was amazingly beautiful on the 1st day, quite exciting on the 2nd and tolerable on the 3rd.. On the 4th we changed out train tickets and left earlier. We just couldn't imagine dragging our old bones to the jungle again. Everyday you wake up in the morning and go walking some 10km in the jungle sweating like an ocelot (btw, that was the figure of speech invented by Roland. I made a search on this "ocelot" and look, it doesn't seem like this cute thing has a too sweaty lifestyle, does it?). After some 4 hours of walking you feel slightly exhausted and dehydrated, then you have lunch, then have a nap, wake up when its getting dark already, go for dinner and go to sleep again. Next day the whole thing all over again. 3 days of that lifestyle is enough!

Otherwise it was really beautiful. Taman Negara national park is 130 million years old. Yes, 130 million, I'm not wrong. There were no major earthquakes and vulcano erruptions in the area, so the place has pretty much preserved as it was (when the dinosaurs were still here?).

There's beautiful rivers and everything is very green (not exactly a "Green Hell", but on the 4th day feels a little bit like that..) The first day we saw a lot of rare birds (as the birdwatchers that we met in the forest explained) and something black and big (a wild boar?), on the consequent days, not much of stuff.. It is basically green and as you walk sceneries don't change too much. You rarely get an open view like that. And when you do - see what happens, Kaitsu wants to leave his mark...

We took a boat up to the waterfalls (ha, does it look like a waterfall for you?) and it was a beautiful ride, but once we got there, other tourists (mostly local or from Leijonakaupunki) started pouring in. We passed a huge bunch of local college students and one of them got a leech sucking on her leg. Oh dear, what kind of screaming and mass panic it caused! As we walked on, we saw a guy carrying first aid box to the area of disaster.. These people are so funny. They go to the jungle in flip-flops in huge groups, all wearing the same kind of Tshirts, girls holding hands, acrrying umbrellas.. I mean, if you think that city people in Finland or Lithuania has lost touch with nature, you should see these guys here. Any of a Finnish or Lithuanian city-person would survive in the forest longer, somehow the people here don't seem to have much of common sense when it comes to nature...

It seemed to be quite an established routine for the boatmen that brought the tourists there. They all came at the same time, took out their chess boards, lit up cigarets and enjoyed their waiting.. I wouldn't be too sure that all these tourists fit on those tiny rocks next to the "waterfall". Scary! Thanks god we came half an hour early, so we were leaving when everybody came.

Once again I was amazed how different the boats were from any other boats in the region. The boats in Taman Negara are made to travel in shallow rivers where the stream is strong. There's also lots of huge tall trees around. So the boats are wooden, very very long and narrow. You wouldn't believe how swift they were and we could climb the rapids quite well. A boat is the most amazing evolutionary instrument that a human mankind has invented. It takes such a multitude of shapes, serves thousands of purposes and is designed from the materials found in the environment to perfectly fit that particular environment. Remember boats in Philippines?

We were caught in tropical rain in the forest, walked some 25km in the jungle and in general, quite enjoyed our trip. Just that you need to take another holiday after this kind of holiday...