Leech Hunting

STATS: Day count=291; theft count=1; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=5.5; Chris’ photo count=2307; Emma’s photo count=122; touch-typing char/min=247; Poi skills mastered since last post: None

(NOTE: This post is now a little out of date – our lack of internet access recently has delayed its posting. We have been enjoying Sumatra for about a week now – no earthquakes, tsunamis or erupting volcanoes so far. More in the next post…)

After the serenity of the last 10 months’ travelling, the last couple of weeks have been relatively hectic, albeit with less public interest as we were often revisiting places we have already seen on our way back to Malaysia. However, you’ll be pleased to hear there were enough reportable events and circumstances to warrant a blog update.

A quick hop across Thailand from Laos to Malaysia meant long bus journeys. To avoid a potentially tortuous 15 hour trip to Bangkok we decided to ‘hop off’ and overnight in Nakhon Ratchasima (locally known as Korat, which is easier to type and spell, so I’ll stick with that). Although the bus we were on did continue on to Bangkok, we got off in the late evening when they said we had reached Korat. Being dropped of under a highway underpass was a little surprising and as we watched the bus disappear into the distance it slowly dawned on us that this wasn’t Korat bus station. Turns out the town was flooded. I mean really flooded – emergency services, people displaced from homes, boats used to get along roads and the army drafted in to help people from their homes and to get around town.

Luckily the friendliness of the Thai people shone through once more. Despite being two helpless, tired and grubby farangs, we were aided by numerous locals, and by the army, to get into town in a large army transport vehicle – being the only thing other than a boat that could get through the flooded streets this side of town. As locals were piled into the back of the lorry, we were treated like royalty by all around and helped into the front seats of the cab, and even saluted by the army driver as we were dropped off on the other side of town, luckily not flooded, near to a hotel. We’d have probably enjoyed the experience more if it wasn’t 9 o’clock at night after a 10 hour bus journey, but it was fun nonetheless!

We eventually got to Bangkok and stayed there a couple of days before moving south into Malaysia. Emma made the astute observation: “There are a lot more older dogs here. Maybe it’s because they don’t eat them”. We stopped off in Krabi to break up the journey a bit and enjoyed it even more than the first time we were there – you have different experiences when you are familiar with the town and the country than when it is all new. One draining aspect of travelling is that you get so many things to adapt to constantly – just as you are relaxing into a place, a language and a local mentality you move on and need to start again. I think that is a large part of the homesickness that people feel – the desire for familiarity.

A night in Penang, Malaysia, was nicer than the last time we were there, mainly due to a nicer hostel. I hunted for a new MP3 player to replace the one that was stolen, only to find that everyone in Asia is mobile phone crazy and basic MP3 players, other than the odd iPod or fake iPod, don’t get a look in. (Geek update: after much internet researching and looking round the tech centres of Bangkok and Penang I’ve come to the conclusion that there is nothing better than an iPod, which is unfortunate, as I hate iTunes with a passion). However, I had an epiphany when my watch broke. I don’t need a new iPod. I don’t even need a new watch. Neither of us has used a mobile phone for almost a year and Emma has done without a watch for months. At this rate we will be discarding the trappings of modern life and returning to the UK wearing only Ghandi-style dhotis. Still clutching my laptop, of course.

 

My long-awaited trip to a Malaysian rainforest came at last, after an overnight bus journey to the Taman Negara national park. Beautiful setting, fairly nondescript town and the rainforest was… humid. But fun. The “canopy walk” around the treetops was scary if, like me, you aren’t all that keen on heights.  Emma took great joy in skipping and bouncing along the planks which were suspended a good 20-30m above the ground as I tentatively inched my way along them, knuckles white from gripping the guide ropes.

We opted to spend one night in one of their ‘hides’ – very basic huts (no electricity, no water, no bedding. Basically just a room with a roof) overlooking a clearing where you may see some animals. Or you may not. We didn’t. At least not at the hide itself, though on the 2 hour trek through the jungle to get to the hide we did see monitor lizards, wild boar (quite scary when you’re completely on your own in the middle of the jungle) and, to my delight if not Emma’s, another massive snake which I will again claim was a king cobra – not (only) because it sounds impressive, but because it was about 3m long and pretty thick and didn’t have any markings that I would associate with a constrictor (and the only non-constrictor that reaches that size is a king cobra). Luckily (but disappointingly for me) it heard us well before we saw it and it slithered away incredibly quickly so we only caught sight of it briefly as it was escaping. Spending the night alone in an isolated hide in the middle of a jungle was interesting, though uncomfortable. We were glad of the solid hut and roof as it rained all night. Not only did that make the ground a lot more slippery for the 2 hour trek back to the town the next day but, more annoyingly, it brought out the leeches.

A brief aside on leeches seems appropriate. Interesting creatures, leeches. They are excellent at detecting your body heat and you can see them moving towards you, in their weird slinky-like motion, as you approach, trying to latch on to you. They are then able to move under your clothing and even through it – we saw them melt into socks and appear on our leg on the other side, David Copperfield-like(the magician, not the Dickens character). Well I found them interesting – Emma found them disgusting. Unfortunately they were impossible to avoid – not only do they deliberately attach themselves to leaves at leg/knee/waist height so they can grab hold as you brush by, but they are also lurking on the ground, and latch on to your shoe as you walk past, then make their way up to any available bit of flesh. We had to stop every 30 paces or so for a ‘leech-check’ and usually found one or two. Easy to flick off when on your clothes, impossible once they get hold of you, when they suck your blood until full, then fall off. They are painless (so you don’t notice them) and they don’t spread disease (though the open ‘wound’ they leave is prone to infection) but the blood doesn’t clot, so it looks a lot more serious than it really is. Luckily a squirt of insect repellent makes them let go. We probably had had about 15 attached leeches between us by the end of the trek. My camera focus had stopped working due to the humidity in the jungle (that’s my excuse anyway!) so apologies for the poor leech photo!)

At this point our travel plans collapsed and we resorted to plans B, C and D. Our original intention was to travel from Taman Negara to the Perhentian islands off the north east coast of Malaysia. The day before our intended train trip there we casually inquired as to the other options to get to the islands to be told that they had just ‘closed for the monsoon season’ – i.e. it would be difficult to get there and everything would be shut if we did manage to. Bugger. Scrap that plan and return to Penang in order to get the ferry over to Sumatra earlier than originally intended. Only to then find that the ferries to Sumatra had been stopped in May due to lack of demand. New plan needed and Emma duly provided. Unfortunately, despite all efforts to avoid it, we have had to increase our carbon footprint and are now flying to Sumatra. Luckily the cost is similar to the ferry (which is probably why there isn’t much demand for the ferry!).

Sumatra – land of volcanic eruptions (last major one in August 2010), earthquakes (last major one in Oct 2010), tsunamis (badly hit by the 2004 tsunami) and typhoons. What could go wrong?