Goin' Feral One Day At A Time: Langkawi, Malaysia

We went on a rainforest walk today so most of my photos will feature various shades of green.

On our Southeast Asian cruise back in January we were meant to visit Phuket in Thailand, but due to some dodgy weather Sam and I had missed yesterday’s trip out to James Bond Island in Phuket, there was too much wind to run the boats out there. So arriving in Langkawi this morning I was happy to look out the window and see blue sky, I was even happier to step outside onto the balcony to find the conditions were pretty still. Unlike in Phuket, the ship docked in Langkawi at a port so that made the day even better as we wouldn’t have to muck around getting on and off the ship on tenders.

It was nice to stretch the legs a bit today after almost 3 weeks of cruising.

Today we had signed up for the Rainforest Walk, the blurb for the tour said it would be a strenuous walk through the rainforest and we might have a chance to see Monkeys, Great Hornbills or Wild Boar. Jumping onto the bus I quickly realised that the tour wouldn’t be too strenuous as most of the other punters were wearing clothes and would be better suited to a days shopping than slogging through a tropical jungle.

I searched in vain for the monkeys.

I looked like the rainforest hadn't seen a lot of actual rain for awhile.

I try (moderately) hard but I struggle in rainforest to take interesting photos.

The bus dropped us off on the side of the road halfway up a mountain and the guides asked us to split into two groups, a group that would do an easier walk and a group that would do a longer harder walk. I was slightly dismayed that it looked like only Sam and a couple of others were doing the easy walk and all the others thought themselves up to the harder walk - it was going to be a s-l-o-w walk. Sure enough, after wandering up the road a few hundred metres the guide led us into the jungle and progress almost stopped.

Like I said 'lots of green'.

At one stage we dropped into this dry creek bed.

It was a slow old walk today so I had plenty of time to look around and take things in...and there was plenty of time for the mozzies to attack me!

Initially I was near the front but after getting eaten alive by mosquitoes whilst I waited for people to catch up I figured that I’d drop off the back, take photos and then re-join the slowly snaking conga line every 15 minutes or so. So that was the nature of my day in the rainforest, fifteen minutes taking photos, walk for five minutes to catch up and then another fifteen minutes of photos again, hey at least I was getting lots of photos I suppose.

There was the occasional opening in the canopy where one of the bigger trees had come down.

This Centipede moved faster than you'd imagine. The Centipede's legs can inject venom.

It's not just the fauna that's a little nasty, the flora can pack a punch too.

Rainforest (actually most forests) are my achilles heal when it comes to photos, I always struggle to do these spots justice unfortunately. Thankfully I had a couple of things helping me today, the first thing was that the rainforest was incredibly beautiful and secondly our guides were incredibly knowledgeable. It was one of these knowledgeable guides who was waiting with me down the back of the conga line who noticed a highly venomous Centipede on the forest floor, without her there was no way I would of noticed it. The Centipede was around the length of my hand and I was very surprised how quickly it moved, it was hard to get a photo of it as it scurried around. The Centipede’s legs can inject venom and they are particularly dangerous if you have an allergy to bee stings, so with no EpiPen handy I didn’t get too close to it.

We were probably never more than a few hundred metres from the road but it felt wild.

I'm sure our guide said that this plant has medicinal properties....or maybe he said it was poisonous. Hmm maybe it's best not to rely on any Feral Rainforest bush medicine!

The track was surprisingly rough and steep in a couple of spots.

The majority of there group had already moved on when we spotted the Centipede so it was almost like having a private tour now. Setting of again we soon caught up to the line, the guides split the group again here and offered a short cut back to the bus, this time more than half the group decided that they’d had enough adventure for the day and headed straight to the air conditioning on the bus. The rest of us set off on another loop a bit further into the jungle. I was a little surprised actually how rough the track was through here, if you’ve done any bushwalking before then the track was comparable to a rough bushwalking pad. After a few steep climbs and descents we could hear the traffic on the road and it wasn’t long before we emerged out from beneath the dense canopy blinking in the bright tropical sun.

I spent most of the time walking at the back of the conga line which meant that I was able to get some photos without the other punters in them.

There was meant to be a chance of butterfly's today...I think the monkey's must have snacked on them....maybe!

At one stage our local guide went down with Hypoglycemia, after a quick search of our packs for sugar we were soon on our way again.

Back on the bus we headed for the obligatory buffet lunch before returning to the ship. It had been a hot and sticky day out so I was pretty happy to jump in the shower and rinse out my sweaty clothes when we got back onboard the ship. It was soon time to head up on deck as we sailed away from Langkawi. Sailing out into the Malacca Strait into the tropical night with Langkawi disappearing into the distance our holiday was slowly coming to its end, life was very good.

It was pretty humid in the forest today. It makes me wonder what it would be like in the rainy season.

Dropping back down to the road and our bus (not to mention our buffet lunch - yep, I'm a hardcore explorer!).

The view from our ship at the Star Cruise Jetty wasn't too bad either.

The Dirt.
This was part of our Princess Cruise around South-East Asia back over Christmas 18/19, our day out today was booked on the ship. The tour today was called the Rainforest Nature Walk and set us back just under $100 each for the 6 hour tour. Lunch was included so I suppose the price wasn't too bad. The walk itself was a little on the rough side and it appeared that a lot of the punters struggled a bit with the heat, humidity and rough pad. Anyone who has done a bit of bushwalking should find it pretty easy though, I think.

Relevant Post.
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, 2018.
Penang, Malaysia, 2019.
Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Malaysia, 2019.