Day 90: Travel Day
Before leaving the park, we made one last ditch effort spot some wildlife. The animal hide was clearly a bust the night before with a half dozen tour groups stamping along the trail, but we thought there might be a chance to see something if we approached the hide quietly at dawn. We set the alarm and snuck out through the trails at 6AM. A valiant effort, but no payoff.
When we got back to our bungalow, we had 30min to kill before breakfast started, so we packed our bags and turned on the TV. We didn’t realize how loud we were being at 6:45AM until a very angry Swedish tourist walked over to our room, banged sharply on our door and told us to keep it down. Oops!
The animal hide at 6AM. Still no animals.
Since Taman Negara is a very remote location, we didn’t schedule any sight-seeing for the day – our only task was to get back to KL before our 4PM flight. We had spoken to the owner of the Rayyan Hostel the day before about booking seats on the bus, however the buses that go to Kuala Tahan are notorious for last minute cancellations if there are not enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile (most tourists take the 2hr scenic boat ride back down the river to Kuala Tembeling). Sure enough, the bus wasn’t running to Kuala Tahan that day. We had two options: take a minibus to the larger town of Jerentut, where there are plenty of reliable buses, or hire a private car back to KL for 800 RM.
OR…THIRD OPTION: get into a car with a complete stranger we had met the day before who offered to drop us off at the airport on his way home to Malacca!
Road trip to KL with our new Malaysian friend!
The owner of the Rayyan Hostel introduced us to his friend Ned*, who joined us on our morning boat excursion and lunch the day before. He was a very gregarious guy who seemed happy for some company on the road and a little extra gas money (We offered him 280 RM – which is about USD$70 – he didn’t even try to negotiate! We got a huge deal, as the bus & commuter train would have cost us 250 RM). However, Ned warned us that if for any reason we got pulled over by police during our drive, to pretend that we are old friends and not to mention we are paying for the ride.
We left Kuala Tahan around 8AM, and took the scenic route to KL both to avoid highway tolls and because we just weren’t in a hurry. Igor sat up front with Ned and picked his brain about Malaysian culture, especially his thoughts on Islam as the national religion. Ned had a very unique viewpoint, as he is ethnically Indian and was born a Hindu, but converted to Islam as an adult. He himself was on the secular side (he didn’t fast during Ramadan and his wife and daughters do not wear hijab) and believed that one’s true relationship with God was a private matter between the person and God as, “No person can know what is really in your heart.”
Ned explained that while Malaysia allows religions other than Islam, everyone must declare a religion, which is stated on their Government-issued identity card. If someone wants to convert to Islam (like he did), that is allowed, but it is forbidden to convert *from* Islam to something else. Also, as a declared Muslim, he could potentially get in trouble if caught breaking fast during Ramadan! Now, we’ve seen plenty of Muslims eating during the day during our stay in Malaysia, so it’s clear that police crack-down on fast-breakers is not common, but the threat was enough that around lunchtime, Ned asked if we could run into a McDonalds for him (as Westerners, we were not legally required to observe Ramadan)! We ended up finding an Indian food restaurant where he could safely eat lunch in public, as he could “pass” for a Hindu and was not likely to get carded.
A delicious lunch with our new friend at a roadside Indian restaurant.
Ned dropped us off at the KL airport with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately, we discovered that our Priority Pass lounge access only works for international flights, so we had a lot of time to kill in the terminal before our flight to Kuching.
This Famous Amos cookie shop was EVIL: they were baking fresh cookies and pumped the terminal full of the delicious smell! (Much better than durian candy – eww!) After a few hours we broke down and had cookies for dinner.
Ready for our next adventure – BORNEO!
*Ned is not his real name