A rumble in the jungle

Set off early last week to start an adventure at Taman Negara, which is one of the oldest rainforests in existence today. I have to admit I'm a bit of a save the world and care about the environment sort of person and the children constantly poke fun at me. Well this little trip was to show them how beautiful our rainforests can be and how important it is that we care for the world we live in.
Arrived for our boat journey and prepared ourselves with lifejackets for what looked to be 3 hours of anxious scary travel. The boat jetty looked like it would sink once we all got on board, no seats, you sat on the floor and prayed there were no crocs in the water. The journey was incredible and spotting the wild animals as we went along was pretty magnificent, wild boar, monkeys and kingfishers to name a few. We were greeted by our guide who was amazing, and a huge thanks goes to his knowledge and expertise as well as his enduring patience with Alex's unending questions.
After dinner we had our first experience of walking in the rainforest spotting all the insects that had come to life, Lauren and I huddled together in fear as we passed tranchillas and other scary insects.
An early start the next morning led us to a huge trek up the which was pretty challenging, especially for us oldies! but magnificent views made it very worthwhile.

Once completed we headed for the canopy walk. How fooled we were. We all imagined it was one canopy, one walk. How wrong could we be! There were 10 canopys, each getting higher as we went along and as high as a 23 storey building. At this point I must mention that it is advisable never to be the one to follow a child with ADHD on such a walk. Alex swung, moonwalked, and bounced up and down, it was probably one of the most scary moments of my life!!!.

After a well deserved lunch we next approached an ear cave, which I am pleased to say both Sharon, Lauren and myself bowed out of. Headed by Megan (our youngest, age 10) who has absolutely no fear and followed by Michael, Alex and our guide, Rusli.They appeared sometime later completely covered in bat pooh and stunk of ammonia. They did all say it was absolutely amazing though.
Alex also at that point had decided to throw up in the cave, much to the delight of the fruit bats as he had consumed rather a lot of melon at lunch.
That was their dinner sorted out!

A moving experience for us all later in the day was spending some time with an aborigine settlement. They have traded with the tour guides, that for a small fee, they would allow us time in their camp and they would demonstrate some of the traditional ways of their survival. This works well for everyone as the Malaysians are aware there are so few of these tribes left in Malaysia and a small income from the tourists helps them buy simple foods and luxuries.

We rounded the afternoon off with a boat trip on the rapids in a jetty boat and we all just dived into the water afterwards, wow it felt good!

Update you all later