31st July - Perhentian Island to Taman Negara

We were up and packed early to the boat back to KualaPersuit. The speedboat to the island was a rollercoaster journey with everyone hanging on for dear life but the return journey was a lot steadier.

We were approached with a price to Taman Negara but when we refused because it was more expensive than on the island, a man came chasing after us and offered us a lot better price. He took us to  'Watercolours' where we sorted our tickets and had an hour spare for breakfast.

We were pointed towards the only place that looked open but had comically terrible service. The lady there often totally ignored people or wandered off halfway through speaking to them. We eventually managed to get a couple of slices of toast with 'kaya' (local jam) and went to the shops to stock up on snacks instead.

Our minibus left at 10am and we were only expecting a 3 hour journey to our final destination. About 3 hours later we made a lunch stop at a hotel buffet place where we ate a pure-carb lunch of rice, noodles and chips (with a few pieces of chicken)  and then changed buses.

I think our bus must have had a carbohydrate-heavy lunch as well because it crawled up the hills on the way to Taman Negara and made pretty slow progress through all the palm plantations that now replaced the rainforest.

After a detour to 'Hans Travel' in Jerantut, we arrived in Kuala Tahan - the access village to the rainforest - at about 6.30pm.

By this time we were thankful that we had booked our first night's stay through Hans and made our way to Tahan Guesthouse - a brightly painted place with inspirational signs posted around the place. Our room was equally bright and was painted with pictures of trees and fruit. It also had a little balcony that looked out onto some green space behind and the neighbouring mosque.

We dumped our stuff and went in search of food. Most of the restaurants seemed to be floating on the river rather than in the village itself and we stopped for a surprisingly nice dinner at a place called 'Nusa'. There wasn't very much at all in the village itself though so we were soon back in our room, listening to the loud call from the mosque, signalling that the Ramadan fast should now have been broken.