3rd August - Taman Negara

We packed up what we needed (mostly about 8 bottles of water), left our main bags at the guesthouse and collected our tatty 'mattresses' from a nearby hostel before going for breakfast at Wan's floating restaurant. I couldn't stomach the floppy toast so Matt got a super-big breakfast and I stocked up on snacks for the journey instead.

After a quick shopping trip and bat trip we were on our way to Bumbun Tabing. It only took an hour and half to walk there and so we had all day to relax in the rainforest before our evening of looking out for tigers and bears.

We dropped off most of our things, thanked providence that there was a shower and toilet there and headed to the river for a while. Bumbun Anjing was across the river and we had debated going there (simply because it had my name in it) but we'd decided against it because it meant actually wading through the river to get there. It did mean that there was a path down to the riverside though and we spent some time there, paddling with the little fishes and watching boats of tourists go by on the disappointing-looking 'rapids' trip. I suspect Matt washing his shirt in the water was actually the highlight of the trip for them.

When I got hungry, we made our way back to the hut to discover some of the food we had brought with us. It was disappointing but entertaining. The tin of tuna mayonnaise we'd bought (because it was pretty much the only protein option) looked, smelled and tasted something like potted meat and what I thought was a chilli version of some crisp-like things we'd already tried and liked turned out to be what I can only describe as fish-jam flavoured. I gave the tuna a go but no amount of 'Cheezles' could mask the flavour and was just a waste of decent cheesy crisps so I stuck to those instead.

We didn't want the leftover food attracting any unwanted visitors in the night so I naughtily catapulted our fishy friends into the rainforest in the hope that they might improve our chances of seeing bears, washed out the containers and hid them in several layers of bag.

We found a way of attaching our mosquito net to the bed above (2nd use in 6 months!)and watched from the window and listened to the jungle sounds until it started getting dusky. Just as I was planning to use the daylight left to enjoy a shower and then settle down for some night-time nature watching we heard the sound of monkeys - and the answering sound of Westerners returning their cries. We couldn't help but be disappointed when four others joined us in our little bubble.

After they'd all jumped in the shower and settled in, it was pretty dark. They did make a bit of an effort to just sit and watch but were still quite chatty (especially after one of them found a huge spider in the bathroom) so we gave up and went to bed to wrestle with our mosquito net while our companions played cards and chatted.

At one point during the night, I woke up certain that I could hear something big outside but by the time I'd untangled myself from the net and woken Matt up for the decent torch,  it was gone.

My favourite belonging (neck and neck with my bumbag no less), my rectangular inflatable pillow, had sprung a leak and kept flattening out within minutes of being reinflated. Combined with the hard wooden slab of a bed and the mosquito net, it began to feel like a pretty long night.