Travels (21 page)

Pahang
 

I became interested in the Sultan of Pahang, ruler of the largest and richest state in Malaysia. I had some notion of writing about him, and I had heard that his birthday celebrations were worth witnessing—horse races on his palace grounds, native dances, and a ceremony in which his subjects ritually poison fish in the river and collect them for a special dinner. It all sounded suitably exotic. From the Malaysian consulate in Los Angeles I learned the Sultan celebrated his birthday in late May, and a week before the date I flew to Singapore with the idea of finding someone there who would assist me in attending the party as a journalist. Failing that, I would crash it.

I was delighted at the idea of crashing the birthday of the Sultan of Pahang. I told everyone that was what I was doing. It sounded so eccentric and dashing.

Unfortunately, when I arrived in Singapore I learned that the Sultan’s birthday was not in May. The
old
Sultan’s birthday was in May, but he had been dead several years. His son, the present Sultan of Pahang, celebrated his birthday on October 22. I was five months early.

I felt like a fool. And in the meantime, there was the question of what to do, now that I was in Singapore. I decided to see something of the province of Pahang—birthday party or not—and learned that there was a national park in the middle of the jungle called Taman Negara. I arranged to visit it in a week’s time. The Malaysian government required
a week to process my application to visit the park, because there was still fighting with Communist guerrillas in that region.

My friend Don, with whom I was staying, instructed me about guerrillas. Don was an international lawyer, but he had been in Vietnam during the war. “Now,” he said, “in case there’s an ambush, you know what to do.”

No, I said, actually I didn’t.

“If they ambush your vehicle, you want to run in the direction of fire.”

“Really?” That didn’t seem logical.

“Yes,” Don said. “Get out of the car, and run toward the fire.”

“Why?”

“Because what they do is, they put two guys on one side of the road, who open fire. They put everybody else on the other side of the road, expecting you to get out on the opposite side of the vehicle. So when you get out you’re exposed: that’s when they let you have it.”

I made a mental note to remember that. Run toward the fire.

“Probably won’t come up, but it’s good to know these things,” Don said. “Now, you have your compass?”

No, I said. I was going to have a guide.

“Jesus, never go into the jungle without a compass,” Don said. “And try and get a decent map. It won’t be easy, but try and pick one up in KL.”

Okay, I said. I would do that.

“Now, you know what to do about leeches?”

Don had lots of information. He instructed me long into the night. In no time at all, I felt dashing again. I bought a compass and a map, and I flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet my guide. He was a young Chinese biologist named Dennis Yong. We set off the same day.

Here is how you go to Taman Negara:

In Kuala Lumpur, the modern capital of Malaysia, you get into a Land Cruiser and start driving. For the first three hours, the road is a two-lane paved highway in mountainous jungle. Then it is a one-lane paved road, then a dirt road, then a mud track. After half a day of driving, the mud track stops at a river, at a place called Kuala Tembeling. Kuala means “mouth of the river,” and most villages are at the juncture of rivers.

At Kuala Tembeling, you get into a long, slender boat powered by an outboard motor, and you head up the Tembeling River. The river is incredibly tranquil; you pass small villages interspersed with regions of jungle. As the hours go by, there are fewer villages, more jungle. Finally there are no villages at all. There is only jungle.

After three hours on the river, the boat pulls over at a place called Kuala Tahan. Here I find several plain, concrete buildings—a restaurant
pavilion, and four or five guest cottages. This is Taman Negara, formerly the private retreat of the Sultan of Pahang, now donated to the nation as a park.

I have never been in a jungle before. Certainly I have never been so far from civilization. The place is quite comfortable, and Dennis radiates competence. Yet I feel so
far
from anything I know. I would never admit I am frightened, but I am.

We go at once to the nearest hide, not far from the cottages. Dennis tells me there are tigers, rhinos, and elephants in Taman Negara, but the animals are shy and rarely seen. We must not make any noise or the animals will not come.

On the path through the jungle, Dennis gestures for me to be silent, and we do not speak after that. We climb a flight of wooden steps and sit in the hide: an elevated wooden hut, with narrow windows looking out onto a clearing. In the clearing is a cake of salt, surrounded by the muddy prints of many animals. At the moment, I see no animals.

We wait, not speaking.

It’s comfortable for me not to talk. I have spent years writing, never speaking. Silence doesn’t bother me. We stare out at a clearing of grass with a salt lick, and wait for animals to come.

Pretty soon an English couple arrive. They sit in the hide with us, but they speak. I put my finger to my lips. They whisper, “Oh, sorry,” and don’t say anything for about thirty seconds. Then they begin to whisper. I think it must be something urgent, but it’s not. Just random chatter. I don’t like to be pushy, but I ask them to please be quiet. Dennis explains to them that no animals will come unless the hide is entirely silent. They say irritably that there aren’t any animals out there anyway. They are silent for a couple of minutes. Then one of them drums his fingers on the bench, and the other begins plucking at the thatching of the hide. Then they smoke cigarettes, and pretty soon they are whispering, and then speaking in low voices, and then talking in ordinary tones.

When I catch their eye, they fall silent again, and the cycle begins all over. I realize that these people
can’t
be quiet. They are incapable of silence. They want to see animals, but they can’t be still long enough to let the animals come. It amazes me to watch them; they seem to have a kind of incontinence. They would be embarrassed not to be toilet-trained, yet they show no embarrassment at their inability to sit silently for more than a few seconds.

Eventually they leave. Dennis and I remain alone in the hide for another hour. No animals come.

* * *

We return to the hide after dinner. The night is dramatic, because the overcast sky glows with silent bursts of heat lightning, casting flickering bluish light on the field before us.

The surrounding jungle is noisy. Crickets make a shrill sound, toads and frogs a low rumble. An owl gives a kind of abrupt, cut-off hoot, which is answered across the valley.

Around ten the sounds begin to die. By midnight it is quiet. No animals come. We go to bed.

I am staying in cottage number 5. Dennis tells me that this was the Sultan’s own cottage, when he was in residence. I think, At least that’s something. I am sleeping in the Sultan’s cottage. At least that.

The next day we hike in the jungle. Paths in the national park are more than ten feet wide. Dennis explains they must be cut wide because the jungle grows back so quickly. We pass flowering red ginger, spiky rattan, and the occasional small orchid, but for the most part the landscape is monotonous green, very dark, and hot.

Dennis has promised I will see gibbons, and we hear them hooting everywhere in the canopy of trees above us, a distinctive “cow-wow” sound. I also hear them crashing through the branches, but I don’t really see them. Finally, with binoculars, I glimpse four black shapes, far off, silhouetted against the sky. They shake the branches and are gone. I have seen my gibbons; I never see them better.

In trying to get a clear look at them, we have wandered a few yards off the trail. I turn and see I am surrounded by ferns and plants as tall as I am. I can only see a few feet in any direction. I am utterly lost.

Dennis laughs and leads me back to the trail.

As we walk, he tells me that the
orang asli
, the aboriginal tribesmen of the Malay forest, can walk in the jungle for weeks and not get lost. Dennis has gone with aborigenes on long expeditions, several hundred miles of walking, and on the route back, weeks later, the aborigines unerringly return to precisely the same campsites each night.

I ask how they are able to do it. Dennis shakes his head. He doesn’t know. He has spent a lot of time in the jungle, but he can’t fathom it, he says. You must be raised here, he says. It must be your city, the way we grow up in a city. You have to know your way around.

He points out some tiny hazards—a small scorpion in a rotting tree,
and leeches wiggling like thin worms along the trail. Dennis himself walks barefooted on the trail. The leeches never bother the first man in a party, he says. They respond to vibration; as the first man passes, the second and the third man get the leeches. I look down, and see one crawling through my boot laces. Dennis tells me not to worry; if it’s still there later, he will show me what to do. I think, If it’s still there later?

The air is hot and humid beneath the trees. I am soaked in sweat. Occasionally on the trail the views open out to a wider vista of the jungle. The trees are all faintly dusted with color—red and yellow and white and pink; a hillside here looks like an autumn hillside in Vermont, but paler, washed out. Dennis explains this is the dry season and the trees are blossoming. That is why they display those dusted colors. I am seeing thousands of tiny blossoms.

We walk for an hour and finally reach the view we have been seeking. I’m out of breath, extremely tired, and glad for a rest. We stop, and I immediately learn a consequence of all the flowering trees.

Bees.

This entire vast jungle is in bloom, and there are thousands and thousands of bees. I have not noticed them while walking, but now that I have stopped they descend upon me. They crawl all over my camera and my hands as I take pictures. Looking down, I see they are on my arms, and crawling over my tee shirt.

Dennis says to be calm, that the bees are only attracted to my salty sweat, and will not sting if I remain calm and move slowly. That’s all I need to hear, and I immediately relax. I am not particularly afraid of bees anyway, nor am I allergic to them. A few bees won’t bother me. It’s kind of an interesting experience.

The bees continue to land.

I feel them crawling over my cheeks and forehead. I feel them in my ears, and hear the hum of their many wings. I see them crawling on the frames of my glasses. I feel them tickling as they walk on my eyelids. I feel them clustered on my lips. I am no longer relaxed.

I want to scream.

It is all I can do to keep from screaming. The bees are now so thick on the lenses of my glasses that I can hardly see Dennis. He has quite a few bees on him, and he is smiling at me.

“They prefer you,” he says. “Nice and salty.”

I am trying to control my breathing, to avoid jagged, short, panicky gasps. I am doing okay, I am holding my own, but, even so, at any moment I may begin to scream.

“Do the bees bother you?” Dennis asks.

A little, I say.

“If you are bothered,” Dennis says, “we can start walking again, and the bees will fly away.” But I am too tired to walk right now. I must endure the bees for a few moments longer. And as they crawl over me, down my shirt and up toward my armpits and around the back of my neck and between my fingers, as I feel them everywhere, I realize that I am waiting to be stung. If I could really believe they wouldn’t sting me, I would be able to relax.

“They won’t sting you,” Dennis says again. “They just want to lick you. They are very gentle.”

It seems inconceivable that they will not sting me. By now I am encrusted with bees; I have so many on me that I feel their added weight on my body.

And I haven’t been stung yet. I look down and see my chest, carpeted with bees, rising and falling. I don’t want to take any more pictures—I can’t see well enough to do it anyway, through all the bees.

Finally Dennis says, “Ready to go back?”

“Yes,” I say.

We start to walk, slowly. The bees slip away, one by one. In a few moments I am free of them, back on the trail.

I was never stung.

That afternoon I meet some
orang asli
of the Semai tribe. They are short, stocky Negroid men with curly hair, very different in appearance from the Malays and Chinese who constitute the majority of the population. They find me funny because I am so tall.

One man appears to be cooking nails in a pot. I am told he is making poison. The Semai take sap from the Ipoh tree and then boil it with nails and snake heads (although Dennis says the snake heads are a ritual ingredient, not necessary for efficacy). The resulting poison on a blowdart produces convulsions and death in animals as large as monkeys.

Nearby, another man is stir-frying Chinese tobacco with sugar. The Semai prefer to smoke it that way.

The men seem jittery. Dennis says that they are always a little paranoid, because, even well into the twentieth century, the Malays shot them for sport. There are stories of Malay sultans riding on the bonnets of their Bentleys and firing into the jungle at the little forest men.