Taman Negara - spotting animals in the wilderness

After leaving Cameron Highlands I made my way to Taman Negara National Park, the only primary rainforest on the Malaysian peninsula, supposedly 135 million years old. The driver of the minivan didnt get much sleep the night before (thats what everyone guessed at least), as he kept closing eyes as if he was about to fall asleep. We got there without any problems and accidents and I decided to go to bed earlier as I wanted to get up relatively early to encounter some wild animals.
But my encounter with wild animals should not happen until later that day. So I got up at around 7 to hike up Bukit Terisek, which is a relatively small hill but very steep to climb and it was so humid by the time I reached the view point I was one wet towel.

View point of Taman Negara

Overlooking Taman Negara National Park

When decscending I decided to take a different route, which was a mistake as I had the feeling after one hour that I had taken the wrong path. So I decided to walk back the way I came in the first place. At night I realized that if I would have continued I would have reached the park's headquarters a little bit earlier. So after my 4 hours hike I decided to explore the longest Canopy Walk in the world and after returning from that place I encountered my first wild animal at Taman Negara. A female pheasant not being bothered by my presence at all.

A female pheasant I

A female pheasant II

At night I took part of an guided Safari Night Walk and compared to the Night Walk we did in the "jungle" of Sabah I really did see a lot of wild animals. At first we saw a wild boar, unfortunately to quick for me to take a picture of that. Apart from that it was really amazing, as we did not have to go very deep into the rainforest and still see all sorts of different animals. Here is an excerpt of it:

Forest gecko

Wild mouse

Blue feather pita

A forest frog (no idea what kind it really is)

Glow-in-the-dark mushrooms (its hard to see!!)

The last highlight of the walk were the blow-in-the-dark mushrooms (these are luminescent mushrooms). Unfortunately the picture taken does not really demonstrate this kind of beauty.

After this wonderful day in the wild, I went to Melaka, UNESCO Cultural Heritage Site, where aliens have played a big role in the past and even today, but that is another story to be told later on.