It’s not just anglers who are heading to the Belum rainforest, families are also finding it an engaging destination – for hiking, caving and waterfall swimming, among others.
I thought that only anglers would be drawn to Perak’s Belum rainforest, billed as the oldest rainforest in the world, since Temenggor Lake is home to prized catches like the giant toman, sebarau and kelah.
Then someone in my clan suggested we head to Belum for our together-time.
Family gatherings are precious. Parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, friends – all must make time to be together to foster bonds.
A family gathering during off-peak season to somewhere off the beaten track makes perfect sense – it is cheaper and it gives chance for those who are working to spend some annual leave days.
So, off we went to this ancient rainforest.
Visitors revelling in the icy cold Sungai Papan waterfalls in Belum rainforest.
The Belum rainforest is carbon-dated to be 130 million years old, making it older than the Amazon in South America or the Congo in Africa.
We were 21 strong, with almost half of our group being children.
The double-storey houseboat for our 3D/2N adventure had six bedrooms and could hold up to 24 occupants comfortably, 28 if they squeeze in and pull out the spare mattresses.
The rental was between RM10,000 and RM12,000, depending on the season. So assuming 24 people on the trip, that would work out to almost RM600 each.
Hello! A two-storey houseboat, one of more than 20 available for rent on Temenggor Lake in the Belum rainforest.
You board the houseboat at Pulau Banding public jetty, which is three hours’ drive from Penang and five hours’ drive from Kuala Lumpur.
There is plenty of parking at the jetty and you can leave your car safely after paying a fee of RM15.
Pulau Banding is a small island on Temenggor Lake, and there are more than 20 houseboats for rent.
It will be wise to rely on internet reviews and old-fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations from friends if you want a comfy houseboat experience because some of these offer only spartan facilities, mainly for hardcore anglers who will spend all day on the water and only return to their houseboats for food and sleep.
Children swimming while a pair of paddlers row past off a houseboat anchored in one of the many channels of Temenggor Lake.
Our houseboat had the bells and whistles.
We had a large LED TV with satellite dish connectivity so no football aficionados needed to miss out on their matches. And there was the karaoke set too for those with a compulsion to break out in melody while on a lake surrounded by a rainforest.
There was a long bamboo raft that allowed seven or eight of us to ride on, and there were sit-on-top kayaks with which we paddled out to greet the rising sun for memorable photographs.
The writer posing with Sungai Papan waterfall in the Belum rainforest.
To the credit of the houseboat operators, everyone engaging in any kind of water sport was required to wear life vests no matter how we asserted that we could swim just fine.
This did add a strong measure of safety for us, since we had so many children on board.
I was piqued to realise the lake water was substantially warmer than the air around us as we were a few hundred metres above sea level.
Feasting time on the spacious main deck of the houseboat.
We had a cook who somehow in the houseboat’s small galley (nautical term for kitchen) whipped up veritable buffet lines for our troop during breakfast, lunch, teatime and dinner during our stay.
The buffet line on board a houseboat on Temenggor Lake in the Belum rainforest. The dish in the foreground is a steamed baung (freshwater catfish) bathed in savoury sauce.We feasted like royalty, and there were delights in the form of freshwater fish like baung, sebarau, red tilapia and jade perch of unparalleled freshness and without that earthy-muddy aftertaste we tend to get when eating them in cities and towns.
There is an experienced angler in our family – my older brother – but he abstained from bringing his fishing tackle along to avoid becoming preoccupied with fishing.
That turned out to be a great choice because he joined us on our hiking, caving, waterfall swimming and an eye-opening stopover at an Orang Asli hamlet.
On our houseboat were three boatmen-cum-guides who took us on those side trips.
The hiking trip was a delight and so easy that the kids in our clan thoroughly enjoyed it.
It was only a 1km climb with a 300m elevation and at the top of the sparsely vegetated hill were craggy dull grey granite formations shaped by millions of years of rain.
The caving experience was wondrous for the kids.
Visitors stepping into an the aeons-old cave in an uninhabited island in Belum rainforest.
Temenggor Lake has about 100 small islands and to one, our guides took us by boat to enter the cave. There were no beaches on this island, so the boats simply unloaded us alongside a sheer rock face which we had to scale to enter the island.
Yet it was an easy hike and a rare treat for children to enter an aeons-old cave full of bats flitting about.
The visit to a hamlet of six large huts belonging to Orang Asli of the Jahai tribe was one I will not soon forget.
From the moment our boats landed by the lakeside where the huts were, I knew it was a raw experience because there was no welcoming reception, no kids rushing to us to sell things like what I experienced elsewhere in commercialised tourist destinations.
Neither did our guides usher us into the hamlet with any kind of introduction. They led us in and left us to wander around the huts made with bamboo and zinc sheets.
Lazy day on board a houseboat. To the right is the skippers controls.
The older children of the Jahai were swimming or fishing and did not come near us. They only stole curious glances at us.
All the men of this hunter-gatherer tribe were not home; I believe they were out in the jungle hunting and looking for resources.
The six or seven women of the tribe were seated on a bamboo platform with their young kids and despite all our attempts to greet and interact with them, all we got were half smiles. They did not appear to speak Bahasa Malaysia.
They were incredibly shy about being photographed, but we strove to get a few to pose for pictures with us.
My friend gave them a bag of used clothing and shoes; they just sat there neither refusing nor accepting, so we left the bag on their bamboo platform.
Entering a hamlet of the Jahai orang asli tribe at the side of Temenggor Lake at Belum rainforest.
The Jahai tribe is of the Negrito subgroup. They have super curly hair, a dark complexion and Asiatic facial features.
It occurred to me that theirs could be a patriarchal society, so when their men were not around, the women took no action.
If ever I get the chance to visit them again, I feel that better gift choices could be foodstuff and items useful for their children, though even that could be a challenge because I would not want to give them canned food with high sodium content that would disrupt their dietary practices.
It was heartening to see so many Jahai children running about. It tells us that this community is flourishing, maintaining their rugged way of life while allowing people from other cultures to step into their hamlet.
And more importantly, for me, was how wonderful the trip had been for the children of my own clan.
There was no Internet connection, so we were freed of the shackles of social media and spent so much time interacting with each other.
We played cards and all sorts of games with the kids when the sun went down.
The only thing we missed were the cloudless nights; it rained every night when we were there, so I did not have the chance to lie on the open deck with my nieces and nephews to stare at the night sky and find falling stars.
There is no light pollution in Belum’s night sky. The nearest town is over 40km away.
So if you go to Belum and you are blessed with a cloudless, moonless night, lie on the open deck of your houseboat and count the falling stars.
