words from the world

At the far northeast of Malaysia, close to the Thai border, my watch gives 6h AM. The sky is still dark when I get on the jungle train. A scenic railway which goes through and gives life to the interior of the country. A handful of villages and farms are the meagre signs of the human presence in the middle of the dense vegetation which borders the route. In the beginning of the afternoon, I get off the train in the village of Jerantut before catching a bus heading for the Taman Negara national park. A genuine jungle, older than the Amazon or the forests of the Congo, which shows an age of 130 millions years. It withstood the successive deluges, geological variations, volcanic activities and for a long time I hope the human appetite for deforestation.
A number of marked-out trails go into the forest. One of them leads to a series of swinging bridges above the canopy. Another one goes alongside the river in the middle of the inextricable vegetation. A range of plants occupy the low layers of the jungle while long trees point at the sky to catch the sun rays. En route, a myriad of insects creep on the ground. more-than-2-centimeter-long titanic ants frenetically walk on the scenic trail. My foot hesitates when it meets a 15-centimeter-long scorpion. But my most appalling encounter will happen when I will lift my tee-shirt noting a dozen of leeches kindly invited themselves on my belly and my legs. It's not painful but they remain hanged until trebling or quadrupling their volume, force-feeding themselves with blood. To make easier their pumping work, they inject an anticoagulant which puts off the healing of the injury. I will wait for several hours before seeing my tiny wounds close up. Jungle hazards.
The next day, I leave the jungle by boat for a relaxing ride on one of the river muddy waters of the park. Back to the civilized world.