The Return Trip

Full trip map!

From Nusa Ceningan to our home in Denver, the return trip was a long and surreal journey through several different snapshots of the global pandemic. The first step was to get back to mainland Bali. Our hotel manager and his friend gave us a ride across the yellow bridge on the back of a scooter. From there, we caught a truck back out to the beach, where another speedboat took us the half hour back to Sanur. We still had a couple hours to kill before we needed to be at the airport, so we walked along the nearly empty beachfront looking for more trinkets to buy, but there wasn't anything of interest. So we just plunked down at a little restaurant by the beach, had a couple drinks, and bemoaned the situation with our waiter before getting a cab to the airport.

The airport was absolutely slammed. The line at the Singapore Airlines check-in counter extended well beyond the stanchions, wrapping almost all the way out of the terminal. Listening to people's conversations, we realized that many (even most) of them didn't have any tickets at all, and they had just showed up at the airport, desperate to pay whatever it took to get the soonest flight out of Bali. Someone told us that all flights for the next three days were completely booked. Fortunately, we already had tickets, and we joined the much shorter and quicker bag drop queue for people who had checked in online, and we made it through passport control and security with plenty of time to spare.

Our flight departed at about 9:45PM, and we arrived in Singapore just past midnight. We had about a nine-hour layover in Singapore, and we'd been hoping to pass through immigration and catch a few hours' sleep at a hotel on the airport grounds. Starting at midnight that night (about 15 minutes before we arrived), however, Singapore began imposing a mandatory 14-day shelter-in-place order to everyone entering the country, regardless of nationality or travel history. Thus trapped, we joined what seemed like thousands of other people scattered throughout the enormous terminal, sprawled on chairs or benches or the carpeted floor. We sought out the best floor space in the terminal that we could find, curled up, and got a few hours of fitful sleep.

So we were pretty dazed by the time our flight took off the following morning, bound for Seattle. Even though it was only about 11:00AM, Chandler zonked out and slept for about 7 hours of the 14-hour flight, while Michelle just watched movies the whole time. Even though the flight was only about 70% full, there was a slight atmosphere of tension in the air, as well as a couple small children who were continuously coughing in a wet, mucousy way that had us slightly on edge.

Compared to Singapore, the Seattle airport was completely dead. In a huge about-face from what we'd seen all over Asia, even going back to late January, the US Customs and Immigrations officials seemed to basically harbor no concern whatsoever about the virus. There were no temperature checks at all, our travel history was noted only very briefly, and the long health declaration forms we had filled out in Singapore before departing were completely ignored by everyone. This was all a little bit disconcerting, since we had been reading about all the shelter-in-place and self-quarantine measures being imposed on local and state levels.

In the terminal itself, we could see people making a halfhearted effort to practice a little social distancing, but it hardly mattered since the terminal was so empty anyways. We ate some delicious sandwiches (that were very expensive by our recent standards) and waited the couple hours til our flight left. This last plane was only about 20% full, and the vibe from the airline was nothing but effusive gratitude that we were there at all. We landed in chilly weather in Denver at about 4:00PM on the 21st, 10 days earlier than our original plan and 4 days before our first amended plan. On our way home from the airport, we chatted with our Uber driver, who said that even though demand for Ubers was way down, so was the supply of drivers, so he was still making out okay. Plus, everyone's ordering Uber Eats now, so that was a big plus.

We had agreed ahead of time with our roommate Craig that he would stay at his girlfriend's place while we self-quarantined for two weeks, so we came home to a very clean but sadly empty house. Since then, we've been spending our time catching up on small projects, watching movies, and going for walks, all the while reflecting on our amazing two and a half months in Asia, the weirdness with which it abruptly came to an end, and the strange new world to which we've returned.

Much love to everyone. Stay safe & thanks for reading.

Michelle & Chandler

Last beer in Asia (for now)

Nice souvenir from the Indonesian government

Madness at the Denpasar airport

Changi Airport, Singapore, 1:02AM

Home sweet home

Nusa Ceningan

From Munduk, the final planned stop on the trip was Nusa Ceningan, one of the three "Nusa" islands off the southeast coast of Bali. This was going to be our "vacation within the vacation," and we had booked four nights at a little hotel right on the water, looking forward to relaxing, exploring the little islands, and doing some scuba diving.

It took just over two hours to drive from Munduk in the mountains back down to Sanur, a beach-resort town on the eastern side of the little peninsula sticking out from the south side of Bali. From there, we took a speedboat about 45 minutes to Nusa Lembongan, the most developed and populous of the Nusas (Nusae?). The ride over was incredibly choppy, and our bodies bounced up and down as the tip of the boat crashed into wave after wave. At the beach, we met up with a kind of pickup truck with benches, which took us to the narrow yellow bridge, which connects Nusa Lembongan to Nusa Ceningan, which is significantly smaller and much less populous. (The third island, Nusa Penida, is by far the largest and least populated of the three and is only accessible by about a half-hour boat trip from Nusa Lembongan.)

Our little hotel was situated on the lagoon between Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan, a very shallow but beautifully turquoise body of water that was much prettier than it was a functional swimming spot. But our hotel had a little pool and a small lounge area where we spent the remainder of the day, nearly the only guests at the place, swimming in the pool, having a couple of drinks, reflecting on our trip so far, and chatting with the manager about the tourist business and the burgeoning global pandemic.

The following morning, we rented a scooter from our hotel and set out to explore Lembongan and Ceningan. We had no real objective other than to tool around, maybe buy a few souvenirs, and book a diving trip for the following day with one of the innumerable dive shops on the islands. We started off heading south along the edge of the lagoon before curving up and over the hills to the far side of Nusa Ceningan. This side is even much less developed than the side facing Lembongan, and we found some pretty amazing views, including a craggy cliff from which we could watch the turquoise water crash dramatically into the rocks below. A little ways offshore, we could see a pod of dolphins playing around in the surf, mirroring the dolphins we saw way back in Laguna Beach on our first day out of Denver.

From this relatively isolated spot, it took about 45 minutes to get back over the yellow bridge and into the heart of Nusa Lembongan. We found a highly-rated and reasonably-priced dive shop where we booked a really cool-sounding dive for the following morning, then ate a delicious Balinese meal at a restaurant nearby. After lunch, we explored Lembongan a little bit, visiting a couple of very pretty but unswimmable beaches before finally heading back to our hotel in the mid afternoon. Once again, we hung out by the pool for a couple hours, relishing the beautiful evening and the feeling of not having to rush (a novelty at this point in our trip). That evening, we had a mediocre meal at a nearby restaurant. Forebodingly, we were the only diners, as had become the norm these previous few days.

When our alarm went off at 6:00 the following morning, we found a dramatically changed situation from the night before. The US State Department had issued a global Level 4 travel advisory and there were several anxious texts from our parents asking about trying to coordinate an earlier return to the States than we had planned. Under our existing itinerary at that time, we were scheduled to spend two more nights on Nusa Ceningan, one night near the airport in Denpasar, then fly from Denpasar to Bangkok, spending one night in Bangkok before flying back to Denver on March 24th.

While our existing flights had not yet been cancelled, more restrictions were going into effect every day, and we quickly realized that our best chance to make it back to the US was to leave as soon as possible. With substantial logistical and financial help from our folks, we got tickets for a flight leaving that night from Denpasar. The decision was made and finalized by about 7:00AM.

Because of the mandatory delay between diving and flying, this meant that we had to cancel our diving plans that day. But we still had several hours to kill before we needed to return to Bali proper to catch our flight. So we hopped back on the scooter and drove over to the north side of Ceningan, where we hadn't yet explored, looking for a coffee shop we had seen on Google Maps. After a very vertical climb up a pothole-ridden road, we found the coffee shop, perched high on a bluff overlooking a beautiful mangrove forest, beyond which you could see the impressively high hills, and beautiful turquoise-water beaches of Nusa Penida. Despite all appearances of being open, including music blaring from the speakers, there was absolutely nobody around at the restaurant. We waited about 15 minutes for someone to show up, then went on our way. A little further up the road (even steeper and more potholed), we found a somewhat fancy resort with an equally beautiful view where we ate a decent late breakfast, talked with our roommate back in Denver, and sort of tried to process the speed with which our plans had changed.

From there, we went back over to Lembongan to do a little souvenir shopping. Whether it was because of the new travel advisory or just because we were now more attuned to it, the whole island felt completely deserted. Very few shops and restaurants were even open, and all the locals we interacted with bemoaned the lack of people and wondered how they were going to survive economically with no tourists. We did what we could, purchasing a variety of little trinkets and knickknacks from the shops that were open, until we had to head back to our hotel, organize our things, and make the trip back to the main island.

Next up: The Return Trip

View from the hotel

Beach views, Nusa Ceningan

Sunset over the lagoon

More scooting around

Mangroves on Lembongan with Mt. Agung in the background

Views of Nusa Penida

Dead empty streets

Amazing statues, tho!

A proliferation of temples

Munduk

When we landed in Bali, there was a pretty good flood of tourists queueing to get through immigration, and it took substantially longer than any entrance we'd had so far. It was already kind of late, and we had one night booked at a cheap resorty hotel in Sanur, about half an hour from the airport. We ate an actually quite bad meal at an overpriced tourist restaurant before calling it a night.

The next morning, Michelle had signed up for an aerial circus open gym at a place nearby. She got to warm up with the group, do some strength training, and play around on the lyra for a while, leaving her incredibly sore afterwards. That afternoon, we caught a taxi from our hotel about two hours up into the mountains to a small town called Munduk, where we had booked three nights at a kind of glamping, yoga-retreat-y place a little ways outside of the town itself.

The drive up was absolutely stunning, and we passed through several incredibly cute villages filled with beautiful Balinese Hindu temples as well as tall decorative bamboo poles called penjor. At one point, we passed a procession of at least 100 people preparing for the celebrations surrounding the upcoming silent day, Nyepi, that marks the Balinese new year. As we climbed higher into the mountains, we were treated to some spectacular views with dramatic combinations of mountains, jungle, lakes, mist, fog, billowy clouds, and patchy sunshine. 

Our accommodation, Ekommunity Farmstay, turned out to be just as gorgeous as advertised. Tucked onto a steep hillside of lush jungle, it consisted of about half a dozen large tents scattered among beautifully landscaped paths and natural foliage. There was also a large roofed, open-sided space that served as reception, restaurant, and common area. Our tent was simple but quite comfortable and looked out across a steep-sided valley, often with tendrils of cloud drifting down it at about our eye level. 

We had planned on spending our three days doing a lot of chilling, so rather than try to squeeze in an activity that afternoon, we just decamped to the common area, ordered some food, and had a great evening playing cards, chatting, and watching the colors change around us with the sunset.

The following morning, we got a slow start. Michelle was incredibly sore from her aerial activities, and after lunch, we walked down to the bottom of the valley and did some stretching on a little purpose-built platform right by a small river. There was a trail running along the river that we had been told ran about 7 kilometers before reaching Munduk proper. It had been raining off and on, but we had waterproof bags for our phones and decided to try the hike.

Once again, everything was just as gorgeous as promised. Despite being pretty small, the stream transmuted every so often into gigantic waterfalls cascading some 50 feet or more. At over 3500 feet above sea level, the air temperature remained very pleasant through the whole day, but still warm enough that we didn't get too chilly after getting rain-drenched a couple times. Some of the trail overlapped with a network of narrow, paved roads that provided access to rural villages and little businesses along the route. At one point, we stopped at a small coffee shop to peruse the selection of little souvenirs, enjoy a hot beverage, and wait out a particularly long downpour. 

After hiking at a very leisurely pace for a few hours with frequent pauses to shelter from the rain, it was starting to get towards dusk. We didn't have a terrific map, just a photo of a hand-drawn one from one of the coffee shops we'd passed. Eventually, after a nearly thousand-foot descent, we reached the fourth and final waterfall on the map. It indicated that there was a trail just beyond this waterfall that led directly to the town. All we could find, however, was an overgrown and disused-looking path that didn't really resemble any of the trails we'd followed that day so far. But since the only other option was to turn and climb the thousand feet back the way we came, we decided to trust it. We switched back and forth up the side of the valley as the sun spectacularly set until we eventually arrived at a small road marked on Google Maps (just a single-lane paved track). It was now fully dark, but at least we knew we were on the right path. We followed this for another 20 minutes and made it to town, soaking wet from sweat and rain.

We had a nice meal at a restaurant overlooking the darkened valley on the opposite side of the ridge. Cacophonous music and singing floated up from an unseen temple off in the distance somewhere, and our waitress said that it was more preparations for the new year celebration. After our meal, we walked around a little until we found two guys who were willing to take us back up to our accommodation on their motorbikes.

The following morning, we rented a motorbike for ourselves, hoping to head in the opposite direction from town, where there was a spectacular ridge overlooking a couple of lakes. Once again, it was raining fitfully, but we only wanted to go about 15 minutes up the road, so we decided to set off anyways. We'd only been going for about 2 minutes when it started absolutely pouring. Within a minute, we were both soaking wet (phones were protected once again, though), and we pulled over to a little shelter to try to wait it out. 15 or 20 minutes went by, and we decided to abort our mission and turn back for a restaurant we had passed earlier. There was a very slight let-up in the intensity of the rain, and we made a break for it, scooting about five minutes back the way we came.

We arrived at the restaurant just drenched to the skin, and the people there kindly gave us towels to dry off with and even a blanket to keep warm. The food itself was so-so, but the meal was made much more interesting by the sweeping views as well as the ongoing torrential rain, the hardest we'd seen yet, just absolutely pounding down for over an hour. Finally, there was another small let-up, and we seized the opportunity to leap onto the scooter and very carefully drive the last five minutes to our place. We took a much-needed hot shower, did some emergency mopping-up where water had seeped into our tent, and parked ourselves in the common area for the rest of the evening.

Learning our lesson from the previous day, we set out on the scooter relatively early the following morning to try to avoid the afternoon showers. We drove along the ridge, enjoying the beautiful sunshine and views, before descending sharply to a medium-sized town located near one of the lakes. This town is home to the Ulun Danu Temple, a place of particular holiness for Balinese Hindus as well as a major tourist attraction. We paid our surprisingly steep admission and were actually a bit disappointed to find that the bulk of the area had been landscaped into treeless green grass and the temples themselves were small and off-limits to visitors. But also we were there in the glaring midday sun, and we've since read that the temples are most famous for their atmospheric sunrises and sunsets. We did still get some nice photos of some of the structures with the lake in the background, though. 

Before heading back to our lodgings, we had a bit of an adventure in finding an ATM that involved Chandler accidentally taking a one-way motorway to the next town over and having to wind through the hills to return, not to mention the two ATMs that didn't work at all, before we finally got enough cash out and scooted back, just beating the first of the afternoon rain. We had arranged for a driver to take us back down to the coast where we'd be catching a boat to Nusa Ceningan, our next (and, it turned out, final) stop.

View from our tent

Some nice statuary

Ekommunity common area

First amazing waterfall

Hiking in the rain

Another amazing waterfall

Fresh-roasted cacao beans

Yet another waterfall

Sunset views (just before our near-panic in the dark)

Just raining so hard

Ulun Danu

Singapore

Preface: We're back in the States now, safely self-quarantining after a turbulent and uncertain couple of weeks. Going to finish out the blog, though, partly in the interest of completeness and partly in the interest of escapism.

So anyways, we landed in Singapore on the afternoon of March 12th after just a one-hour flight from KL. We took a quick look at the Jewel complex in the airport--an incredibly lush indoor jungle-mall surrounding a huge cylindrical waterfall--before taking public transportation to our Airbnb, a little bit east of the center of the city.

After a delicious wonton soup dinner right next to our place, we took a bus and train about 40 minutes to Gardens by the Bay, a super iconic public park with large-scale nature-themed art installations. The sun had just set as we got there, and we had a really nice evening wandering around, commenting on the seamless integration of the natural and urban worlds, and enjoying the warm night air. We even caught that night's light show in the Supertree Grove, which was impressively arranged to a series of opera hits, culminating in the Nessun Dorma aria from Turandot.

The following morning, after having some kaya toast for breakfast, we walked around Kampong Glam, a historically Muslim neighborhood that now lives side-by-side with a plethora of cute shops, restaurants, and bars. This was our first time just wandering around a big city since Saigon, and we had a really nice, relaxed time checking out Singapore's multiculturalism, admiring the beautiful and functional urban design, and marveling at everyone's adherence to the collective social order.

That said, we were still at a bit of a loss for what to actually do, so we decided to go to the aquarium, which we had heard was really cool. The aquarium is located on Sentosa, a kind of super-resort island just south of the city itself. We took a weird monorail to get there (opting to pass up another expensive and terrifyingly high cable car ride), and found ourselves in a huge Disney-esque plaza of stores, hotels, branded experiences, and attractions (including a Universal Studios theme park). As we had seen several times on our trip so far, this was a space designed to accommodate thousands of people but which was nearly empty because of the virus.

The aquarium itself lived up to its reputation, and we spent a really fun couple hours walking around and looking at the various marine life exhibits on display, including a gigantic "open ocean" tank with three manta rays. There wasn't really anything else that we wanted to do on Sentosa, though, so we just went back to our Airbnb to rest a little. Michelle took a short nap while Chandler went out, grabbed a beer in a nearby expat-dominated area, and did a little work.

That night, we walked around Little India for a while and ate incredibly delicious meal of dosa with lentils. Besides some restaurants, however, there wasn't too much activity in that area, partly because of the virus and partly because the it's more active during the daytime anyways. So we just returned home and went to bed early.

We kicked off our last morning with another delicious Singapore classic, Hainanese chicken rice and duck rice, before heading out to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The gardens are actually a UNESCO World Heritage site and yet another example of Singapore's seamless integration of green space into the urban environment; we were super impressed at the mix of manicured nature and functional public park. We also visited the National Orchid Garden, which had orchids in an amazing array of colors and patterns. From there, we just went back to our Airbnb, gathered our things, and headed out to the airport to catch out flight to Bali.

Next up: Munduk

Gardens by the Bay

Kaya toast!

Haji Road, Kampong Glam

Just some casually awesome urban design

Singapore Aquarium

Delicious dosa

Orchids!

Taman Negara & Kuala Lumpur

From Penang, we took a bus about five hours south to Kuala Lumpur. We stayed just one night in a bit of a strange part of town, kind of like a single forgotten dead-end street of older low-rise apartments surrounded by brand-new high-rises and active construction sites, weirdly inaccessible to larger roads and without much going on. It served our purposes, though, which were mostly planning, resting, and eating some really good Malay food. Plus, we had a nice chat with an Indonesian guy at our hostel who was working as a freelance marketing consultant and was in KL on a short business trip.

The following morning, we got up early to head east towards Taman Negara, a giant national park (in fact, Taman Negara just means “national park” in Malay) in the center of the peninsula. We took a Grab about 25 minutes south to a large bus terminal, hoping to catch a bus to Jerantut, the jumping-off point for the park. Turns out, no buses run from that terminal to Jerantut (despite what we had read online), and we had to take another Grab 30 minutes back north to another bus terminal. We made it just in time for the 10:00AM bus, but it was completely full. So we killed a couple hours in an Indian food restaurant and had actually quite a good meal before catching a noon bus and finally getting on our way.

In Jerantut, our plan had been to catch a second local bus another hour north to Kuala Tahan, the tiny town that basically provides accommodation only for tourists to the national park. Once again, despite what the internet said, we learned that no buses were running that route anymore, so we had to splurge for a cab to make the hour-long trip.

Kuala Tahan consists of just a few streets with maybe two dozen guesthouses and restaurants scattered along the south bank of the Tembeling River. The park starts on the north bank and stretches north in a huge swath of completely undeveloped ancient jungle. Our first night, we just got our bearings, ate a mediocre dinner, and signed up for an overnight trek into the jungle departing the following morning. We organized our things and went to bed early.

After a quick breakfast the next morning, we were shepherded down to the riverfront where we met the other members of our tour: a 19-year old German girl on a gap year, a 25-year old Dutch guy on an extended solo trip, and two Italian women in their late 30s on what was supposed to be a 3-week vacation, but which was looking to also become basically indefinite because of the lockdown back home. Our guide was a youngish-looking Malay guy, Ajip, with excellent colloquial English and a bit of a world-weary vibe about him.

We crossed the river in a boat to get our entry permits and also to register every piece of plastic we were carrying with us into the jungle in an effort to hold everyone accountable for any possible littering. Before starting our hike proper, we made a quick stop at the Taman Negara canopy walk, which is one of the park’s main attractions. This consists of a series of seven rope bridges that span nearly a kilometer of total distance, rising as high as 40 meters above the forest floor. Although slightly terrifying, it was very cool nevertheless, not the least because we could chill and look around from the little platforms where the bridges were connected to the trees.

From there, we got back in the boat and churned about an hour and a half upstream to the trailhead where we finally started hiking. The first day, we trekked over 8km through the jungle, stopping a few times for short breaks. The trail itself was relatively clear, though it was surrounded by impenetrably dense jungle, and we could never see more than 10 or 15 meters at a time in any direction. Also, we had to frequently scramble around or beneath giant tree trunks that had fallen across the trail as well as watch out for the maze of roots crisscrossing the forest floor. Despite being in deep shade for pretty much the whole hike, it was very hot and very humid, and we were utterly drenched in sweat within minutes.

We were warned that seeing large mammals is extremely rare, so we didn’t really have any expectations of spotting an elephant or a tiger or even a tapir. We did see lots of signs of them along the trail, though: large piles of elephant poop, some elephant footprints, bear claw marks on some of the trees, and even a cat print that could have been a tiger or a leopard. At one of our stops, Ajip walked over to an enormous tree and gently pulled off a millipede that was over a foot long. Although a bit horrifying, they’re completely harmless and we all took turns holding it, feeling its little feet scurry over our skin.

Eventually, we made it to our campsite, an enormous cathedralic cave set into the side of a limestone mountain. A huge jungle-encrusted fissure in the rock allowed plenty of outside light into the cave, so it didn’t feel claustrophobic at all. We set up our sleeping pads on the floor, washed off in a nearby stream, ate a nice candle-lit dinner all together, and went to bed. Just after we had fallen asleep, we heard some scurrying, and sat up to find two porcupines rummaging through some of our leftover food. According to Ajip, once they find some food, there’s basically no way to chase them off, so we just watched them happily for a while before drifting back off to sleep.

The following morning, we woke up a bit achy from the hard ground and found our cave beautifully drenched in sunlight streaming through the opening in the rock. The second day’s hike felt a bit easier (perhaps just because our packs were lighter), and we covered the 5 kilometers to our lunch spot quite easily. We had lunch by a small river where we cooled off and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the jungle around us. Chandler also got bitten by a couple of leeches (which are super prolific and basically harmless, though, again, quite creepy) and donated a little literal blood back to the jungle.  

At the end of that day’s hike, we came to a small Orang Asli community (Orang Asli just means “original people” and refers to any number of indigenous groups in Malaysia). About 2000 Orang Asli people live in Taman Negara mostly as hunter-gatherers (supplemented with some purchased goods), and they’re the only people permitted to actually live in the national park. This particular community (only about 20 individuals) had decided to make a little extra income by interacting a bit with tourists, but most of the groups don’t want anything to do with the outside world at all.

We watched as one of the guys made a small fire using only wood-on-wood friction, which he used to heat a natural glue and assemble a small dart, which he then shot out of a blowpipe at a small stuffed animal about 20 feet away. Apparently, these blowpipes are actually how these people still hunt today, using poison-tipped darts to ensure that even a small hit will be fatal. We then each got a chance to shoot the blowpipe. Even though the whole demonstration was sort of arranged for the benefit of tourists, the people involved were definitely among those living full-time in the jungle, which gave the experience a bit of a flavor of authenticity, and it’s not often that you meet people living apart from the cash economy (at least in part).

From the little village (just a couple of shaded platforms, really), we hiked just 10 minutes back to the river where we hopped on a boat and sped about half an hour downstream back to Kuala Tahan. After a much-needed shower, the six of us who had been on the trip all had dinner together before retiring for the night.  

The following morning, we got a boat back down river to Jerantut, where we met up with a minivan that took us the remaining couple hours back to Kuala Lumpur. We had booked just one night in KL, but found ourselves in a very comfortable place (Ahyu Hotel) located right at the border of Little India and Chinatown. After sorting out some coronavirus-related travel adjustments, we had an amazing Indian food lunch at a place right next to our hotel and just chilled for the remainder of the evening. The next morning, we allowed ourselves a slow start, doing a little planning and eating a quick but delicious breakfast of plain roti with curry, before heading to the airport to catch our flight out of Malaysia.

Next up: Singapore

Canopy walkway

Starting our trek

Millipede!

Gotta be careful

Fungi!

Ajip, looking sagely in the cave

Our beautiful sleeping spot

More jungle

Malaysian green viper

More fungi (in elephant poop)!

Leech in C's back

Glad to have a break

The flora showing off

The finish line back at the Tembeling River

Kuala Tahan sunset