welcome to the jungle

Malaysia boasts some of the most spectacular rainforests in the world, and remarkably, some of it lies not far outside of KL. In fact, even right from inside the city, you can see deep green forest-covered moutains brushing up against the sky. In between visiting metal stores and rocking out at hardcore shows, Maya and I went to FRIM (Forest Research Institute Malaysia), a scientific jungle-study center that was only recently opened to tourists and which is still off the beaten track (though I can't imagine that this will remain the case for long). There we tackled the "canopy walk," a precarious 600-foot-long rope-and-wooden-plank trail hanging from the trees some 90 feet above the ground, right in the midst of the jungle canopy, where it's used by researchers. The walk was ridiculously bouncy and the structure seemed ready to snap apart at any second, and the views were amazing - we saw families of monkeys leaping from tree top to tree top, and, through occasional breaks in the tangled foliage, we saw the KL skyline, with its famous Petronas Towers, in the distance. Indeed, civilization as we know it seemed fantastically far away.