Belum Fishing Trip Part II - The Hunt

We set off from the Banding jetty around 9am and reached our first spot very soon. It was not more than 10 casts each before the boatman already wanted to change spot! Ok, guess we've really got ourselves a very hardworking boatman...

Rules stated that everyone had to wear a lifejacket.

We moved around the river and the different tributaries, stopping now and then to cast and always moving on with 10 minutes of no action. Pretty soon, an hour had passed and we caught had caught a grand total of.... zero fish.

Thinking of taking a rest anyway, we welcomed the boatman's suggestion that we take a short hike into the forest to see the Rafflesia flower. We had earlier asked the resort about their Rafflesia sighting tour, but was told that no flowers were in bloom. Hmm... did the boatman know better? 10 minutes later we arrived, and saw... Rafflesia buds. Haiz... I was rather curious about its supposedly disgusting smell...

This big 'cabbage' lookalike is the bud of the Rafflesia flower, it will bloom in approximately 8 to 9 days.

One of the highlights of this trip soon showed themselves... Leeches! Unknowingly, we had brought 4 leeches back with us to the boat... all engorged with our blood. The boatman helped us pull them off and the blood just kept flowing for more than 10 minutes after! Yikes!!!

The leech before it started sucking blood. We were too freaked out to take the 'after' photo!

So, when we requested that the boatman bring us to a waterfall for our lunch break, you can imagine it was with much trepidation that we made the half hour trek into the forest.

Note point number 2. We were definitely not worried, we were just absolutely disgusted...

We had our lunch by a lovely waterfall, with the sound of falling water and birdsong as accompaniment. It was almost perfect - if we didn't have to constantly worry about the leeches lunching on us!

Plenty Ikan Kelah could be seen in the water, but they were all babies less than 3 inches long.

One thing definitely worth mentioning is the fact that everyone seemed to be really environmentally conscious about their nature reserve. We did not see any rubbish floating in the river at all and the boatman conscientiously bagged all his rubbish - which he deposited later in a bin at the jetty!

We gladly brought all our rubbish out with us as there were no bins in the forest.

By the time we went back to the boat, it was already 1 pm. Half the day was gone and we had nothing to show for our efforts. Was this destined to be a wasted trip after all?

To be continued... :)