A day at FRIM

Reference.

http://www.frim.gov.my/

http://www.frim.gov.my/facilities_canopy.htm

http://www.virtualmalaysia.com/destination/forest%20research%20institute%20of%20malaysia%20(frim).html

The gang decided to have the monthly breakfast gathering from the normal ‘tame’ environment in town, mostly in urban restaurants (Indian mostly) or in hotels (air conditioning and all) to a ‘wild’ site. Breakfast gathering to be held in a forested area. But of course it’s a forest in an urban vicinity, but still a forest with all the characters of a forest, a tropical forest. It was FRIM where we all decided to go to. Planned for a jungle walk, and probably a visit to a tree top canopy walk. It was an ambitious plan indeed.

Come Sunday morning 25th Feb. 2007, we all gathered at FRIM, gathered is a misnomer really, many found their way to FRIM, but most lost their way in FRIM, searching for the Biz Café’ where we were all supposed to gather for breakfast before going on our adventure. Most made it by 10.00 o’clock,





but one of our members just lost his way in KL, and did not even make it to the gathering. He ended up having lunch at IKEA, almost 120 deg away on the opposite side of the KL City centre.

By about 10.30 am, the walk started, adults and children, all eager to explore the jungle. guided by a FRIM staff.



Started of with seeing the Big Fish, a South American species …. cannot remember what its called now. Then the walk into the jungle. Not really a jungle but into the area where trees and plants were especially planted but never harvested for the last 50 years or so. The path were quite clear really, unlike a real tropical jungle, and one can see many families and foreign tourist walking about leisurely, especially it was a Sunday morning then. It was more of a day outing, walking about in the ‘tame’ tropical jungle, among the valuable logs of the tropic.



Valuable because if loggers can get their hands to these logs they would be so happy, and probably can make their first million overnight. Many such eager people are in Malaysia today.

Wild or not, the gang learnt a thing or two. Now we saw what a Kapor tree looks like and how Jelutong tree can be of value. And the other timber trees, there were too many to be remembered especially by those who have no inclination towards forestry or the timber industry. The famous ‘tongkat ali’ tree was shown but it was just a small plant. Unlike the small tree that I have the picture of here. http://www.tongkatali.org/





I must confess that it was quite a dull walk, no wild animal sighted, no small crawling animals like jungle lizard, saw a few big ants and a few hungry land leeches (these are smaller than the fresh water leeches, they tend to wave their heads about and they move about by curving the bodies, but they do suck blood like other leeches in n the family). I must say that except for the female children, the male children were quite brave or even looked forward to finding these small leeches. Unfortunately one or two of the female children had leeches finding them, not enough to worry about anyway, and an adult never even realise he caught a leech until he saw blood at his trousers leg.

Most of the old folks return early after the walk in the ‘jungle’,



but many of the youngsters went on to climb the hill to the tree-top canopy walk and returned about 1 hours later to the gathering point at Biz Café. They all looked very pleased, they must have enjoyed themselves at the canopy walk. One old folks tried to climb to hill with these youngsters but did not go very far up when he realised that he could not make the climb. The FRIM guide had to guide him back.

As usual, after the lunch there was a Birthday celebration of all those members of the gang whose birthday falls during the month, in this case Feb. A combination of grandfather, grand mother and grandchildren born in Feb gathered to blow the candle and to cut the birthday cake.



The party broke up at about 2.00 pm, having enjoyed the company of all the members of the gang and their family, a pleasant and productive day trip, gathered new experience in a different mode, a non-city mode. Until the next breakfast gathering.



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