Weekly Travel Feature

Exploring the Jungles of Asia

Prepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International

We hear about the deep, brooding jungles of Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia where wild elephants and tigers come down to drink side by side along the riverbanks. And then in the same breath we hear about the devastating encroachment of the jungles, that the habitat of the wildlife is rapidly disappearing.

Somewhere between the two lies the truth. Wild elephants and tigers, and various other wild animals, still exist and, if we wish, we can go and search them in the wild. And it’s also true, the jungles are disappearing.

But first, what is this mysterious jungle anyway ?

Scientists call the tropical rain forests of Southeast Asia the “Oriental Jungle.” What comes as a surprise to many is that it is the largest jungle on this planet. It begins at the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh and extends for nearly 4500 statute miles (7300 km.) eastward. It spreads over all of Southeast Asia and includes the forests of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and the Malay Peninsula, and all the off shore islands like Phuket and Koh Samui. It reaches the Philippines and covers all of the Indonesian islands and as far as New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Much of the forests of New Guinea, the southern islands of the Philippines and the central plateau of the Malay Peninsula, which includes parts of southern Thailand, are the least spoiled, although encroachment is inevitable and on its way.

The Oriental Jungles of the Malay Peninsula (the Thai/Malay rain forest) are the oldest in the world, so old they make the tropical rain forests of Africa and South America seem adolescent by comparison. While creeping ice fronts were swelling and shrinking across the northern hemisphere, the jungle here slept through an estimated 130 million years of uninterrupted slumber. And while far-reaching climatic changes were affecting the rest of the globe, and the animal species there were forced into new evolutionary channels, the jungle wild life was left undisturbed and developed into unique species.

The process of evolution is slow and mysterious. Given enough time, and under the right conditions, anything can happen. In the upper foliage of the jungle trees, where branches are densely thick and interlaced, there live bizarre specimens. Frogs and lizards which have grown leathery membranes that pass for wings, fly from tree to tree. Most striking of these is the flying lemur, on earth for about 70 million years; it dwells only in the Oriental Jungles.

There are also tree snakes living in matted vegetation 150 feet above ground. These reptiles developed over centuries of existence without ever coming down to earth, while their nearest relatives elsewhere in the world are the common burrowing kind that have never climbed above ground.

The Oriental Jungle’s profusion of rare wildlife has stimulated trade in luxuries which has thrived for more than a millennium. Before the days of Kubla Khan, Chinese merchants journeyed to Borneo in quest of exotic medicines like bezoar stones, extracted from the stomach of monkeys, or rhinoceros horns, used to make cups which could detect poison. Powdered rhino horn is still an expensive ingredient in the Chinese apothecary, just as birds’ nests, fetched from gigantic caves in East Malaysia and the off-shore islands along Thailand’s west coast, are to Chinese chefs.

Clouded leopards, tigers, tapirs, elephants, deer, wild pigs and porcupine still roam the isolated hinterland of the Oriental Jungle. But big game is most elusive. Due to the density of the undergrowth, animals, other than monkeys and gibbons, are frequently heard but seldom seen. Years of callous butchery at the hand of profiteering hunters have depleted the ranks of some beasts. The one-horned rhino, which Marco Polo mistook for the mythical unicorn, has all but vanished from Malaysia's jungles and is on the verge of extinction. The Orangutans, the famous “wild man" of Borneo, have been rounded up and placed in a special sanctuary in Sabah.

Many governments of Southeast Asia have set aside vast tracts of land as game reserves and strict hunting laws are enforced. Game departments have concluded that instead of shooting wild elephants that tear up garden patches in remote villages, elephants should be captured and relocated in protected park areas. Efforts are made to preserve other species as well.

Our understanding of the Oriental Jungle, or any jungle for that matter, is often misleading. When I saw the jungles in central Malaysia for the first time, while on a fishing trip on the Endau River, I seriously believed we could not leave the river and penetrate the thick green wall that faced us. Furthermore, none of us thought of doing so anyway, for it had to be the same tangled mass of vegetation in the interior as we saw along the river. It wasn’t until subsequent trips, when I befriended Malaysia’s chief game warden and was invited to join him and his rangers on a couple of expeditions, that I learned how wrong I had been.

To understand the jungle, I first have to debunk the myth most people have about jungles. The existence of these tropical forests have been known for hundreds of years, but only a very few people have actually entered them. It’s a fact. Men have passed around them and floated through them on rivers. Primitive tribes and civilized peoples live on the edges but only a few know what it is like inside, just as I had been misled by my first time on the Endau River.

Most adventurers and explorers, including noted British hunters, were not out to study the rain forests but only to make use of them for their own purposes. The name these people generally applied to the forest was “jungle.” Scientists consider the word as meaningless as 'dinosaur,’ adopted by the French to mean any and all large fossil reptiles thought to be extinct.

Our concept of “jungle” was further hampered by literary men like Edgar Rice Burroughs and, to a greater extent, Rudyard Kipling. Kipling’s intent was simply to give the tropical rain forest the sound of romance. In his jungles, he placed not only animals and plants he had not seen but others of which he had only heard whether or not they were even typical of jungles. Kipling's jungles were a never-never land which was so vividly described that readers took it for the real thing. Burroughs was a little more realistic.

The world's ready acceptance of the Kipling concept of a jungle is quite understandable. Until recently virtually no genuinely scientific studies had been made of the interior of these closed canopy tropical forests.

Perhaps the reason jungles have been ignored for so long was that man supposed the inside must be an extension of what they could see from the outside. If you look at a jungle from a river, all you will see is a solid green wall of dense vegetation cascading down to the ground from the tops of trees. This is only a wall.

Then there is the “law of the jungle,” widely held to be nothing more than a ruthless competition for survival, a kill or be killed situation. People think of jungle law when they refer to a particularly bitter fight without pity or scruple. 

Such competition does exist, but it is not the only rule by which jungle vegetation
must grow.  There is an interdependence, a mutual aid, and without it the forest could not exist. The jungle plant fights not for itself alone but for the general welfare.

And there are the jungle people who live in the rain forests of the Oriental Jungle, some tribes that shun civilization; but that’s another story for another time. For those who are interested, I go into detail about the jungle and the people who inhabit it in my latest book Return to Adventure Southeast Asia.

For jungle trips check with Royal Orchid Holidays for their special programmes.  Here are a few examples: ROHA 27, offers an elephant trek into the jungle; ROHA 29 Khoa Sok, a jungle safari; ROHA 37 Khao Lak National Park; ROHA 14 Trekking & Rafting in Wildlife Sanctuary and many more. 

Next week I will tell readers more about jungle lore, and this time it will be about Tarzan of the Apes—but not in the jungles. This time it’s Tarzan in Paris. It’s true, Tarzan in Paris.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Q. Dear Mr. Stephens, Thank you very much for answering my question a while back about how the Chao Phraya got its other name, River of Kings.  It was very, very informative. I hope you don't mind but here is another question for you. Why are some of the images of the Buddha swathed with a saffron colored textile while others are not?  It was the same with the chedis. Again, thank you for your help. Sincerely, Marlyn from the Philippines

A. Dear Marlyn,
I could reply to your question by saying with the hundreds of thousands of Buddha imagines around Thailand there is not enough cloth in all the land to cover them all. But, that’s not the reason. Robes placed on images of Buddha are donated by devotees who are seeking merit, asking for blessings or want to give thanks. The devotee selects the image he or she wants robed and gives a donation for purchasing the cloth to the monks at that temple.  Usually chedis are robed by families who are descendants. I hope this answers your question.  —HS


Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited.