I Bought the T-Shirt

I still have the T-shirt.

All these years later, it lives in that particular part of my wardrobe reserved for clothes I absolutely still wear, but would probably no longer wear outside the house.

It is old.

It has been washed hundreds of times.

It is not particularly beautiful.

But it says Mutiara Taman Negara National Park Resort, Pahang, Malaysia on it, with “The Oldest Rainforest in the World” printed above the trees.

Once upon a time, I bought it from a tiny wooden kiosk on the edge of Taman Negara.

And I was unbelievably proud of it.

I was backpacking around Malaysia in 2009, when I was twenty-five, and had decided I was going to Taman Negara.

Getting there was an adventure in itself.

I started ridiculously early in Kuala Lumpur, making my way to Titiwangsa and then towards the old Pekeliling bus station, where I caught a bus towards Jerantut.

From there, the journey continued towards Kuala Tembeling and Kuala Tahan, the village at the entrance to Taman Negara.

There were buses and boats and bags and waiting around.

Proper backpacking.

At some point during all this travelling, I found myself sitting at a bus stop with a bag of crisps.

Nearby was a little girl who could not have been more than about four years old, standing with her dad.

I offered her some.

She stared at me.

Absolutely enormous eyes.

Then she looked at her dad as though I had just presented her with some highly suspicious British contraband.

He smiled.

“Terima kasih. Terima kasih.”

She tentatively took some crisps.

Wanting desperately to demonstrate my extensive command of the Malay language, which consisted of approximately two words, I said something like:

“Terima kasihlah.”

She giggled.

Her dad laughed.

I have absolutely no idea what I had just said to her.

But apparently it was funny.

There were also two men around my age waiting nearby, so having now appointed myself official distributor of crisps at the bus stop, I offered them some too.

They were Australian.

And, as I remember it, really quite good-looking.

Twenty-five-year-old me definitely noticed this.

We started talking.

Then discovered we were all going to the same place.

“Oh my God, you’re going to the rainforest?”

“Yeah.”

“So are we.”

And that was basically that.

Within hours, these two complete strangers and I had become a tiny travelling unit.

We talked the entire journey.

Where we had been.

Where we were going.

What we had seen.

What we wanted to see.

Eventually we arrived and started looking through our guidebooks trying to work out where we were going to sleep.

This was before your phone could instantly produce a map, seven hundred reviews, photographs of every room and a button saying BOOK NOW.

You just arrived somewhere.

And hoped.

We started walking.

And walking.

And walking.

Up a fairly substantial hill carrying our backpacks.

The first place we tried was full.

No room at the inn.

So we kept going until we found another guesthouse further up the road.

The main building itself was actually quite lovely in a scruffy backpacker sort of way.

Colourful.

Surrounded by trees.

And with one of the best signs I have ever seen hanging near the entrance:

PUT OFF YOUR SHOES.

Which I thought was brilliant.

But we were not staying in the main building.

We were shown to a tiny shack off to the side.

And the shack was something else.

Over the years, backpacking has provided me with some fairly questionable accommodation, but this was right up there.

Inside were three metal bunk beds, all slightly different, all painted and repainted over the years in various colours, and all looking as though one enthusiastic turn in the night might bring the whole structure down.

The mattresses had experienced things.

Many things.

I remember lying down on one of the beds and looking at the wall beside me.

There were geckos.

About three of them.

Just casually scuttling around the inside of the cabin as though they were the actual residents and we were the ones who had arrived uninvited.

I lay there watching them disappear across the walls and thinking:

Right. So this is the places we sleep now.

Fortunately, the Australians turned out to be complete gentlemen.

That first evening, we settled into our tiny shack.

We played cards.

We talked.

We laughed.

And there is something very backpacking about that.

You can meet two complete strangers at a bus stop in the morning and by nightfall be sitting in a questionable little cabin in the Malaysian rainforest playing cards as though you have known one another for years.

At some point, I went to freshen up.

The bathroom situation was fairly economical with space.

There was essentially a squat toilet in the floor and the shower above it.

You showered where you weed.

You showered where you pooed.

There wasn’t a great deal of ceremony about any of it.

The Australians were also appalled by my showering technique.

Apparently Australians took four-minute showers.

FOUR MINUTES.

I discovered this after being interrogated about how long I had spent in there.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m having a shower.”

“You’ve been ages.”

“I washed my hair.”

They explained water shortages to me.

I explained that I was a woman with long hair.

Neither side left particularly persuaded by the other’s argument.

Eventually we went to bed.

Me.

Two Australian men I had met that morning.

Several geckos.

And one very questionable shack.

Excellent.

The next morning, we went looking for breakfast.

Down by the river were little boats and floating places to eat.

We sat there with pancakes and beautiful rice dishes, paying what felt like pennies in ringgit.

Children would bring food over and we would play and laugh with them while we waited.

The river itself was not some crystal-clear travel-brochure river.

It was brown.

Murky.

Fast-moving.

Children played in it.

Boats travelled up and down.

Life happened around it.

And it was marvellous.

Just completely, utterly marvellous.

After breakfast, we crossed the river.

And then we went into the rainforest.

Even now, all these years later, I can remember the sound.

There were noises I had never heard before.

Birds.

Insects.

Things somewhere inside the vegetation that I could not identify.

Leaves moving.

Water.

Life.

All layered on top of one another.

It was almost like hearing the slow heartbeat of the rainforest.

The trees were enormous.

Their roots twisted across the ground like sculptures.

Everything was wet and green and growing on something else.

There was so much to look at that my brain could not process it quickly enough.

I wanted to stop.

Constantly.

I wanted to look upwards.

I wanted to touch things.

I wanted to breathe it in.

I wanted to understand where the sounds were coming from.

I wanted to stand underneath that canopy and let the fact sink in:

I am in a rainforest.

The lads, however, were walkers.

Proper walkers.

They were both around six feet tall.

I am five-foot-one on a generous day.

Their single stride was about four of mine.

So while they were striding through Taman Negara with the efficiency of two migrating wildebeest, I was somewhere behind going:

“Wait. LOOK AT THIS TREE.”

They wanted distance.

They wanted to trek.

They wanted to reach the next point.

I wanted to experience where we already were.

And I knew I was slowing them down.

But they never left me.

They stayed with me, waited for me and made sure I was safe.

We climbed.

And climbed.

There were steps.

Roots.

Wet ground.

Slippery patches.

And leeches.

I had forgotten the leeches.

Things occasionally attached themselves to us and had to be removed, which rather interrupts any attempt at being spiritually transformed by nature.

Still.

It was magnificent.

Eventually we reached a clearing.

And everything opened.

There was rock beneath us and rainforest stretching out ahead.

Canopy.

Canopy.

Canopy.

Green as far as I could see.

And that sound.

That enormous living sound.

I remember standing there and thinking how completely insane my life was at that particular moment.

I was in one of the oldest tropical rainforests in the world with two Australian men I had met over a bag of crisps the day before.

And I wanted to stand there forever.

The lads wanted to press on and achieve the walk.

I wanted to absorb it and feel it.

Neither was wrong.

We were just moving through the same place in completely different ways.

By the time we came back down, I knew they had wanted to travel further than we had managed.

There were little comments.

Little niggles.

Nothing terrible, but enough for me to understand.

So I said:

“Tomorrow, don’t wait for me.”

They protested.

But I knew.

“Go and do your big trek. I’ll find something else.”

I had absolutely no idea that “something else” was about to involve a straw hat, a blowpipe, torrential rain and several hundred bats.

The next morning, the Australians went off to do their proper trek.

And I wandered down towards the little kiosk near the entrance to Taman Negara to find out what else I could do.

This was when I bought the T-shirt.

Obviously.

I had come all the way to the Malaysian rainforest.

Of course I was buying the T-shirt.

I also bought a straw hat.

There was something about it that reminded me of a hat I had had as a child when Mum and Dad took us to Universal Studios.

We had all got sunglasses and hats, and this one triggered some tiny buried memory of that.

So I bought that too.

A Taman Negara T-shirt.

A straw hat.

Fully equipped.

Except, as it would shortly become apparent, for almost everything I actually needed.

I looked through the excursions.

There was a trip visiting a local Indigenous community.

There would be trekking.

And caves.

Caves?

I could go caving?

In the rainforest?

Me?

Absolutely.

Sign me up.

There were only about six or seven of us.

Most were older than me and from different parts of the world.

We travelled by boat and then trekked through the rainforest until we reached a clearing where members of the community showed us some of the ways they traditionally lived and hunted.

One of the things we were shown was a long bamboo blowpipe.

We learnt how the darts were made and how they could be blown through the pipe to hunt food in the forest.

Then we got to try.

One by one, people attempted to hit the target.

Miss.

Miss.

Miss.

Then it was my turn.

I picked the thing up.

It was much heavier than I had imagined.

And I remember thinking:

I’m asthmatic.

How the hell am I going to have enough puff to do this?

I put the dart in.

Raised the blowpipe.

Blew.

And somehow—

THWACK.

Straight into the target.

I HIT IT.

I was absolutely delighted with myself.

Possibly disproportionately delighted.

But I had just fired a dart through a blowpipe in the Malaysian rainforest and hit the bloody target.

This was an excellent day.

Then the rain started.

Proper rainforest rain.

I had not brought waterproofs.

Obviously.

I had not brought a waterproof bag.

Obviously.

I was wearing shorts.

Walking shoes.

And a white T-shirt.

With a black bra underneath.

Excellent jungle attire.

We trekked deeper into the forest.

The ground became mud.

Water ran through the trail.

There were points where we were slipping down slopes, grabbing trees and holding onto one another.

It rained and rained and rained.

My clothes were soaked.

My bag was soaked.

Everything inside my bag was soaked.

The walking shoes I was wearing were possibly the best walking shoes I have ever owned, and I have never found another pair like them.

The rainforest destroyed them.

They remained wet for about three days afterwards.

Eventually, after travelling by boat and trekking what felt like miles through the rain, we reached it.

A tiny opening.

The cave.

We went inside.

And it was incredible.

At one point, somewhere inside the cave, I looked to the side of me and saw what appeared to be the largest frog ever created.

I genuinely thought it was fake.

Someone has put that there.

That is a joke frog.

It was enormous.

The size of a full sourdough bloomer.

Just sitting there.

Silent.

Watching us.

Then its head moved.

Oh.

That’s real.

We continued deeper.

There was water inside the cave, so parts of it involved wading.

By this point the concept of keeping anything dry had been abandoned entirely.

My T-shirt was soaked.

My shorts were soaked.

My beautiful walking shoes were soaked.

My bag was soaked.

I carried my camera carefully because that was what mattered.

There was no mobile phone.

I did not travel with one then.

Imagine that.

Just me.

A camera.

A sodden bag.

And several tonnes of bat shit.

Because that is what we were wading through.

At some point I remember looking around and thinking:

This is the craziest shit I’ve ever done.

Then our guide started making noise.

Clapping.

Calling.

I did not know what he was doing.

And suddenly the cave exploded.

Bats.

Hundreds of them.

They seemed to appear from nowhere.

They swooped down around us while everyone screamed, which presumably did absolutely nothing to improve the situation.

They came so close that I could feel the air moving across my face from their wings.

And they skimmed the brim of the stupid straw hat I had bought that morning.

The hat.

My ridiculous tourist hat.

Suddenly invaluable protective rainforest equipment.

Everyone was shrieking.

The bats were swooping.

I could feel their wings beating the air around my head.

And I was completely exhilarated.

It was surreal.

Beautiful.

Slightly terrifying.

Completely alive.

Eventually we crawled and waded our way back out into daylight.

I emerged absolutely destroyed.

Mud on my face.

Mud on my legs.

Mud everywhere.

My white T-shirt had gone completely transparent, leaving my black bra triumphantly visible underneath.

My shoes were coated in sludge.

My hair was wet.

I looked feral.

And I was absolutely delighted.

We got back onto the boat.

Eventually we said goodbye.

I think I hugged our guide.

Then I started walking back up towards the shack.

And there, coming towards me, were the Australians.

They stopped.

They stared.

“Fran.”

They looked me up and down.

“What the HELL happened to you?”

I stood there covered head to toe in mud.

“I went caving.”

Their faces changed.

“What?”

“I went caving.”

“In the rainforest?”

“Yeah! I’ve been in the caves. We were wading through water and bat shit and there were hundreds of bats and—”

They were not delighted for me.

They were annoyed.

Really annoyed.

And I could not understand it.

One of them eventually said something along the lines of:

“You were so whingy yesterday.”

“I wasn’t whinging.”

“You couldn’t keep up.”

“Well, no. You’ve got legs about nine feet long.”

“But you’ve had your trek,” I said. “Did you not have a good day?”

“Well, clearly not as much as you.”

And suddenly I found myself feeling as though I needed to apologise for having had an incredible time.

It was bizarre.

I will never really know what was actually going on for them that day.

But I do remember thinking:

You have known me for two days.

You decided I was not adventurous because I could not walk as fast as you.

Those are not the same thing.

I did not want to race through the rainforest.

I wanted to hear it.

I wanted to look at it.

I wanted to stop underneath enormous trees and stare at their roots.

And apparently I also wanted to crawl through a cave full of bat shit.

Humans contain multitudes.

That evening things were awkward.

One of the lads barely spoke to me.

And when it was time for me to leave Taman Negara, I wrote my details down on a piece of paper.

Facebook was becoming a thing.

I handed it over.

Something along the lines of:

“I know you’re upset with me, but if you want to keep in touch, here are my details.”

And then I left.

I never got a friend request from the rainforest.

I did, however, keep the T-shirt.

I wore it throughout the rest of Malaysia.

Other backpackers took the piss out of me for that too.

They could not believe I had bought official Taman Negara merchandise.

“Oh my God. You haven’t bought the T-shirt?”

Absolutely I had.

Of course I bought the fucking T-shirt.

I had been to the rainforest.

I had heard it.

I had stood above its canopy.

I had pulled leeches from myself.

I had slept in a shack with two strangers and three geckos scuttling across the walls.

I had eaten pancakes beside a brown river.

I had fired a dart through a blowpipe and hit the target.

I had seen a frog the size of a loaf of bread.

I had waded through a flooded cave full of bat shit.

I had had hundreds of bats swoop around my head.

I had destroyed a perfectly good pair of walking shoes.

And I had walked back through Kuala Tahan in a transparent white T-shirt with my black bra on full display looking as though the jungle had chewed me up and spat me back out.

Absolutely I bought the T-shirt.

And all these years later, I still have it.

I still wear it around the house.

It is just an old piece of cotton now.

But sometimes objects become containers.

They hold versions of us that no longer exist anywhere else.

That T-shirt holds her.

The woman I was then.

Twenty-five.

Backpack on.

No mobile phone.

No waterproofs.

No idea who she was going to meet at the next bus stop.

Completely underprepared.

Completely game.

And now I tell Hallie and Nell that one day I am taking them.

I really mean it.

I want to take my girls to the rainforest.

I want to cross that river with them.

I want them to hear those sounds underneath the canopy.

I want them to stand somewhere unimaginably old and realise that the world is enormous and strange and alive.

And I really, really want to take them caving.

Maybe we will get soaked.

Maybe we will get covered in mud.

Maybe there will be bats.

Maybe there will be geckos on the walls of whatever questionable place we end up sleeping in.

Maybe they will wonder what on earth their mother has signed them up for.

And afterwards?

We are buying the T-shirts.

Because I am absolutely that kind of backpacker.