Visiting Taman Negara in Malaysia

Update 2024: I took this trip several years ago. Prices may have increased meanwhile, but I left them here anyway, because they will still give you an idea of what you can expect.

Taman Negara is one of the largest, most important, oldest and most popular national parks in Malaysia. The name itself simply means “national park” in Malay, but as a name, it only refers to this particular national park.

If you like nature, jungle trekking, rafting or simply spending time in a tranquil environment, Taman Negara is just for you. I recommend spending at least two days there, but you can also enjoy its beauty if you only have one day – you will most certainly have to spend the night there though. I opted for three nights and three days, but some people spend a week or more in the park.

Also see my gallery of tree roots and lianas in the park, and another one with general pictures from Taman Negara.

1. Getting there and away

Long story short:
1. Bus to Jerantut from wherever you are coming from. From KL, it takes 3 hours.
2. If you don’t make it to Jerantut before 3pm, spend the night in Jerantut, or use private transport to Kuala Tahan. You can also use the boat from outside Jerantut to Kuala Tahan.
3. Bus from Jerantut to Kuala Tahan: 1.5 hours. Two buses daily, 8 am and 3 pm. Tickets on the bus, no pre-booking.

1.1 Where is Taman Negara?

Taman Negara is in the state of Pahang, about 150 km to the north-east of Kuala Lumpur.

The entrance to Taman Negara with the park headquarters is in a tiny village called Kuala Tahan. The village is on one of the banks of the river Tembeling. You will have to register and buy an entrance ticket to the national park, which you can only do at this park entrance. Organised trips/hikes are available elsewhere, too, but individual visitors are required to enter here. This means that you will have to get to Kuala Tahan first.

There are a few options to get there, but most people will use the bus, which is the most straightforward way. However, there are no direct buses to the village from major cities, so you will first have to reach another town nearby, called Jerantut.

To Jerantut, there are buses from Kuala Lumpur and some other major cities nearby the national park, including from the Cameron Highlands. If you are further away or in other regions of Malaysia, I think the best way will be to first get to Kuala Lumpur, from where there are several buses a day. Check the exact schedule on either Redbus or Easybook.

I wanted to go from Penang to Taman Negara, and that was a little trickier. I could theoretically choose to go via the Cameron Highlands, but the timetable was terrible. It seems that there is one bus from the Cameron Highlands to Jerantut in the early morning, but of course I wouldn’t be able to get to the Highlands by 8 am from Penang. So the other option was to go via Kuala Lumpur, a rather big detour.

1.2 From Penang to Kuala Lumpur by bus

There are dozens of companies that do the Penang-KL route. I read some reviews, and was shocked to learn how unreliable and/or uncomfortable some of them may be. The best one, everyone says, is Aeroline, which runs luxury buses. Problem is, you can’t easily buy a ticket on their website (try it anyway). The next best thing was the Nice Bus company, and that’s what I chose. It was good, comfortable and on time. Buses from Penang leave from Sungai Nibong Bus Terminal – there are buses from Komtar, too, but didn’t bother with them: they tend to be the worst. When you arrive at Sungai Nibong, there will be touts trying to lead you to some of the worst bus companies’ ticket windows – thank them an ignore them, and find the Nice bus ticket office. The Nice ticket cost me 51RM.

1.3 Bus from Kuala Lumpur to Jerantut

I arrived in Kuala Lumpur at KL Sentral, and called a grab car (14RM) that took me to Pekeliling Bus Terminal, where most of the buses to Jerantut leave from. It was about 3:30 pm, and I wanted to catch the 4pm or the 4.30pm bus. I was shocked when they said to me the next bus with available seats would only leave at 8pm. But I was lucky: after I bought the 8pm ticket, the bus attendant (whom I had asked earlier, and she was the one who showed me where the ticket office was) waved to me and said there is one available seat on this 3:30 bus, so I was enormously relieved. The journey takes 3 hours to Jerantut, no stops on the way. I couldn’t even go to the toilet before I boarded the bus, it was so quick – but no problem 🙂 But I suppose, you could ask the driver to stop should you need a toilet break.

I arrived in Jerantut in the evening. I had booked a room for one night in the Town Inn Hotel, which is about 10-15 minutes walk to the bus terminal. It cost 65RM (55 + the usual tourist tax, 10RM per night all over Malaysia). The room was OK, it even had a desk and hot water in the bathroom, with air conditioning. Otherwise, a very shabby looking place, but for one night, it was perfectly fine.

In the evening, at about 8 pm, almost everything was closed in the neighbourhood. There was one single food stall in the street, which only sold noodles with prawns, which I don’t like, so I bought some snacks in the supermarket for dinner. Such a shame – Jerantut is a town of about 85.000 inhabitants, and all the food places were closed before 8pm.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time (and energy) to look around Jerantut, but I suppose, you could spend a few hours there, too.

1.4 From Jerantut to Kuala Tahan

There are two buses daily from Jerantut to Kuala Tahan. One at 8am, the other at 3pm, and the journey takes 1.5 hours. Most of the time, you will pass oil palm plantations, as far as Kuala Tahan – luckily, Taman Negara itself is protected, so hopefully, the palm plantations will not spread any further, destroying the oldest rainforest of the world.

The bus is very simple, but it’s OK. There were a total of 4 of us travelling in it on a Sunday morning. Tickets are sold on the bus, you can’t buy it in a ticket office, and costs only a few ringgits. The Bus terminal in Jerantut is rather small, but there are simple restaurants and food stalls, and some shops nearby. Also, there is an open air market very near, should you want to buy fruits or some further food options.

I arrived in Kuala Tahan almost exactly 1.5 hours later, i.e. at 9:30 in the morning. The village is very small, and you will see signs and notice boards all over the place showing you which guesthouse is which direction. If you haven’t booked accommodation, just walk around and check the places that you see.

To return from Kuala Tahan to Kuala Lumpur, follow these steps in reverse order. The bus from Kuala Tahan to Jerantut is at 10am and 5pm. From Jerantut, there are several buses daily to Kuala Lumpur. There are a lot of agencies in Kuala Tahan that sell you transport packages all the way to KL, for about 100 ringgits. It is absolutely not worth it. The whole trip with two bus journeys will cost you at most half of this if you buy the tickets yourself.

2. Accommodation in Kuala Tahan

The tiny village of Kuala Tahan is full of small hotels and guesthouses, most of which can be regarded as budget options, even though prices tend to be higher than in other parts of Malaysia for the same level. Initially, I wanted to find something on the spot without pre-booking, but I ended up booking Greenland Guesthouse (formerly Durian Chalets, if you want to find it on Google Maps), because I was worried that the best options will be gone.

Greenland is not bad, but my chalet was only separated from the next one with one wall, a thin one – luckily, the neighbours were not loud. I paid more than 100RM for one night, it had hot water in the bathroom, and it came with air conditioning, but there was no sink at all, you had to use the one outside in the open air for cleaning your teeth or washing your face. Also, it was a bit further away from the action (restaurants and the ferry to the park), and you had to climb a steep hill to get into the village. So now I don’t think that it was the best option, no matter how good reviews it gets on booking.com or Tripadvisor or elsewhere. If you want a budget accommodation, I suggest that you should really find something when you arrive: ask the guesthouse yourself and look at the room before you pay.

There is one more expensive option right in the jungle already, next to the park headquarters, the Mutiara Resort. It has numerous bungalows scattered all over the place, some of them really in the jungle already. I haven’t seen them from the inside, but they didn’t look very different from the much cheaper ones on the other side of the river, in Kuala Tahan village.

If you stay in the village, you will have to cross the river to get to the park area. There are a lot of small boats that you can use for that for 1 ringgit. Some of the boatmen were really funny and welcoming, one of them even sang a song to me (yes, to me, I was the only passenger in his boat). Which song? Well, he asked me if I was travelling with family, and I said, no, I am single. And then he started to sing “No woman, no cry” – I joined in, of course, so it was a happy two-minute boat ride.

3. Food and drink

There are quite a few small and simple restaurants in the village, some of them floating on the river. Most of them serve the same old dishes, i.e. fried rice and fried noodles, and there are a few Indian restaurants too. If you want something more elegant, go to the restaurant in the Mutiara Resort, which will of course be a little more expensive, but it is a nice place. Restaurant prices in the village are very reasonable.

I always had lunch and dinner at the village restaurants. Some of them only open on select days, some of them don’t seem to be favoured by many people, so I suggest that you should choose one where there are at least some guests 🙂 I found Kedai Makan Sarapan Pagi (which translates to Breakfast food in English, although it serves lunch and dinner too) quite good, with a good selection on the menu. The Mawar floating restaurant was OK, but service was slow, and the waitress seemed less than welcoming. On my first day, I went to have coffee in the Family restaurant (floating on the river), where I was the only guest, only the family members were sitting there, smoking. For me, that was a good thing, because I like to smoke a cigarette while drinking my black coffee, but for non-smokers, it would be a nightmare, I suppose. Especially because smoking is banned in all public spaces in Malaysia. Theoretically, that is.

The latest Lonely Planet guidebook advises everyone to buy alcoholic drinks in Jerantut, because, they say, Kuala Tahan is “dry”, and no alcohol is available in the village. This is not true. You can buy beer at several places in Kuala Tahan – although some of the restaurants do put up notices which read “no alcohol here”.

4. Activities in Taman Negara

4.1 Hiking

The first thing you must do is register at the park headquarters. You will have to pay a 1 ringgit entrance fee, plus a 5 ringgit camera fee. I don’t know if you are officially required to pay for a smartphone too. I did pay the 5RM fee, because I am travelling with a camera, and I almost never use my phone to take photos. You will have to fill in a registration form too. There is a sign saying you should let the staff know which trail you are going to take, but in practice no-one asked me about this. You can find information about the trails on a notice board in front of the Park HQ, but I think they are quite sketchy. If you want to do some serious hiking (which I did not), I think it’s best to consult the park staff where you pay.

I went on two short trails around the Park HQ. What I enjoy most in the jungle is not the hiking itself (i.e. not the climbing and the physical activity), but the wonderful plants, the trees, the flowers, the small animals, the birds and the sounds of the jungle. I can spend hours walking very slowly and carefully examining some of the plants and insects, or simply stand (or sit, if I can) and enjoy the tranquility, listening to the birds, the crickets, the cicada, the frogs and other animals.

The first trail that I took was the one that leads to Lubok Simpon, which follows the river Tahan. After only a few hundred metres, you will find a small beach on the river bank, which is one of the most beautiful sights you can find in the jungle there. You can sit in the sand, on a tree trunk, but there are also benches and two shelters too. I actually did this hike twice, and only on one occasion did I see four other people there; the next time I was completely alone. This trail is not demanding at all, so inexperienced hikers, children and older people can also enjoy it a lot. The trail leads you on built-up paths, so you don’t even necessarily have to wear hiking shoes – some stronger sandals will be just as fine. Be careful with the water though! There may be leeches there, and if there are cuts on your skin, you should think twice before you step in the river. The water is crystal clear though.

You can go on much more demanding hikes, too, on your own, without a guide. Some of them are several kilometres long, but I only tried them for a short distance, and then turned back. However, if you plan to spend the night in the jungle, it is highly advisable to hire a guide or join a group – see below.

4.2 Night Walk

Before I went to Taman Negara, I had already taken part in a jungle night walk in Bako National Park in Borneo, which I enjoyed a lot, with an excellent tour guide. So I was looking forward to this one, in Taman Negara, even though I had read mixed reviews about it online.

I arrived in Kuala Tahan in the morning, and the first thing I did (after the coffee and the cigarette in the non-smoking floating restaurant, that is) was walk into one of the many tour agencies next to the floating restaurant, and enquire about the night walk. I had to bring the only guy “working” there back to this world, because he was listening to some music on his mobile, with earphones in his ears, his legs on the table. He said no other people have signed up yet. And then he didn’t say anything else, just stared at me. OK, I said, good-bye. Then I went to another agent next to the bus stop, where the girl was behaving much more like a service provider. She made a few phone calls, I paid 25RM, and she said I should be waiting for a certain Sam (or whatever the name was) in the Mama Chop restaurant at 8.20pm. I checked on Google Maps, and Mama Chop has almost a 100% negative reviews, so I decided to wait in front of it rather than having dinner there.

To my surprise, there were quite a lot of people in our group. And to my even greater surprise, it turned out that there were many other groups too, doing the night walk exactly at the same time. This means that sometimes, you are very close to each other, and the area doesn’t seem like a jungle at night at all – but rather like a crazy tourist spot. We did see a few interesting things: scorpions, stick insects, sleeping birds, giant ants and some snakes. It was an interesting experience. I think you should do it, once you are there, but if for some reason, you cannot make it, you will not miss an awful lot, especially if you have already done similar tours earlier.

4.3 Boat ride to “native villages”, rapid shooting

These are both quite popular activities, but neither seemed attractive enough for me, so I don’t have first hand experience. However, I talked to some fellow travellers, and the ones I talked to didn’t think these activities were very exciting or even worth the money they paid. The visit to the native village is nothing more than a boat ride and a short hike, and then a tourist show where you will learn how to make fire with natural materials, and you will have a chance to try to use the blowpipe, which used to be a hunting tool for many jungle dwelling peoples. Not anymore, though, whatever they tell you. The villagers you meet there, are most probably employed by the tour organisers, and you won’t see a real village either. But if you are prepared for this, and you are aware that you will see a show, and you are happy with it, then go for it.

I had no idea what “rapid shooting” was before I went to Taman Negara. It means you “shoot” ahead with your boat (filled with a few tourists and a boatman) in the rapids in the river, and the fun of it all is that you will get a lot of water splashed on you, and you will all be screaming and laughing, and you will end up being wet all over. Well, I don’t know… If you are a bunch of young people, you may easily have a lot of fun with it.

4.4 Multi-day hikes

There are organised package tours to the depths of Taman Negara. Agencies promise you the “real jungle experience”, which normally means you will spend one or several nights camping in the wild. You are not likely to see large animals even this way, although the area is home to elephants, tigers and other wild beasts.

You don’t necessarily have to book in advance, but it could be a good idea. Do your research online and see what other people experienced. There are organised tours even starting in Kuala Lumpur. If you decide to book on the spot (either in Kuala Tahan or the nearest city, Jerantut), be careful which company’s services you want to use. Some of them get terrible reviews online. For reviews, you can turn to Tripadvisor or Google Maps reviews.

4.5 My favourite: doing absolutely NOTHING at all

Even if you are a fan of hiking long distances on difficult terrain, you don’t always have to run around like a headless chicken, especially when you are on holiday. And once you are in Taman Negara, chances are you are on holiday. It doesn’t matter how many recommendations on possible activities you find either online or in person from other travellers, you don’t have to do all or even most of them. You are in the oldest jungle of the Earth: enjoy the beauty of nature. Examine some of the living things from a little closer, including the ones that you don’t see moving, and marvel at how beautiful they are.

One “activity” that few people choose here is having a rest, or doing nothing, if you like. I, on the other hand, can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone. If you think you need two full days for your hikes, stay for three days, and have at least one whole day for lazing around. Go to the beach on the riverside (see above), and sit there for as long as you like. Take a towel with you to lie down and breathe in the nice air. You will most likely not be disturbed by many other people. Take a book with you if you like, and sit on a restaurant boat over a large glass of fresh fruit juice. Or find a nice spot in the jungle, and sit there for a while. Or choose a guesthouse where you have a balcony or a terrace with a view, where you can just spend time.

But above all and of course: enjoy your time whatever way is enjoyable for you.